“Once we got into the studio for the first time we just couldn’t wait to get back in again so we just sat around and wrote music. We were itching to get back into that studio because we had so much fun the first time around. It was so new to us, we were all so young, still in high school. We went in the second time with Cause Of Death and really had fun, as you can tell with all the weird intros that we were doing.”
Unsurprisingly, choosing to specifically focus on their first three records for the current world tour has led to re-discovering many things lingering in the past.
“We went back and started listening to them and I can see Donald (Tardy, drums) and I sitting down and listening to Slowly We Rot, which we probably haven’t done in several years, some of them songs I was like, ‘I don’t even remember this song!’ it’s crazy. Some of the songs we never even played live before, some of them were tuned a little bit different so Trevor (Peres, guitar) had to go back and re-pick them out because we tune differently now. We play about six songs off each album, which is a pretty good representation of each one,” Tardy enthuses.
Even though some songs were basically unfamiliar to them, Tardy insists that once they started working on the set many things about the band’s early days became really clear in his mind.
“It seemed like once we listened to them a few times and played them a few times it all started coming back together again. By the time we made it to Europe we were ploughing through them. They sounded so great and it brings back a lot of memories of that time.”
Tardy shares a few details of before Obituary were a recognised band, which have vividly appeared in his mind while performing the classic setlist.
“You’ll find yourself starting to think back to some of the little shitty clubs we were playing in around Tampa at the time. You know, playing the weird show at some civic centre or the airplane hanger we played one time and the cops all showed up. Little things like that you find popping into your mind as you’re out there onstage and you just wind up cracking a smile to yourself.”
Tardy attests that music’s time-transporting ability has also led to recalling the values and attitudes he promoted at this point in his life.
“It brings back a lot of memories and a lot of things that you used to think and the way you used to act. You can mess up on stage a few nights because you’re just sitting there getting totally lost in time.”
In addition to re-living their nascent days, over the past few years Obituary have been working on what will become their ninth album. They’ve already devoted substantial time to a follow-up to 2009’s Darkest Day, but Tardy says they’re still at the songwriting stage.
“We’ve been scheduling a lot of time to continue working on our new album, which just kind of keeps getting pushed back. We scheduled three more months off and I think we spent more time out fishing then we did writing! We keep saying, ‘Oh yeah, the album will be out this year,’ that was last year and it probably won’t get done this year either!”
Tardy doesn’t seem worried that their work ethic might be too relaxed. He suggests that rather than forcing the songs they’re letting them evolve naturally.
“We should start recording here in the next couple of months, but we’re not in any hurry. It seems like sometimes in the past we’d write songs and once everybody knew it you find yourself recording. Some of those songs you go back years later, especially after you played them for three of four tours, and things just change a little bit. One thing we wanted to do was to really learn these songs and give them every opportunity to grow as much as that song’s going to grow.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
