In a new interview with music writer Joel Gausten, Obituary frontman John Tardy discusses a variety of topics including the band’s upcoming self-titled 10th album, their 30th anniversary and their decision to work with Relapse Records following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013 for what eventually became their ninth album, 2014’s Inked in Blood. An excerpt from the chat appears below:
 
Joel Gausten: Why did you guys wait until your 10th release to do a self-titled album?

John Tardy: I don’t know; we really didn’t think that much about it. We don’t overthink things, and we don’t over-complicate things; we just kind to go with what we feel. I don’t know if there was any one reason in particular. We saw the artwork and we just liked the plain logo against the black background, and I guess we just really didn’t want to include an album title on that. Also, there were so many good songs on the record that it was kind of hard for everybody to agree and pinpoint one down and call the album after that. I didn’t even realize it was our 10th album until we started doing some of these interviews and people started pointing it out. With that in there also, it’s kind of fitting and it feels right at this point in time just to go ahead and roll with a self-titled album.

Joel Gausten: You’re 30 years and 10 albums into Obituary. What are your big goals moving forward? What has this band yet to accomplish?

John Tardy: "Coming from a band that really didn’t plan on doing the first album, to look back and see where we’ve been and what we’ve been through, we’re pretty satisfied. I think if this was our last album, I don’t think any of us would sit and look back 10 years from now and think, ‘God, I wish we would have done it longer.’ I think we’ve been pretty fortunate; we’ve had a great run at what we’ve been doing. We’ve had absolutely life-changing experiences touring around the world to fortysomething countries. It’s been awesome. At this point in time, as long as we’re still having fun and we want to do things – we want to go on a tour and we don’t need to go on a tour, and we want to do an album and we don’t need to do an album – whatever happens from here on out is just kind of gravy. As long as we’re having fun, we’ll continue to do it. If something is not so fun, then it’s something that we’re not going to get into."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Picking up where 2014's Inked In Blood left off, Obituary show no signs of slowing down as they continue to reign as Kings of death metal. Recorded at their home studio in Tampa, FL, Obituary is a 10 track tour-de-force of bone-pulverizing death metal that is as heavy, uncompromising and infectious as anything they've released in their historic, nearly 30-year career.

Obituary is due out March 17th on CD/LP/digital. Physical and digital pre-orders are available now via Relapse at this location.

The album art was created by Andreas Marschall.

Obituary tracklisting:

“Brave”
“Sentence Day”
“Lesson In Vengeance”
“End It Now”
“Kneel Before Me”
“It Lives”
“Betrayed”
“Turned To Stone”
“Straight To Hell”
“Ten Thousand Ways To Die”

“Turned To Stone” lyric video:

"Sentence Day”:

Trailer:

"When writing records the song titles and album titles are always the last things on our minds," said vocalist John Tardy. "We know that the songs themselves are the most important thing, so with this our 10th studio album and nearly three decades as a band, we thought it was the perfect time for a self-titled release. It always helps to have a killer album cover so we worked with Andreas Marschall, gave him our ideas and thoughts and asked him to break out the big guns to create an epic logo and he delivered like he always has for Obituary.”

The band further added: "We could not be any more excited about this new album. We had a blast writing and recording it and having Ken and Terry as part of the writing process was a very cool experience for all of us. We really took our time with the writing process of these new songs, recording riffs and ideas as we went along and recording them as rough mixes then listening back and making necessary changes to help mold them into the songs that we are extremely proud of.

“It's always a challenge in the studio to get the song ideas out of your head onto the recording the way you want but we made sure we were comfortable with the songs and the sounds we were getting before we even hit the record button and it made it a great experience. It's hard to believe it's been 2 1/2 years since the release of inked in blood and we are so excited to get this new album into the hands of our fans. Can't wait for everyone to hear it, hang on to your ass!!!!"

Additionally, Obituary are touring as part of the 2017 Decibel Magazine Tour with Kreator, Horrendous and Midnight. The tour kicks off on March 17th in Charlotte, NC and runs through April 15th in Philadelphia, PA. A complete list of dates, including numerous festival appearances are included below. More dates will be announced shortly.

March (with Kreator, Midnight, Horrendous)
17 - Charlotte, NC - Underground
18 - Atlanta, GA - Masquerade
19 - Tampa, FL - The Orpheum
20 - New Orleans, LA - House of Blues
21 - Houston, TX - House of Blues
22 - Dallas, TX - House of Blues
24 - Phoenix, AZ - Club Red
25 - Santa Ana, CA - Observatory
26 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
27 - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theater
28 - Seattle, WA - Neptune
29 - Vancouver, BC - Rickshaw Theater
21 - Calgary, AB - MacEwan Ballroom

April (with Kreator, Midnight, Horrendous)
1 - Edmonton, AB - Union Hall
4 - Denver, CO - Summit Music Hall
6 - Minneapolis, MN - Cabooze
7 - Chicago, IL - House of Blues
11 - Toronto, ON - Opera House
12 - Montreal, QC - Club Soda
13 - Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
14 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza
15 - Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts

Summer festivals:

June
16-18 - Clisson, France - Hellfest 2017

August
4-6 - Corroios, Portugal - VOA Heavy Rock Fest
10-13 - Derby, UK - BloodStock
16-19 - Dinkelsbukl, Germany - Summer Breeze 2017

Obituary are:

John Tardy - Vocals
Trevor Peres - Guitar
Ken Andrews Jr. - Guitar
Terry Butler - Bass
Donald Tardy - Drums

(Photo - Ester Segarra)