Mark Carras of here recently conducted an interview with OBITUARY vocalist John Tardy. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

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 [like], 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."

Read the rest of the review at this location.

Obituary's new album Xecutioner's Return, is due out on August 28th.