For death metal royalty, bassist Terry Butler holds himself calm, cool and collected. But you probably wouldn't want to meet the towering man in a dark alley. BraveWords caught up with the Death, Obituary and Massacre legend recently and spoke about the latter's reunion album of sorts (Back From Beyond), the current Death To All tour and of course his late guru and comrade in arms, Chuck Schuldiner.

BraveWords: Given the fact that this is Massacre's first album in 20 years, give us a summary of where you've been in your musical life.

Terry Butler: "As for Massacre, it kind of fell apart in 1993. Bill (Andrews) moved to Japan, Rick (Rozz) and Kam (Lee) kinda wanted to go in a different direction musically. That’s just the vibe that I got at the time, we didn’t really discuss it. Under the radar they kept Massacre going and they released that album called Promise (1996). But basically from 1994 until now the band has been dead. Not now but three years ago. I was talking to Rick one day on Facebook, and I just said to him ‘if you want to get together and jam, let me know. I know what dude that’s willing to put a tour together. It’s the 20th anniversary (2011) of From Beyond being released.’ So we got to talking, but we need to find the right drummer and the right singer. But we needed to talk to Bill because he started the band, kind of get his blessing so speak. He was cool with it. So Mikey (Mazzonetto) was jamming with Rick already on another project. He’s a veteran of the scene in Orlando. So we contacted Ed (Webb) about singing and he was totally into it. And the first practice that we did it was amazing. We could tell right away that he was super powerful and he could handle it. Then we set up a live show in Tampa and it was well received. After playing one night, a couple of main guys from Century Media came to talk to us and they offered us a record contract. One of them was (founder) Robert Kampf. His band Despair opened up for Death on the Leprosy tour in Europe. So I’ve known him for that long, so we were blown away. So that was awesome, so we immediately started writing songs. It’s been a little bit of a longer process than we wanted, but we wanted to make sure that the songs we put out were strong, it was good production and everything. We played Wacken and that was well received. Overall we had some really good positive feedback. It’s straight-forward death metal, nothing fancy, there’s no keyboards or horns! Just straight up death metal. And we know that Kam has his fans, and we’ve had people say that if there’s no Kam there’s no Massacre, but we can’t work with the dude. I don’t have to sit here and trash him, he does that to himself. But we wanted to move on, there was enough people out there that wanted to hear new material. And Rick wrote all the stuff in the Massacre before, and he wrote a good amount of this record. We just hope people like it. That’s Massacre in a nutshell for the past 20 years.”

BraveWords: Where is your heart these days?

Butler: "Well Obituary is my main band, but Massacre is a legitimate band too, so I’m splitting time. I’m giving both bands equal amount of attention. So far there’s been no clashes of conflicting schedules or things like that. So I will deal with that if it happens. But the music is different enough. It’s death metal, but Massacre is a little faster, a little thrashier. And Obituary is more Celtic Frost-like, so it’s easy for people to separate. I know there are bass players out there that can do arpeggios in their sleep, all kinds of crazy slapping and extreme base. I grew up with Geezer Butler, Geddy Lee, Steve Harris … they all play for four-string basses. That’s where my heart is musically, that style. Just hold that bass down and put in some tasty runs here and there. That’s just my style.”

BraveWords: Is there a riff from one of these classic bands that you’d wish you had written?

Butler: “Oh man. To write the riff in "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", or any Angelwitch riff! (laughs). Venom! Oh my god, "Don’t Burn The Witch" (from 1982’s Black Metal). I love Savatage. Criss Oliva was amazing.” BraveWords: Being such a major part of the Floridian metal scene and death metal scene what are your thoughts about it today? Butler: "It’s still strong. It was super-strong in the early ‘90s when I first hit the scene. I won’t say it was trendy, but it was really popular. The core fans are still there in the bands are still there playing and trying to do it. I’ve always said that I’d rather play in front of 300 kids in your face than 2000 people that are 20 feet away from you. I like the club feel, it’s more personal.”

BraveWords: What are your thoughts on the Death To All tribute? Is that a sore spot? Why aren’t you involved?

Butler: “Not really. I was going to play some shows, but the schedule was conflicting with the Obituary shows, when they first set it all up. I told that camp that it would be cool. I suggested that we do a first three album thing or the first two. Have Rick and I involved and we could do some of the Leprosy stuff. Eric Greif (President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. which runs everything related to Chuck Schuldiner's intellectual property) is helping out Massacre, which is funny because Massacre was a mortal enemy of Chuck’s for a while! About Death To All, some people are saying that Chuck is rolling over in his grave and that he wouldn’t want that at all because problems with everybody that’s been onstage in the Death To All line-up. But I look at it another way, they are letting everyone know that this is a tribute to Death’s music and we’re just putting it out there with people that were actually in the band. I see both sides, but it doesn’t bother me. It’ll happen.” BraveWords: How do you think those Death records have aged over time? Butler: “I think they’ve aged well. Obviously if you start at Scream Bloody Gore, you definitely see the progression in the band. They’ve aged well; Leprosy is just an amazing album to me. I love Spiritual Healing too, I helped write four songs on that album, so that holds a special place in my heart.”

BraveWords: I remember as plain as day when we received that album at my college radio station in 1990 and I put it on and listened to the title track and I was taken aback immediately by its progressive nature. This band was really pushing things at the time. Butler: “From early on it was total gore and zombies, and it started graduating and you can see that on Leprosy where it was talking about real-life situations. By the time Spiritual Healing came out, it was all about crazy stories you’d hear in the news and get inspiration from. It was a transitional stage, because Rick had left and we gotten James (Murphy) in and he was an amazing guitar player, which allowed us to do some more harmonies and scaly kind of stuff. I don’t think with Chuck it was a conscious ‘I’ve got to get more progressive on each album.’ As a musician you always want to get better, and you want your peers to think that you are really good musician, so you kind of portray that and try to be that. With him that’s what just was coming out. A lot of music that we were listening to at that time influenced him. A lot of melodic French metal.”

BraveWords: Did you connect with him at that level?

Butler: “Oh yes definitely. We were really tight and great friends. We got along really well. He liked to initiate a change and if nobody liked it … he would cancel a tour and go into hiding for two months. Time heals all wounds kind of thing. It worked a lot for him. Sometimes he would get too involved with drama and it affected him a lot. I’ve heard now that maybe that was the tumor that was affecting him but I don’t know. Sometimes people – and this is a quote from my all-time favourite movie Blade Runner - a candle that burns at both ends burns brightly, but it burns itself out. A lot of super talented musicians were like that such as Jimi Hendrix, Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy), Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), whatever. You know what I mean. People that started a genre didn’t last, they got burnt out.”

BraveWords: Are you proud of your resume?

Butler: “Yeah, I was able to leave one band and land on my feet in another band. I’ve been fortunate for that. I’ve known Obituary since they were 15, 16. Same with the Morbid Angel guys, we’re kind of close in that regard.” BraveWords: Do you talk about aging and still playing fucking death metal?!

Butler: “I remember back when I was in my 20s and hearing about older bands like Uriah Heep. Like how do those guys do it when they’re 50! Now that I am near that, I don’t feel any different. I think the drummers and the singers have it the worst, because it’s more physical for them. But I don’t think about it too much, I keep plugging along and I’m in pretty good health. I’m going to keep doing it until my body gives out or the scene dies or whatever!”

BraveWords: What does the future hold? Butler: “We are currently recording a new Obituary album and it’s supposed to come out in the summer. Both Massacre and Obituary have lots of Festival stuff tho year. I think we’ll be a lot busier in 2015 with Massacre as it will give the new record a chance to sink in. It’s going to be busy with both bands. You’re not going to get rich doing this, but you can make a living if you stay busy.”

In closing, Butler revealed that the Death portion of the 1989 video Ultimate Revenge II (recorded in Philadelphia's Trocadero Theater on October 23, 1988) is being released. The actual film featured four Death classics ("Left To Die", "Pull The Plug", "Forgotten Past" and "Denial Of Life"), but their entire ten-song set will finally see the light of day!