Another reason the band chose him was that they wanted the album to have more of an American sound to it, with Wheeler thought that American-made albums "sound better sonically", with "better engineering, better studios, so we wanted to check it out ." Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl had visited the studio a few times during the recording, but the band reframed from asking him to play on any recordings, as Wheeler explained: "There’s a whole bunch of people we could have called, but we just want to get our band’s sound on record." Despite planning to have finished by November, the sessions continued until January 2004. Rich Costey mixed the recordings at Cello Studios, also in Hollywood, with assistance from Claudius Mittendorfer. Howie Weinberg mastered the album at Masterdisk.