OBITUARY's DONALD TARDY: 'We Are Working Our Asses Off To Make A Monster Album'

During an appearance on the latest episode of "The Official Danko Jones Podcast", OBITUARY drummer Donald Tardy confirmed that the band is working on material for a new studio album.

"I'm super stoked on some of these new songs that we've got," he said (hear audio below). "And 2021 would be fabulous if we had a release date, but just like everybody, especially nowadays where physical copies are very tough to sell and talk people into buying, the new album is really just that bait on the hook to really keep people happy to where when you need to get on tour, you can get out there and give them some new music and give them a new album to get their hands on, but also to obviously support you and buy a piece of merchandise and come to the show.

"Once these [pandemic-related] handcuffs are off of all of us musicians, the new OBITUARY album will be ready and it will be a worldwide release," he continued. "But in the meantime, we are working our asses off to just make a monster album."

Regarding OBITUARY's songwriting approach this time around, Donald said: "We've never been a band to worry, to put pressure on ourselves to even look back in the past, or even just the last album, and put pressure on ourselves, like, 'Oh my God! The last album really went over well. We really have to make a great album.' And, 'Oh my God! What are we gonna do? The last one we had this kind of groove, and people liked this song, so maybe we need to think about a song like that.' We don't ever do anything like that. When Trevor [Peres, guitar] and I enter the studio, or the jam room, there is nothing on our mind except, 'Let's just turn the amp on,' and within the first 15, 20 minutes, if something comes out, and that's usually about the time frame that the good shit comes out, then we roll with it. If not, we don't panic. We just then jam a little bit and keep the thing recording, and maybe some riffs come out of it. But we're not the band to sit there and grind for a seven-hour day on one song just to try and make it spectacular. Obviously, some people have extreme success doing it that way, but we are that kind of band where we write entire songs, entire albums without knowing really what my brother's gonna do. He'll obviously give us some insight on what raises his eyebrow, and then we move forward that way. But we are the band to be the first to say, 'You know what? It's music. It's fun as hell. And we have the best jobs in the world.' It's the most fun.

"I don't do anything — I don't do roller coasters; I don't jump out of airplanes; I don't do any of that — because being behind a drum set is the most fun — and it's been this way since I was nine years old — it is the most excited I can ever be on this planet," he explained. "I don't know what it is, but just sitting down behind a drum kit and grabbing drum sticks, that is my roller coaster.

"So we don't put pressure on ourselves as in, 'Oh my God! The last album went well.' Instead we're just, like, 'Let's just get in there and go for it, man. Let's write what we love,' and we know our fans are gonna love that."

Last month, OBITUARY completed a three-part "live stream concert series", featuring full-album performances of "Slowly We Rot", "Cause Of Death" and rare classics. The first two streams — a "Slowly We Rot" took place on Saturday, October 17; and a "Cause Of Death" set on Saturday, October 24 — were live from the ESI Streaming Studio in Tampa, Florida. The third stream, featuring rare classics and special tracks, was broadcasted live from OBITUARY's recording studio in Gibsonton, Florida.

OBITUARY's latest, self-titled studio album was released in 2017 via Relapse.