MetalSucks recently spoke with THE HUMAN ABSTRACT singer Nathan Ells about a variety of topics, including the band's change in musical direction from Nocturne to their recent release Midheaven, the reasons behind guitarist A.J. Minette's split with the band, whether he takes critics' and fans' opinions to heart, his prog-rock heroes, the importance of talking directly with fans, creating music for the sake of art, and what went wrong in the initial Midheaven recording sessions with producer Toby Wright. Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: Was that conscious change in direction [between Nocturne and Midheaven] independent of A.J. leaving the band or was it a result of that or after that?

A: "I think it was totally mutually exclusive or not related at all. If A.J. Minette had stayed in the band, we would have gone in a much lighter direction than we have. That's for sure. I think that was part of the problem initially, that A.J. wanted to make the next record not even heavy in any way at all. I've been in metal bands for 13 years, and everybody else in the band has always been into metal. All of our fans that we worked so hard over the past few years to build up love Nocturne and love our band from that Nocturne time period. Although we did stretch out into different directions on the new album, I just kind of felt like it would be a serious slap in the face to everybody like our fans, and really it would not be very fun at all to not be a heavy band anymore. I really love doing the high energy live shows. I think that's what everyone has come to expect. I mean it's not doing what people expect, but I think heavy shows are fun. I think what we built up with the band initially was a pretty good thing. I think that was one of the major reasons of A.J. leaving. He wasn't feeling the heavy music like he originally did. He didn't want to do another heavy album, so I think that's really the big difference of A.J. leaving the band that it kind of made [Midheaven] a heavier album than it would have been. That's for sure."

Q: That's interesting to hear because a lot of the people who comment on our site, at least, might not be aware of that. They seem to think that his leaving the band was actually responsible for this record going more of a prog-melodic direction.

A: "Yeah. that's just because they aren't within our circle of friends and don't know us personally. They haven't had the experiences of actually knowing what's going on with the band. It's nobody's fault. It's just how it is. Everybody fills in the blanks about what they think happened. I've been reading a lot critical reviews of our albums. It's really funny to me with these critics I've never met they'll just be filling in all these blanks about what happened. They really have no idea. It's just kind of like their opinion of how it might have been, but they talk about it like this is how it is. They really just don't know."

Q: What happened with Toby Wright in the studio?

A: "Oh man. I love getting this question. There are certain things that I've been told not to say, so I'm just going to try and say it the nicest way possible. The factors that went into Toby Wright not working out is that Toby Wright is a producer that is used to getting paid a whole lot of money to do what he does. We paid him, I believe, $17,000, and I don't think that was even close to what he was used to being paid. So I think that started us off on the wrong foot in his book and the way he does things. I don't really have a whole lot to say about Toby other than the fact that when we got done with everything, the mixes didn't sound like we wanted them to, so we had to go with somebody else. We ended up pulling extra money out of our pockets to do that.:"

To read the full interview, head over to MetalSucks.