Background Anberlin set about doing two weeks of pre-production for
New Surrender, a significant amount more than the four days they did with
Cities. Guitarist Joseph Milligan said the pre-production comprised them "playing in a room, playing all the new songs together and working on parts together. We would tweak things here and there." Christian said "the pressures were immense" after signing with Universal, and that he had a "minor breakdown" leading him to "run away to New Orleans" in February to write a couple of songs for the record. Reminiscing over the experience he added, "the songs that came from the trip, inspired by New Orleans, are like none other before". Rhythm guitarist
Christian McAlhaney has made his debut as a songwriter on the album; Stephen Christian said "He is an incredible counterpoint to Joseph Milligan and has written several songs that are going to be on this record!.". incidentally by turning four songs into a single one. The actual recording and production took place at multiple studios in
Hollywood,
California, under Avron throughout March and early April 2008. The first recording took place at Swing House Recordings in
West Hollywood, followed by
NRG Recording Studios in
North Hollywood, where they completed at lot of the drum tracks and began the bass and guitar tracks. Finally they completed recording at The Boat Studio in
Silver Lake, where the main focus was the vocals. The band stated in a webchat session with
AbsolutePunk.net that they would be using a wide range of instruments including the
sitar, this claim was later declared as a joke, with Joseph Milligan saying, "It was a joke! There’s no sitar! Now I kind of wish there was so that we could actually say that!"
Title The album's mysterious title has been explained multiple times by Anberlin's lyricist Christian. He has said the title explains people's need to give things up to change, "In everybody's life, there's something they know they have to give up... There's something they have to change or take care of in their lives to progress to the next step." His original explanation on the band's
Myspace blog quickly spread across music news sites, with them reporting his insight on the title and how "we must change, not because we want to, but because we desperately have to." Christian alluded to the title's power, "I think it's a motivational speech, in two words... Hopefully, [
New Surrender] is that motivational speech in 40 minutes." ==Promotion==