its a half step down, like most of the other riot stuff. Detuning doesnt necessarily mean more heavy. Can still make happy songs in lower keys.
& I think they should just produce themselves.. hire a recording engineer to sit down and not say a word and let them do the rest. They wouldn't have to pay any advance or escalating points on the record via producer and could pocket that money. They sold their soul in that 360 and can use that extra $$ in case the junior attempt falls short of riot numbers (which im sure everyone knows wont happen but hey... doesn't hurt to be prepared). They probably have some sort of escalating royalty clause in their deal (or I would HOPE they do). If I had to guess they've got to at least be getting 17-19%. A high profile producer would take on average 3 points or percent off that since all deals now are 'all in royalties' meaning the producer's royalty gets docked from the artist royalty. However this all means nothing if the record doesn't recoup as no one would see any money from the AR account. This discludes writer's royalties though which is an entirely separate thing where other than controlled compositions, record labels can't really get their hands on that money.
/Ramble off! .. Anyways, I think they're capable of doing it themselves by now. They don't need someone pushing them in a direction. I'm sure they're all so hyper critical of their music anyways that it doesn't matter who's sitting at the board. After all.. they write the music anyways.