OBITUARY Frontman Talks About New Album, Reveals New Songtitles

OBITUARY frontman John Tardy spoke to Abrasive Rock about the recording process for their new album, tentatively due this summer via Roadrunner Records. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Abrasive Rock: You guys started in the studio on Saturday, correct?

John Tardy: "Yeah, we started setting up on Saturday and pretty much ran through all our drum tracks, setting them up and micing them up and getting different sounds all through Monday, then started laying down tracks on Monday. DT [Donald Tardy] is a good way through his drum tracks so when he's done, we'll start with the guitars one at a time and I'm singing as we go along."

Abrasive Rock: Do you guys have any album titles or songtitles yet?

John Tardy: "Well, obviously when we played some shows in October over in Europe, we played one of the new songs then and that was 'Insane', and there's another song that we recorded. What we did is we went into the studio several months ago just to set up Donald's new drum set and to work with Mark [Prator] in his new studio and see if that's where we wanted to do it, and while we were there we did two songs we recorded just for testing purposes, and we recorded 'Insane' and 'Mindset'. So I'll give you those two, but I'll hang on to the rest of them until the album gets closer."

Abrasive Rock: Is this going to affect Donald being in ANDREW W.K. or vice versa?

John Tardy: "Yeah. Up to now it has kind of worked out because Andrew is busy writing his own album now, so he hasn't been doing a whole lot of touring, but Donald has let Andrew know that OBITUARY is going to be the primary thing here and the two will conflict, so they're at an understanding there. It's just been working out. Donald's drum tech they take is also a good friend of ours, so when Donald can't do shows, Ritchie, the drum tech, just starts doing them instead. It works out good for Andrew."

Abrasive Rock: Did you have all the songs completed before you entered the studio?

John Tardy: "Yeah, you know what? I think we were more prepared for this album than probably any other album that we've done except for 'Slowly We Rot' because for 'Slowly' we were together already for so long and had songs written, so for that album we were really prepared too, but we weren't prepared for the whole studio experience at that time. From a writing standpoint, we've had these songs written for a long time and we've been jamming them for a long time so the longer you do that the more you change things, the more times Donald does a fill and goes, 'I want to do this fill instead.' Little things like that. I can sit there and say, 'I started singing it like this, but I think this is going to be cooler.' The more you play it and the more you practice it and go over and over it, the more little things you change and the more prepared you are when you get in the studio and we're just rolling through these things really nice."

Abrasive Rock: So what's it like being back in the studio with these guys and playing live together?

John Tardy: "We had an absolute blast over in Europe when we went over there in October. We really didn't make any big deal of it, we didn't even tell our record label that we were going over there. We did it with an unknown kind of agent that set up all the stuff for us, and it was kind of low-key, but still a lot of people found out about it so a lot of people showed up and see us, which was really good to see since it's been so long since we’ve been over there. As far as being in the studio, it's just fucking awesome! Scott Burns has been around, hanging out with us and he's helping us out. Mark Prator, who's been on every one of our records also is there. We're going to be going back in the studio to Morrisound, which we haven't been there for a long time. We're just getting an old-school vibe here, and it's really cool to have everyone around."

Abrasive Rock: So is this record going to be the last OBITUARY record or is this going to be something that goes on for a while?

John Tardy: "It is not going to be [the last album]. In fact, we've already got some new songs written for another album. We're actually hoping, come the end of the year or early next year to try and get back in the studio to try and do another record again, which should be cool because, like I said, this is our last record with Roadrunner [on the contract], so we're going to be kind of free agents and we're kind of rolling it from there. We're just having so much fun right now and there's so much coming our way, so we're just going to roll with it and I'm hoping for another three or four records actually."

Read John Tardy's entire interview with Abrasive Rock at this location.