Mind Control

Mind Control is the fourth album by American rock band Tantric, released on August 4, 2009. It is the band's second album under Silent Majority Group and was produced by Brett Hestla, marking Tantric's departure from mainstay producer Toby Wright. Mind Control retains the band's 2008 lineup with the exception of drummer Kevin Miller who was replaced by Richie Monica. Background and recording On March 9, 2009 via MySpace, Tantric announced that they were recording a new album entitled Mind Control. The band's fourth album would be produced by Brett Hestla, former touring bassist for Creed, and initially given a July 21 release date. Singer Hugo Ferreira noted that Mind Control was more collaborative than previous releases and called it "really, really heavy for Tantric, twice as heavy as the last record at least." However, as all Tantric band members live in different cities across the United States, Mind Control was written piecemeal. The band would send each other compositions via email for others to build on. In an interview with The Flint Journal, Hugo Ferreira discussed the album's production: "It was all like via e-mail. Basically Joe would send me a guitar riff on the e-mail and I would dump it into my home studio and kind of slice it up and put it together, and maybe add a chorus. It was put together like a puzzle. But with the instrumentation, I think that the guys, in my mind, really stepped up to the plate and gave me a lot of great stuff to work with. I never really wrote a record like this. But, to me, I think it's the best one we've ever done. It was crazy because it was really effortless. It's great." Ferreira also elaborated on performing for the US military in Korea and the meaning behind Mind Control and its title track: "This record is a lot darker than anything we have ever done. Basically, I wrote the song about the media kind of controlling people's opinions and thoughts and stuff like that. Just from being on the side of the viewer of me watching television and seeing the news and flying out to Korea and talking with troops out there and getting their take on it and being completely different. That's what the song was about. The song, even musically, and with the video we already shot, it sets up the whole tone of the record. I thought it would be a cool name."