![Nate Garrett Discusses His Decision to Conclude Spirit Adrift]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Nate-Garrett-Discusses-His-Decision-to-Conclude-Spirit-Adrift-758x406.jpg "Nate Garrett Discusses His Decision to Conclude Spirit Adrift] 1")
Nate Garrett’s decision to fly Spirit Adrift into the sun was not taken lightly. The venerable US doom metal band has been his passion project for more than a decade.
Formed in 2015, initially a solo endeavour before expanding to a full band, Spirit Adrift was Nate Garrett – and vice versa. They were inseparable. But the end has arrived, and it has been coming.
Garrett made no secret of it. Spirit Adrift officially played their final show on 20 March, when they opened for Garrett’s heroes, Crowbar and Eyehategod. Spirit Adrift’s sixth and final album, Infinite Illumination, was surprise released via 20 Buck Spin on 10 April (it gets a physical release on 15 May).
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And although Garrett has since been convinced to reanimate Spirit Adrift for an encore as they replace Fulci on the Decibel Magazine Tour 2026, and right now are hauling ass across the US with Cryptopsy, Necrot and Blood Monolith, after 28 May, that is it. Done. Game over. Mic dropped.
But the truth is Garrett is tired. He had even considered making 2023’s Ghost At The Gallows the band’s final album for “borderline superstitious” reasons.
It seemed like every time I made a new Spirit Adrift record something awful would occur in my personal life
“I don’t know if this is just life – it’s probably just life – but it seemed like every time I made a new Spirit Adrift record something awful would occur in my personal life,” he says, joining MusicRadar from his home in Texas. “And I almost – again, probably just superstitious thinking – felt like the project had a curse or something.”
There are also some very real reasons why Garrett could not longer sustain Spirit Adrift. His wife, Nicole, was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing treatment. They are planning to move to Washington state. With all that also comes money concerns. And even if Spirit Adrift enjoys an exalted status in underground metal, the music business has become unsustainable.
“I hesitate to call it the music industry,” he says. “I don’t even really know what an appropriate descriptor would be for what it is now.”
What the music business is is not paying. Not only are revenue streams being battered by 21st-century macro-trends, streaming et cetera, but Garrett says that post-Covid it has become not uncommon for promoters to stiff the band and run off without paying.
It became, ‘Oh, well, you’re gonna make your money on merch.’ But even now, like, that’s hardly ever even enough money to pay the band at the end of the tour
He says he doesn’t mind getting “gangster semi-threatening” on one or two every now and again – a few bad apples are to be expected – but it’s out of control.
Garrett had to “get serious” with one promoter after he ran off without paying him. Six months after the show the promoter was outed in the Austin press as being a serial con-artist who had been running the same scams on the East Coast. “It’s like the whole shit seems to be run by people like this nowadays.”
And the squeeze that’s making Spirit Adrift unsustainable is even affecting bands with way bigger audiences. Bands you or I might call big.
“It’s that sort of bullshit and navigating how cutthroat it’s become trying to get on tours,” Garrett explains. “You get a tour offer with bands that you are excited to tour with, and the money is just, like, nothing – like you literally can’t even pay your bills if you go on tour. And it’s happening to everybody. Everybody, like, big, big bands. Bands that people perceive as being big. I know a lot of guys in bands like that, big-time shit, and some of those guys are like slaves to the organisation.”
Those bands play in bigger venues. They have a bigger production. They bring in more money. But the margins remain brutally slim once management, agents and crew are paid, and thinking about the bottom line 24/7 is not why Garrett started a metal band.
“I play music because I love to write songs. I love to play music,” he says. “At a certain point, I determined that’s why I exist, like, that’s the thing I’m supposed to be doing. But doing it in this environment, whatever this underground metal touring industry has become, it’s just the most joyless shit in the world – and everybody feels that way, and they’re all pretending that they don’t feel that way! [Laughs] So that’s a big factor, too.”
Many pretend. Many don’t. It’s not that uncommon a story. And in a sense, it is a tale as old as time.
Once bitten, twice shy, Aretha Franklin used to insist on being paid in cash. No cash, no show. But at least there was cash floating around back then. Now everyone is chasing shadows.
“It’s fucked, man! It’s fucked! Used to be you could make a little bit of money by your music being played. Now you really can’t,” says Garrett. “ And then it became, ‘Oh, well, you’re gonna make your money on merch.’ But even now, like, that’s hardly ever even enough money to pay the band at the end of the tour, so I’m just like, ‘What is the fucking point of this, man?’”
Maybe Infinite Illumination is the point. From a fan’s POV, it is bittersweet to see a much-loved heavy metal institution scuttled just when it has released a record that finds Garrett at the sum of all his songwriting power, his on-point melodic choices, the sheer majesty of a record that opens with the steely splash of acoustic guitar suspended in the long-tail of cathedral-sized reverb as the eight-minute title track stretches and comes to life, animated by a riff of burnished steel.
There’s the psychedelic doom primitivism of Buried In The Shadow Of The Cross, the Trouble-style biker-metal of White Death…
I respect bands that go out that way, like, on the high-note
“I’m really proud of the new record,” says Garrett. “Personally, I think it’s the best Spirit Adrift record. It’s the one that I can listen to and I don’t hear anything that would change.”
There are guest solos from the legendary James Murphy (Obituary/Testament/Death), über-producer Arthur Rizk of Eternal Champion, and Steve Jansson of Crypt Sermon. Tracks like You Will Never Hold The Key prove once more that there are few bands out there more gifted at mixing traditional capital H/capital M heavy metal with doom.
Where Once There Was An Ocean is beyond epic. They’re all epic. But the old showbiz rule applies in metal as it does elsewhere; leave ‘em wanting more.
“I think bands and artists have two choices,” says Garrett. “You crawl out on your fucking hands and knees with the shit kicked out of you, or you walk away on your own two feet. That’s the way I look at it right now. I respect bands that go out that way, like, on the high-note.”
And this is a high-note. It says everything for Garrett’s appreciation for Infinite Illumination that the standalone single, Eternal Celestial Energy, released a month before the album dropped, never made it onto the record when it might just be one of the great doom tracks of our time. “Zeuss [the producer] and Jeff Henson, the engineer, were both really adamant that that song be on the record,” says Garrett.
He might not be able to live with the music business in its current state, but Garrett can live with the album. And he has things to do.
Garrett has his Big Riff Energy podcast. His wife wants him to do a solo album, which will draw on more of his influences outside of metal – psychedelic music, Gene Clark, Pink Floyd, old country, some contemporary neo-trad country bluegrass cats like Tyler Childers. And then he has Neon Nightmare, the gothic metal band inspired by Type O Negative and the morbid romance of the late Peter Steele’s songwriting.
But that can wait. Once this tour is out the way – once he can organise it – Garrett and his wife are moving to Washington. Right now he’s on YouTube learning how to build a wood cabin.
“My main thing getting up to Washington is we’ve been obsessed with watching these YouTube videos of people building cabins, like from the ground up,” he says. “So I want to teach myself how to do that. That and the solo record are gonna be the two things I’m focussing on the most.”
Life’s too short to be worrying about the stuff that doesn’t really matter.
“And that’s the thing, I love writing songs,” says Garrett. “I love writing riffs. I love being in the studio. I love the exploratory nature of touring. Like, I got to go to Russia. That would have never happened otherwise.
“I’ve seen more of the Earth than anybody ever in the history of my family. I love that. I love playing the shows. All that stuff’s the greatest stuff in the world. All the rest of it is literally the worst fucking thing that you could experience.”
