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Staying Alive With DONALD TARDY From OBITUARY · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  Hey, well's help everybody. This is Donald Tardy with obituary and we are
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  about to have an interview and a chat about this Australian New Zealand tour that
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  we are getting ready to jump on an airplane and head that way. Beautiful,
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  Donald, thanks for joining us today. Right on. Chris, how
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  you doing man? Have good? Thanks brother yourself. I'm doing real good.
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  We're down here in Florida, been been home now for I don't know,
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  two or three months. So the band's ready to get things going and
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  get on an airplane and get down there and rock some Australian shows. Yautiful.
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  I've aterually kicked start twenty twenty four with a tour of Australia, starting
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  in Upland on January the fifth, before going through a christ Church launch and
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  Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney, Bruceban and Adelaide and finishing in Perth on January
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  the ninet eighth. That's not a bad way to snap everyone out of the
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  festive season. Yeah, I mean we're excited about it. You know,
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  we know that we don't get to Australia often enough. You know, it's
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  so damn far away from us that it's only so many times that we can
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  get there. But we're excited, we're we're we're excited about the tour,
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  but we're also excited about these pre sales and these venues and the fans.
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  They really seem to be as excited as we are to get this thing going.
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  So we're looking forward to it. And the chor is called the Barely
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  a Large chow Mate, which is a bright name, but does that refer
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  to the band or the audience? Yeah, that's the I think that's the
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  band. After that flight trying to get to you guys. You know,
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  it's a twenty I think it's I think this time it's a twenty six hour
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  journey for us just to make it just before we land, because we head
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  to New Zealand first, so it's just brutal from Florida to uh to your
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  side of the world is there's no easy way around it. So the band's
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  gonna definitely be barely alive by the time we make it there. At the
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  press release promises is setlistic toughs. You're in child career. It's with eleven
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  albums and nearly four decades in the business, might like the copy an easy
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  set list right, Yeah, I mean it's you bring up a good point,
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  and any fan can imagine if they just if they just take five minutes
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  to think of how many minutes you're on stage, how many albums you have,
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  how many songs you have written, and and then try to put a
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  set list together. It's it's quite comical, actually, think, thank god,
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  we're not the band where every band member chimes in and demands a certain
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  song. The band is is pretty okay with with me selecting the set list
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  and of course my brother. So it's just challenging. You know, you
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  got you got eleven albums, and you try to play something off everything,
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  or you know, at least every you know, every decade you've been around.
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  You try to throw the songs in there, and you know, especially
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  with the new album, and we're so excited about the new album and these
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  songs we wrote and the way they came out and the really the really cool
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  thing is the way they come across live. We're really digging these new songs
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  live. So it's just a tough one to put a setlist together because we
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  want to play all the new songs. But we're not stupid, you know,
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  we're fans of heavy metal, and we know fans are coming out and
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  hoping for those songs they've known forever and the ones they love. And you
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  know, we know that if we don't play certain songs, we're gonna get
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  bottles of beer thrown at us. You know, you've got to play stuff
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  off cause of death. You've got to play slowly rot. You know,
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  if you don't play Chopped in half, you're gonna get a lot of people
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  angry. So we know what's needed. But we're also super excited about this
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  new album. Yeah, now the band's being anty and lost. In twenty
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  twenty, Mint said, what's change, Chine? You go since you're Addie
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  lost. You know, we're just busy. I mean that's a good thing.
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  Is is the demand is there for Obituary. We are as busy as
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  we want to be. We are a lucky enough band right now to be
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  able to pick and choose tours that are offered to us and the opportunities that
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  are there. And you know, not much has changed except that, you
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  know, just like everybody, when you get sent home and you're home for
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  however hell long that was eighteen months, two years, whatever that was,
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  it felt like forever you really just grow an appreciation of freedom and getting back
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  out on stage. Being home and handcuffed to our chairs and our sofas at
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  home, that was punishing. And you know, everybody knows, you know,
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  we're a band that you know, we are a live band. It's
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  one thing recording albums, but we're a band that likes to get on the
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  road and get our hands dirty and get out there in front of the crowd
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  and with the fans live. And we're just really really appreciative, really fortunate
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  and really excited about twenty twenty four and starting it with Australia. And you've
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  got Psychroptic and Black Lives supporting misce of the two and so we'll watch these
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  icetream bands. It's pretty brutal line up. That is a brutal lineup.
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  You know, I've never seen Black Love alive. I am just now familiar
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  with the music because I honestly, just being honest, I didn't know the
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  band. But of course now I've checked it out and it's heavy as shit.
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  And then you got and then you got Dave and the Psychroptic guys,
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  and those guys just when they came out and that now for this last decade.
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  They have just set the bar so high for every band, especially technical
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  bands. They're just incredible. They they they've never ceased to amaze. Every
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  album they put out gets better and better. That combination between those brothers are
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  just I've never seen anything like it. I've never heard anything like it,
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  you know, and I don't know. I just listening to those records makes
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  me want to burn my drumsticks because I know, no matter no matter how
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  many minutes, hours, months I practiced my drums, I'm never gonna know.
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  I'm never going to be that kind of drummer. And uh, hats
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  off to Dave for that kind of energy and skill behind a drum kit.
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  We start of touch on this before, but I'll pict sure. I released
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  the lightest album, Dawn of Everything earlyer DC. Has it been received by
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  fans my like your fans sort of one? Is it just stuck in the
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  past and just love the old music or did they still in Brice and you
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  music? No, they're really digging the new album. You know. We're
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  very We're very proud to say that these last two albums, the fans have
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  really embraced it, and especially this new one, you know, Dying of
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  everything was something we knew it was going to be a good album, uh
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  when we were writing it and the songs that were coming together. But once
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  we got in the studio and once we heard that final product, we knew
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  it was going to be a special album. And the fans really did showed
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  their support and uh, and you know, we charted and charts higher than
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  we've ever had. So it's it's it's out there and the fans are definitely
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  seeing that it's a pretty decent album, and that's pretty Uh, that's pretty
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  exciting and it makes us very proud. I've got it back in history a
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  bit mate like the bands styled in the nineteen eighties in Tampa for hard,
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  So what was the music for Clumbate like that gave birth to Ourbuary and when
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  did you fit in there initially? Yeah, you know, it's it's crazy
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  to think that it's over three decades now. It's you know, it's thirty
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  five years in the making, and anyone that's old enough to have been on
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  this earth for forty years or more, they know what it was like thirty
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  five years ago. And in music terms, in tech and technic and technology
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  terms, that's an ancient time. I mean, the eighties were ancient when
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  it comes to studios and the recording process and the musicians ways of writing songs
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  and remembering your songs because there was no computer to quickly record your riff or
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  your drum beat that you just made up. And we have so many funny
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  memories of early days when Alan West was in the band, that he would
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  always bring U straight up radio, you know, a radio with double A
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  batteries and that thing that with a cassette, because every time we come up
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  with an idea, we would just try to hurry up and record it somehow
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  to before we forget that riff. And there's so many times I remember when
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  we were young that Trevor or Alan would play a riff and I'd be like,
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  oh, I'm like, dude, that's killer man, hang on a
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  secon, let's hang on, let's get that radio. Okay, let's record.
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  Okay, try that again, and they they try to play the riff
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  again and it's just not quite the same. So you we're like, ah,
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  fuck man. You know, you know it was close to that,
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  but it wasn't quite that magic. And so you know that times have changed,
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  you know, now we got the studio. We got the pro tools
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  rig we always have the record light blinking ready to you know, ready to
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  record the riffs and the ideas that we have when we start writing music.
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  And that's the biggest the biggest difference from the eighties nineties into the two thousands
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  is that technology is just incredible. Now we're recording, we're recording albums at
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  my brother's house, which we you know, which we call Redneck Studio,
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  and we've done the last four or five albums there and uh, we haven't
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  had one complaint yet from fans with the sound quality of our albums. So
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  I think we're doing something all right. Yeah, And in that thirty five
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  us say, since you've been a band by lot, a lot of things
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  are changed in the music industry, especially trends and stalls and fashions and things
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  all that. Like have a bittuer. I haven't tried to keep up with
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  what's gone on music on your sort of more stocks here in Bove. I
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  think I think we've you know, over over the years, over the albums,
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  over the decades. You know, we are not trend setters. We're
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  not trying to be trends. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel every time
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  we write an album. We know that we love our style. We're comfortable
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  in our own skin. But you know, like the difference between slowly Rot
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  going into two albums later with the end complete, you know, I think
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  the song style and that the songwriting was a little bit more modern, a
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  little bit more thought of. And then of course the fourth album, World
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  Demise. You know, we didn't do anything super special, but we did.
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  You know, we did dive into doing some a couple of weird sound
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  effects, and you know, of course it wasn't a typical death metal album
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  cover and some of the lyrics my brother had and the music video and stuff.
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  You know, we tried to step out of our box a little bit.
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  But again it goes right back to a bit. You always been a
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  band a long time. We are a staple in this death metal world,
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  and there's fans out there that don't want change. They want us to stay
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  that same band that they love, and I agree with that. I don't
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  want to have to think that we need to change to stay relevant. I
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  think we write the music that we love and our fans are gonna love it.
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  So what would you say you've learned about yourself and your music. I
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  get Jetty sum it up. I mean, you know, we've said it
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  many times. If that was the question, is you know we are not.
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  We are very happy with the style that we came up with when we
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  were young. We honed our skills all these years, and with this new
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  album, it just goes to show that, you know, what we believe
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  is good and what we believe is great is not necessarily one thousand mile an
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  hour bas drums, five hundred different riffs in one song. We know that
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  keeping it simple, keeping it heavy with some groove, and really just rely
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  on our songwriting skills. That pretty much sums up what we are as a
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  band. You know, again, we are not trying to be the heaviest
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  or the most technical band in the world. We just like writing riffs,
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  you know. We just love being in a band, being a band,
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  and it's really cool to know that fans are still supporting it after as many
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  years. Oh, I don't know, thanks very much for you So I
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  might just been a pleasure speaking with your happy effective season two and we should
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  see you out in Australia LA next year. Right, Yeah, right on,
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  Chris, good talking to you and everybody. We're super excited about it.
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  Man. I hope you guys check out the website and get those tickets,
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  because I did see pre sales and I can tell you right now we
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  are moving right along with pre sales. These are gonna be a lot of
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  sold out shows. So if you plan on coming and seeing us, grab
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  that ticket because we want you guys to come out and experience it with us.
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  Yeah, if it might be, take cam, enjoy the rest of
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  your day right on. Cheers everybody,