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Rock My Monkey: Hello, you are listening to the Rock My Monkey netcast on RockMyMonkey.com. Today we are speaking with John Tardy of Obituary and their new CD, Executioner’s Return. How are you doing today, John
John Tardy: I’m doing good, man. What’s going on?
Rock My Monkey: Not too much. Now, the one thing that seemed kind of strange to me with the whole Roadrunner thing was that they had just started signing metal legends again, but they decided to ignore Obituary. Did you hear anything-how do feel about that?
John Tardy: Well, I don’t really know what is going on with that record label. And to be honest with you, we’re just glad to be moving forward and going on our business with Candlelight. You know, we were with them for a long time. We feel like we have done nothing but kind of give them good albums all through the years. Just the last few albums they seem to ignore us even more and more, and I’m not sure why. But like I said, we’re happy to be moving forward and going with Candlelight. Seems to be into what we’re doing, and treating us good, so we’re happy about that.
Rock My Monkey: Cool. So you never heard like even through the grapevine any reason why they decided to drop the ball so badly with Frozen In Time?
John Tardy: It’s an absolute mystery to us. I’d be the first one to say if I thought our albums weren’t all that great, or if we were a pain in the ass to them for some reason or another. But I just feel like we’ve kind of always just done what we always do, and that’s to put out good material and support it with touring and things like that. I honestly cannot explain their lack of interest in what we do.
Rock My Monkey: On the other side of the fence, what was it about Candelight that stuck out so much and made you feel like, ok, you know what, all the problems are going to be bad, and we’re going to actually get the push that we deserve?
John Tardy: We spent a long time looking, talked to a lot of people, any record label we thought would be able to handle somebody like us, know what to do with us. We talked to all the big labels, and we had a list of things that we wanted from a record label. And Candlelight was really the only one that sat there and took our list and just said yes to it. That made us feel good right off the bat. I didn’t know a lot about Candlelight before we started talking with them. They’re not the biggest of record labels, but they do got some money. They got great distribution. And they got enough people, and people around the world there to do some decent marketing for us. So it’s good, because we’re one of the bigger bands on the label. They’re giving us priority over anything and everything else that they’re doing right now. They seem to be just as excited to have us as we are to move onto them from Roadrunner. So far so good. Everything’s really working out good with them, and we’re having a good time with it.
Rock My Monkey: One thing that I heard before the breakup was that you listen to more country than you do metal. Is that true?
John Tardy: (laughs) Well, probably. But first of all, we never broke up. I don’t know how that exactly came around. Everybody always says that. But we never really broke up. We just actually took a break for a while and that wound up, what should have been three months wound up being like six months, wound up being a year and a half. And as the scene got quieter and quieter, and Roadrunner certainly wasn’t doing anything for us. So no one really came our way and say ‘hey, you guys want to do this, or you going to do that?’ or anything like that, so we kind of all got busy doing other things and we just took a step back. But what I listen to, it just kind of depends, you know, when, like what we’ve been doing, so busy writing here as of lately, I really don’t listen to much of anything other than like sports radio if I’m in the car or something. But I go through my phases. I listen to a lot of blues, a lot of country, a lot of southern rock, all kinds of stuff. But we play so much metal and we get on the road and listen to it every night so much, that a lot of times, especially when we’re touring or doing a lot of writing or something, metal is usually not something I listen to that much of. But you know, away from that once I get home and done with the tour and I’m sitting around and out cleaning the garage, that’s when the good old Slayer records come out, and the old Venom and Frost stuff comes out, and we start jamming it. So I listen to a little bit of everything.
Rock My Monkey: When you listen to country, please tell me it’s more along the lines of Johnny Cash, and less along the lines of this pop music that they call country music nowadays.
John Tardy: Well, you know, country music is no different than any other kind of music. And there’s some absolutely horrible, horrible, cheesy generic trends out there, and a lot of it gets a lot of radio play. That’s never going to be understood, unless somebody is just making a lot of money getting their music played. But I do not listen to that. I listen to mostly older stuff, a lot of the heavier stuff, a lot of the southern rock stuff. But yeah, the old George Jones and Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash kind of stuff as opposed to, I probably wouldn’t even be able to name some of the newer artists that are out there. But yeah, definitely old, classic country is something I listen to more.
Rock My Monkey: When people talk about death metal vocalists with a distinctive sound, you are always at the top of every list. Is there something that you work at, or something that you do, to make sure you have that distinctive sound, or has that always just come natural?
John Tardy: I think it’s just natural. I mean, when you look at any of the good singers, it’s most of the time that they have a good voice, or maybe they don’t really have a great voice, but there’s something unique and individual about their voice. So it’s really nothing you can work on per se, but you know, I just try to not be quite so monotone. I hear some of these singers, especially a lot of death metal singers, and they kind of get into a monotone where they just kind of keep the same tone and same pace. And I like to think that I, I like to think that I have a little bit more range where I do try to go low and I do try to go high. And then kind of have some different singing in between there, and stuff like that, too. So I mean, that’s good. I appreciate that very much. But you know, I’m maybe fortunate more than anything. That’s just nothing you can really work at, per se.
Rock My Monkey: As far as the road goes, is there anything that you do, as far as maybe a certain tea or something to keep your voice going on the road?
John Tardy: No, there’s really not. I mean, nothing like that really works, to be honest with you. You know the only thing that I-when I’m at home I drink a lot of beer, and I love drinking beer, but when we’re out on the road I just tend not to drink quite so much just because you can get dehydrated. So it’s really important to keep all your muscles, because that’s all your voice, vocal chords, are, really hydrated. So I just drink a lot of water. In the middle of a tour, just try to keep really as quiet as possible in the daytime. That’s really all you can do is rest your voice and drink a lot of water.
Rock My Monkey: What do you think hurts the music industry more? Bad choices inspired by their paranoia, or actual downloading?
John Tardy: (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: And this is inspired by the promo of your album I was sent.
John Tardy: Yeah. Well, you know, it’s tough. I mean, the downloading thing, it’s just really brutal. To be honest with you, it hurts everybody in the industry. Last time around, one of Roadrunner’s brilliant maneuvers, we gave them masters. I think like the same day they just started emailing mp3s to everybody in the company. And it was by the end of two days, three months before the album was out, it was just so available on the internet it was why would anybody go and buy it when you could just get it so easily. This time around Candlelight did make an extensive attempt to hold back, keep it out of the wrong hands as long as they could. No mp3s were allowed at all. The promo copies that they did made up were somewhat protected for the most part. You couldn’t just put them in the computer and copy them. But obviously people are going to find a way around everything. So I know it’s out there on the internet now, and we’re just under a month before the release date. But there’s not much you can do about it. I just hope that people-if they want to see their bands stick around and continue, hopefully they’ll go out and purchase a record if it’s something they like.
Rock My Monkey: Do you think that it hurts the band at all to have a promo sent out that, for example, like the promo that I got, I have yet to hear the album because it won’t play on any of the players in my house.
John Tardy: There’s been a couple of people that say that. I just know, I have one of my vehicles that it does not play in, but it plays fine in another of my vehicles. And any regular player that I have it plays fine. Where it has the problem is what they tried to do is the whole mp3 thing, so if your stereo plays like mp3s, or you can plug your iPod into it, it may have a problem. But I just as soon have those handful of journalists have a problem listening to it, than it be so easy that they just get it, right click and copy, right click and paste, and email it to everybody that they want to. Even though that most people are going to find a way around it eventually, anyway. But to be honest with, chances are next time around we may not even send out any promo copies, just for the fact that there’s this handful of journalists that are just not responsible with the music. They put it on the interest and they just don’t realize how important it is to keep that, to keep it under wraps. You think someone would have a little bit more professionalism and listen to it and hang onto it for what it is, and let it get released and be a surprise to all the kids out there, as opposed to just being able to get it for free months before the album even comes out.
Rock My Monkey: Personally, that’s one of my biggest pet peeves because, the people that are being dishonest and doing that kind of thing, they’re only making the honest journalists’ job more difficult, because they’re inspiring record companies to do things like this.
John Tardy: It is a tough and ongoing problem. It’s a cancer in the industry. And it’s being felt from the band members to literally record companies are going out of business because of this stuff. But like you said, we could mail out a thousand promo copies, and 999 of those people could be responsible with that music, and the one person that lets a friend borrow it, and they go and copy it and they put it on the internet. You know how rampant it runs. As soon as it’s out there, it just starts spreading like crazy. It’s just a matter of a couple of days before it’s just available to anybody. I don’t really know how they’re going to change that and get around it. It’s just a little strange. We work hard to put our music and stuff together, and we get all excited. We just want to have that release date be something special. Where it’s like, you know what, nobody has heard it, and hear it is, and I go out and get it and then everybody talks about it so it’s a big surprise and everything. Nowadays it’s like, the artwork, everybody has seen it, there’s nothing surprise anymore. You’ve heard the album, you’ve seen the artwork. So by the time you go to the record store, there’s no more surprise to anything. You know, it’s like, I don’t know. It’s strange.
Rock My Monkey: Yeah, it’s bad for everybody. I know that I do, I’m very, very hard on my writers to say don’t you dare loan these out to anybody, nothing. Personally I wish more labels would actually go around the method of-there’s a way you can put tracking stuff in the files where basically that’s how you catch people uploading. Because when the record company or the band goes online, looks for the file on The Pirate Bay or whatever, and they see it, they download it, then all they do is they mouse over the thing, and it shows actually where, which cd the file came from. Then they can actually prosecute that person and get that person shut down and black ball them from the industry so they’re not creating problems for everybody like that.
John Tardy: I really wish they could. I know in having our own studio and being able to work with Pro-Tools and do that, I know I could make a copy of my record and put a series of clicks in there that you probably never even heard. But if I saw that music at get out there, I’d be able to import it, open it up, and with a series of clicks that I could take notes and tell them, you know, Notepad, that I know that on your cd that I gave you that every one of these songs has these little clicks, and I could identify it and say, ‘You know what, that is the copy I sent to you.’ But at the same time to try to prosecute somebody now, it may be kind of tough because they can simply say ‘Well, how do I know you didn’t give it to somebody else, and something happened,’ and blah, blah, blah. But it sure would be nice to come up with something. But in the world of the internet it’s just tough. Kids are going to have to realize the way they’re going to feel it in their pockets is when people come on tour and their ticket prices and merchandise stuff are just going to be higher priced just because the amount of album sales that a lot of bands used to have are not there. It’s just the lack of money that comes in from that has to be made up in another way, or it makes it impossible for bands just to even stay together and tour and do records, you know?
Rock My Monkey: What do you feel inspired the title Executioner’s Return?
John Tardy: After being with Roadrunner so long, and just being freed of that, and having that foot taken off our back, we just, we felt kind of just rejuvenated. We felt like we could come back to whatever we wanted to. We could just kind of start from scratch and move forward. And so it was just kind of a simple idea. It really didn’t take long for us to kind of think of the fact that we’d like to have it something like Executioner’s Return. We had, (Skull?) and I sat down, had some cool artwork kind of ideas. As usual we give some of our ideas to Andreas Marschall, and he just kind of twists them and turns them and makes something super cool out of them. So with the fact that we just felt like we could start over again, with the artwork that we came up with, it seemed to be an easy fit.
Rock My Monkey: You did mention the artwork by Andreas. He did an excellent job on the artwork. How much input did the band give him on that? Was that kind of a you guys throw him an idea and he just runs with it, or did you guys go back and forth?
John Tardy: We had an idea, but he kind of, and our idea was kind of an executioner guy, similar to where you see him now, but Andreas turned it into some really crazy mutant stuff, then of course he puts the background and the scenery around it, and the colors in the sky and things. There’s not a lot of artists that have that in them, even with the Frozen In Time. You don’t see too many death metal albums with all the green skies and things like that that were just super cool. So there’s something about his style and the way he works that just really seems to go along with what we do. And any little ideas we give him, he just seems to be able to take and just bring them to another level that not even we thought about it. We work really good with him, and it was good that we got to do another album cover with him.
Rock My Monkey: Obituary is a band that has maintained one of the most stable lineups in metal. So what made Ralph Santolla the right man for the job?
John Tardy: Well, somebody had to do it, because Big Al was unavailable to us once again. A, starting kind of with with Allen West, shouldn’t be a great surprise. Actually, if I may back up a little bit even further to your question. One of the things we do, I know I do, and our band members do, is take a lot of pride in staying the same band members. I know a lot of the bands I see, and I absolutely love Slayer. They’re one of my favorite bands, because they have stayed the same band, they do the same thing, and I love to see that. I like to see them hanging in there and having fun and doing the same stuff they always have done. So to me, I take pride in the fact that all of us have been together for so long. The one factor in there has been Allen, who over, throughout the years, he’s kind of had problems on and off, blah, blah, blah, way back to Cause of Death, even. He wrote some of the music of Cause of Death with us, but wasn’t available to do leads, which is when we brought James Murphy in. Once again, Al’s is not available for us now, and we had to find somebody. It just so happens Ralph, he’s lived in this area, and we’ve known Ralph for a long time. And then it just so happens that the thing with Deicide just didn’t work out at the same kind of time where Allen is not going to be able to be here for these solos and now we have to do something. And it really just seemed to come together. Ralph is so talented. He was just so open to listen to what we kind of wanted as opposed to just trying to do anything that he wanted. We didn’t want this lead to kind of contrast with the music, or be too melodic, or too pretty, or anything like that. He’s just so talented he could play anything he wants. But it was really cool of him to take the time. We spent a lot of time out in our studio working with Ralph, solo after solo after solo, until we just came up with stuff that just seemed to be, in my opinion, it’s just great. It’s something that this band’s never had before is some of the work that he’s done. We’re really happy and fortunate that he’s playing with us, and he seems to be just as happy to be playing with us as we are happy to have him doing it. So it all seems to be working out good.
Rock My Monkey: How permanent is Ralph?
John Tardy: It’s so hard to say. A, I mean, his solos have just brought a whole new light to what we do. It’s absolutely great to have him on board. And B, I mean, I haven’t even spoken with Allen in months since he’s actually gotten his sentence and is sitting in prison now. I haven’t even talked to him, so really, what his mindset is going to be by the time he gets out, I can’t even begin to say where that’s going to go. That’s just something that time’s going to have to tell what happens with that. So it’s hard for me to say, because it’s just a tough situation for all of us right now.
Rock My Monkey: When you needed a replacement, did you even think of James Murphy, or was Ralph the only choice?
John Tardy: I don’t have any problems with James Murphy. I like James Murphy. Cause of Death is one of our most popular records, and there’s a lot of kids that like it because of him. He came in and helped us out. He went out on the road with us and did the U.S. and a European tour with us and everything. But when this album came around it was just one of those things, where it was just kind of, it just kind of, the Ralph thing just happened naturally. So it wasn’t-just like when we write music and do albums or something, we don’t sit there and try to fight with it, we don’t try to hurry it, we don’t try to do a record just because, hey, we haven’t done one for a year and a half, it’s time to do another one kind of thing. If it’s three years, it is. So the Ralph thing, that’s the way it moved. We didn’t try or push or fret or think too hard about anything. It’s just the way it happened, and I think that’s why it’s working out so well.
Rock My Monkey: You guys have a new label, you have a new guitar player. How much did that weigh in on basically the feedback you’re getting on this album that it’s the best Obituary album ever?
John Tardy: I certainly appreciate that. There’s a lot of people saying that, and I feel that it is, too. I feel that it’s just as heavy as anything we’ve done. I mean, it’s got better written songs than anything we’ve done, and I think the production is better than any album that we’ve done. So all of them are little factors. Obviously a record label doesn’t really have much say so or anything to do with the songs that we write. But at the same time it was so good. I really don’t know if I could have put any heart into anything knowing that we had to give it to Roadrunner, to have them just sit there and stuff it in the back of a file cabinet and be done with it. So it was certainly nice because we knew that at least this time we had a chance at maybe somebody paying attention to it and treating it with a little bit of respect. I don’t ask for a lot, but after over twenty years of doing this, I just wanted a little bit, and that’s all I ask. So it was great. It feels great to be at Candlelight. It’s refreshing. I love solos, too. Something that Obituary really hasn’t done in the past have been a lot of just ripping solos, Kill ‘Em All kind of stuff. I like that stuff, but it’s just really never has been part of what we did. Now that it is part of something that we do, I think it’s a lot of fun, and it’s really fun to listen to, for me.
Rock My Monkey: What song on this cd do you think has a chance of becoming an Obituary classic?
John Tardy: (laughs) Every one of them. (laughs) It was tough to even pick one for a single. We sent the masters off to Candlelight and after they had it for a day or two, they called us up and are like, ‘Okay, you’ve got to tell us what songs you want to use as singles.’ And they were like ‘We think songs 1, 2, 4, 7,9, 10, or 11’ would be fine to use, kind of thing, and that was good to hear off the bat, you know, that there is a handful. I think the songs, all of them, they all have something different about them, and they all have a little bit something different from what we’ve done in the past, too. It’s just hard for me to tell. I just really love the entire record right now. We did pick Evil Ways to be the iTunes exclusive release, but I think every band member picked a different song. We said, ‘Hey, listen, we need to come up with a song, what do you guys want to do?’ I think every one of us had a different song title that we brought up. So we all kind of went back to it and we kind of thought, you know what, if we get any publicity, or if we get any person that maybe wouldn’t listen to Obituary that might hear it, maybe Evil Ways has that something a little bit catchy about it, that maybe we could get somebody that wouldn’t listen to us to go out and maybe listen to our record.
Rock My Monkey: Now will there be a video single for this CD?
John Tardy: I don’t know. We definitely want to do one, but to be honest with you, it’s just not something that really seems to help us out. I mean, it seems like we do them, and we never put enough time, and to be honest, money into a video to make it something that maybe would get some mainstream play. I just don’t know. Even the record company is like, ‘well, we don’t really want to do too much video kind of stuff, because it really doesn’t appear to help matters much.’ But we have been dragging some our cameras around with us quite a bit over some of the shows that we’ve been doing, so we’re going to probably try and compile some of this footage and edit it together and at least get one of these songs a video attached to it somehow or another. So we’ll see how far we make it with that, because we are working on trying to do something.
Rock My Monkey: Maybe even make it a contest and have a fan do the editing just from maybe some blue screen footage that you guys allow for upload or something.
John Tardy: Yeah, that’s always fun to try and get something where you can get some fans involved in doing it. I understand some bands have done that with their music where they give them a ProTools file and all the kids sitting around with their ProTools could take the songs and actually mix and do whatever they wanted to those songs. That sounds really interesting, too. I know nowadays with the way some of the software and computers are just so fast and there’s so much available software that’s easy to use, there’s a lot of people that are working with both audio and video. There’s a lot of kids out there that like to mess around with it and always come up with great ideas. You can certainly learn a lot by doing things like that, that’s for sure.
Rock My Monkey: There are some dates announced in America for a very short little tour in September and October. Will more dates be added, and if not, will there be a second leg of the tour that gets you to the cities you missed this first time around?
John Tardy: That’s actually what we’re hoping for is to do kind of a first leg and do one big sweep as the album’s being released. Hopefully with the success of the record we could kind of go back and hit some of these cities. It’s been tough. We picked a tough time. There are so many bands out there on the road that even some of the venues that we would normally go to that would literally be like sold out shows and packed houses, the promoters are just like, ‘I got three shows before that date, and three shows after that date,’ that all end up here. They’re crammed with bands right now. It’s tough to get good fees to keep things going. So there is a bunch of cities that people are like, ‘How come you’re not playing Chicago? Last time you guys were here it was a sold out show.’ And that’s exactly why. There’s so many bands out at this time. Hopefully we can get out and do this one time while the album’s being released, and then we can come back again and go back around and do some other shows, and maybe we’ll have a little bit better luck with a little less, fewer bands on the road.
Rock My Monkey: Is your brother’s time with Andrew W. K. totally done?
John Tardy: Yes, it is. I would never say never. They’re still good friends. I’m good friends with Andrew. They used to use my studio here to rehearse and they all got together. And Donald was interested. He put that whole band together with Andrew at the time. Obviously at that time also Obituary wasn’t doing anything. We were just all kind of doing other stuff. All the guys in the band, Donald, he’s a pretty good drummer, and he can drum just anything that he wants. So he was, Andrew came to him and said, ‘Hey, you want to play?’ Donald put the band together. They started doing shows. The next thing you know it was like almost two years he was on the road doing shows with Andrew. It was great to him. It was a great opportunity for him. He had a lot of fun with it. But Andrew’s just, I don’t even know what he’s up to right now. But I just know we have so much work and so much going on, that even if he wanted to it’d be kind of a difficult time for him to try to do both, that’s for sure.
Rock My Monkey: Before my final question, is there anything you’d like to let the fans of Obituary know?
John Tardy: Well, we got a new album coming out. (both laugh) That’s pretty much it. We’ve been having a great time being back together again, starting even with Frozen In Time. We’ve been going at it steady since then. Having a blast right now. We think our new album is absolutely great. We’re literally sitting here thinking we might play the whole album when we go out on tour. We’re really looking forward to playing some of this music live because we’ve heard it in the studio now long enough that we’re ready to actually start jamming it live, and see it how it feels out on stage, that’s for sure.
Rock My Monkey: This is my final question. Every year we make up one final question to ask every single band, everybody from classic rock legends to bands like Obituary. This year’s final question is I’m asking people to look into their crystal ball and predict what political figure, world leader, musician, celebrity, anybody well known, anybody famous, who do you think might die before the end of the year?
John Tardy: Wow.
Rock My Monkey: Don’t tell me the singer of Obituary is offended by that question!
John Tardy: (Both laugh) That’s just tough. Other than throwing somebody underneath the bus, I’d be putting targets all over everybody. God, I have no idea.
Rock My Monkey: No celebrity that’s partying too hard, or any old world leaders that are just about done?
John Tardy: (sighs) I don’t know. With the way Allen is in trouble, the mess he’s gotten himself in, sitting in prison, it could be him. You never know. (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: Wow. Okay.
John Tardy: Don’t tell me that the person that made up question is offended by that! (laughs)
Rock My Monkey: Not offended. Just shocked that you’d name him.
John Tardy: To be honest with you, we could go on about Al. I hate to use the word ‘joke’ but anytime that we’re sitting there in like in Argentina, we’re stuck in the airport for twenty hours, kind of the common thing for one of us or somebody else as you’re sitting on the floor for twenty hours in the airport, stuck with that closed airport, it’s like ‘Hey, you could be Big Al right now.’ But it’s a tough deal there, so I’ll just leave it as such.
Rock My Monkey: Anybody that’s listening to this through our audio portion can go to RockMyMonkey.com for the full featured version with clickable links, readable text, and many more wonderful features. I hope everybody that’s reading this, or listening to the podcast, can click on the album cover above and below this interview to purchase-or pre-order actually at this point-Obituary’s Executioner’s Return. And I do hope to see you up on tour in the Northwest sometime soon, hopefully at Studio 7. Thank you for your time.
