Through the Eyes of the Dead Decide to Produce Their Own Album … Again

So many bands aren't in control of their fates. But South Carolina deathcore mavens Through the Eyes of the Dead are taking matters into their own hands for their forthcoming album. And they are doing so by producing it themselves. That's a daunting task for any band, since a seasoned, experienced producer regularly offers invaluable input and guidance into the intimidating recording process. But Through the Eyes are handling the job with poise and don't see self-producing as that scary at all! In fact, the band has produced all but one of its albums in the past.

"It's really great to have the control on the production of your own album," guitarist Justin Longshore told Noisecreep. "We usually knows exactly what we want to capture on the recording, before the rehearsal process even begins. It starts from the core. We've always self-produced our records in the past, other than our previous album, 'Malice.' We decided to change things up then, and let Erik Rutan -- who we really respect as a musician, engineer and producer -- produce, engineer and mix 'Malice.'" TTEOTD retained Rutan's mixing services for the vocals for this forthcoming album, though.

"I have learned a lot from Erik [from his work on the] last record and wanted to really utilize production techniques I've gathered from him on our new material," Longshore also said. "Luckily, one of the band's best friends and merch guy happens to be an awesome engineer with a really nice studio. We all think he's the sixth member of the band, and he knows our sound, so we felt very comfortable letting him engineer the album while we produce it. We still have had input from Erik, even though he's not here with us, thanks to us having the comfort to utilize the studio to track a lot of pre-production."

The desire to shake things up again was the reason for TTEOTD going back to producing the record themselves. "We just wanted to change things up a bit with this album so we decided to go this route," Longshore said. "That way, we all get a lot of involvement in the outcome. Everything is going great and we really think we captured what we have envisioned."

A tidbit for the uninformed: Rutan also serves as vocalist/guitarist for his own band, Hate Eternal.