Lasting Presence – An Interview with Donald Tardy of Obituary
In the land of death metal the 1989 release Slowly We Rot by the band Obituary has become a classic, and Obituary themselves pioneers of the genre.
As the band is about to head over to Europe in support of their recent and eighth studio release, Darkest Day, Obituary is a band that is definitely no stranger to the road.
After more than two decades in this business, is touring still exciting after all these years?
“Yeah, it is. It’s obviously very cool just to say that I have a job that I get to write music and record music, and also that I just get to see 20 different countries on this planet. How could that ever get boring?” replies Obituary drummer Donald Tardy. “You know, a lot of people don’t realize – and all you’d have to do is be a band member for two days or three days to realize that the hard part is not playing the songs, the hard part’s not being on stage and sweating it out, the hard part’s just being in airplanes and airports and hotels – backpacks, and living with 15 people on one bus for a month. That kind of stuff gets a little bit old after 20 years of doing it, but the love of music and the love of performing and playing drums - it really tops everything, so I take the good with the bad. The bad is that you have to get on a thousand different airplanes this year and deal with stinky buses and tours and this and that, but it’s all just about writing songs and loving the idea of playing music in front of people that are enjoying my actual song that I wrote. So, I’ll take that,” he chuckles. “It’s not made for everyone because like I said, it would only take three days for most people to go, ‘My god, are you kidding? It’s 4am and I’m supposed to be up in two hours to get on an airplane – and I just did that three days in a row, I haven’t slept but six hours in two days!’ – that kind of thing. Last year we had a ridiculous schedule when we went and did South America because they had you on an airplane at 8 o’clock in the morning every day for seven days in a row but we weren’t on stage until like 1am so it was the ‘insomnia tour;’ just wishing you could sleep a little bit but knowing, ‘Hey, you guys are going back to the hotel and you’ve got to be in the cab three hours from now,’ and we did that like five days in a row. So it tested us, it definitely tested us mentally and physically but we were able to see Ecuador and Venezuela, Bogotá, Columbia, and Argentina, Brazil – so it was really cool.”
Now that Darkest Day has been released, what are Tardy’s feelings about this particular album compared to past Obituary releases?
“It’s a classic Obituary album. I don’t know how we did it because it definitely came by a natural way of writing and the way that Trevor and I write albums now it’s definitely flowing in an easy way. And now that it’s done and we get to check it out it’s an instant classic album. From what the reactions are there’s stuff that sounds like The End Complete, there’s stuff that sounds like Slowly We Rot, and then I just know that some of these songs are really cool but there’s like an old Sepultura type feeling on some of the songs on this album. There’s a song on this record that’s faster than anything we’ve ever written; and just throughout the album it’s just a classic Obituary album. So, I’m proud of it, I think it came out really good.”
Is there ever any difficulty maintaining a signature sound while keeping the writing process fresh?
“No, and I don’t know how we don’t after writing a hundred songs or however many songs we’ve written in our career. But I think our gift of what we do is that we’re simple guys; we don’t think too much – which I guess tells you the level of our IQ probably," Tardy states in jest, of course, “But you know, we don’t allow stress to enter the studio when we’re writing songs, we don’t worry about what’s going on in the world of music, we don’t worry about what band has just put what album out or what kids probably want to hear, and what song we haven’t done yet as Obituary. We simply just write songs that we think are cool and if we do that - I’m pretty confident that if band members like it I think that Obituary fans are going to like it because we’re fans of this type of music. And we don’t allow that outside influence to come in and make us think, ‘Oh god, we have to write this because bands are doing this now.’ We know what Obituary is, we have this magic when we get together and we write songs, and we keep it that simple – we don’t try too hard and we don’t think too much.”
Tardy continues: “Drumming wise – I just write on drums what I can. I play what I’m good at, I don’t try anything more, I don’t try and go outside the pocket just to please other metal fans or try to gain fans, I stick with what I think I’m pretty good at. And then with John’s vocals it’s not even ever about – and it’s never been about - lyrical content or what he’s trying to write about on this album or this time or year, or talking about this and that, it’s about the sound of his voice and not what he’s writing on paper – and it’s always been that way for Obituary. We’re happy with what we write as a band and we’re confident that if it’s something that we think is good I think our fans are going to like it. And it works – and that’s really the main thing, if it works don’t try to fix it.”
Are there any songs off the new album that are current favorites of Tardy’s?
“‘Blood to Give’ is a song that right when we wrote it I kind of knew it was just going to be one of those songs where on the album it’s going to sound good and live it’s going to sound really good. So, I’m excited about it, it’s just going to be one of those songs where whether it’s live in front of 400 people in Texas or 4,000 people at a festival in Europe it’s going to be a good song on stage, I’m convinced, and that’s exciting.
Obituary recently played some shows this year prior to the release of Darkest Day – were they able to incorporate any of the new material into those shows?
“We did, we played one of the songs off of the EP that’s on the album – ‘Forces Realign;’ it’s the only one we really knew when we toured Europe,” Tardy chortled, “And it was a good crowd reaction when we played the new song – it was a cool reaction because no one in general really knew the song but we saw the reaction of the crowd that they were actually digging it and that they weren’t questioning, ‘Oh, this is a new song? I don’t really know it so I’m just going to sit back and check it out.’ They were digging it and there was a mosh pit starting and dudes banging their heads and that’s to a song they’ve never heard before so that was very encouraging.”
So now that Darkest Day is available how much new material will be played at upcoming Obituary shows this year?
“Good question!” Tardy laughed. “We have not discussed that yet. Honestly, Trevor is still in Italy, he comes back I think next week and we will start diving into what the set list is going to be for this year – for these festivals and for the American tour coming up in September. And we have to re-learn some of these new songs because you perform them in the studio but that does not mean that you know them perfectly to go play them live. So we’re going to put the microscope down and figure out which songs are going to be good live and what we’re going to be able to pull off, because some Obituary songs are really tough for John to pull off live because he does so many layers sometimes on vocals that they overlap each other and it’s hard for him to have that much wind to get the sentences out. So, that’s a good question, we have not discussed exactly what songs off the new record that we’re going to play.”
How important is it to Obituary to try to craft a fine balance between new material and the older staple songs for live shows?
“It’s real important. You don’t want a dude to show up – because you what fans do – they’re driving to the show with that album on, one of their favorite ones, and you can imagine if a guy’s jamming The End Complete album and then he gets to the show and it happens to be his favorite record and you don’t play anything off of that record; even if it was a great show where we had just played 17 songs, if we didn’t play something that represented that album then he’s going to be bummed and that’s understandable. It’s a challenge – if you have 10 albums to even play two songs off each record you’re already over the limit of the amount of minutes you’re allowed on stage most of the time if you’re not headlining a show. Or even when you are headlining there are curfews like in Europe when people have to catch trains and stuff, you don’t have the means of playing 20 songs a night. And not to mention physically, I couldn’t imagine doing 24 shows in a row and trying to play 20 songs every night. We’d kill my brother, basically if we did that. So it is tough, it’s very hard and you’ll never please everybody. And you don’t want to only play only one song off of a new record because for us it’s about promoting the new record – so you want to play three or four off of that. And if you do that you only get to play one song off of every other record; it’s a tough juggling act to do because some of the records you can’t only play one song off of - Cause of Death – if you only played one song off that album people are going to be like, ‘Boooo!’ So that’s tough. Then you start getting in to the band members and if you asked each one of our band members, ‘Hey, we can only play a song off each record – what song?’ everyone is going to come back with a different song. And now it’s going to be in the argument where, ‘Well, we’ve never played this song before live – and we should be playing it, we’ve never done it,’ well, we don’t even know it and it’s 20 years old and we have to re-learn it and I don’t even know if kids are going to care that we do play that song. It’s a never ending battle of figuring out how in the heck we’re going to make everybody happy on stage.”
With shows scheduled through October and more in the works, almost everyone is going to get a chance to rock out with Obituary this year and the next.
“Oh god, there’s already a lot more being confirmed. There’s a full five-week that’s been confirmed for March in 2010. That’s already been confirmed, venues and promoters have been confirmed, everything. And then the things that haven’t been quite confirmed yet but they’re in the making is South America they’re talking about, I think Mexico is October and then South America, then they’re talking about Christmas time in Japan. Australia would be at that time also. So there’s a lot of stuff that’s already on the table that we’re probably going to confirm.”
Tardy adds in closing: “If we can physically make it there then we’re going to say yes to it.”
Obituary Related Links:
Obituary Official Website
Obituary MySpace
Obituary Live Webcam
Tardy Brothers Official Website
*
Comments are closed for this blog post
NONELOUDER Features
 |
 |
 |
 |
Latest Activity
Taxes New york- is a daunting task.
To file taxes in New York one must understand that taxes in America are imposed at federal, state and local government levels. Each State has its own rules and regulations. Taxes are imposed on income, sales, imports, estates gifts and property. Every sector has its own way of charging tax. When filing tax one must have a complete knowledge of the taxes of different sectors.Federal, local governments and states all impose taxes on your annual income. These are imposed on both individuals and…See More
Blog post by Cuthbert
Datong Sculpture Collection reveals Datong as sculpture capital
To many people, red bottom shoes Datong in north Shanxi Province is an old-fashioned coal mining city with significant reserves. Unfortunately, the city also has developed a reputation for its pollution. However, Christian louboutin while the city is introducing more environmentally friendly business services, such as warehousing and tourism, the recent publishing of "Datong Sculpture…See More
Blog post by chen
Vida Decker updated their profile
Status posted by Vida Decker
Status posted by Grant Carol
Scarlett Johansson Steps out With Twin Brother
Scarlett Johansson attended the Runway to mulberry bags Win event on Tuesday night in New York. The handsome man who accompanied her? None other than her twin brother, Hunter.As you might imagine, having a twin sister who happens to be a Hollywood A-lister comes with certain advantages. Hunter, who is mulberry handbags three minutes younger than Scarlett, once told People magazine, "She tells…See More
Blog post by handsome
Badge
Paying the Bills
Scott Ian ULTIMATEBET!!
© 2012 Created by Brenthrax.
Powered by 
.
