It sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun on the new album, Dying of Everything.
It's been so many years since the last album. We had the luxury of taking our time, focusing on song to song, and not rushing things. We never really rushed things anyways when it comes to songwriting. Our fans know that Obituary does not put out an album every year, or every other year. We're having a blast in general with this band, and the songwriting process was the same.
You got to record it at your home studio, RedNeck Studios.
It's the home that my brother [John Tardy, vocalist] and I bought 24 years ago. We've done the last four Obituary albums there. This time, during the pandemic, we upgraded the system to the new Pro Tools Carbon [interface] and revamped everything. Got new inputs, cleaned it up, and made it more modern. We are rocking and rolling.
Who's working the board for these sessions?
My brother and myself run it. It's a pretty interesting process. Bands are usually in a studio with an engineer, behind their instrument; then the engineer hits record and they do their thing. If you make a mistake, you've got to explain to the engineer where to back up and punch in. With this process, I was able to record 99 percent of the album myself, and my brother did 100 percent of hitting record himself and fixing some of his parts. Then, when we both thought we were finished with songs, we had each other listen back, give opinions on what we thought, and fixed any little things. We kind of engineered the album ourselves.
Even though you two have been the tracking engineers, with Joe Cincotta [Full Force Recording Studio] as the mix engineer, all of these records sound really different from each other.
Yeah, they do. Maybe that's just the process of learning the studio! The first two albums – the two that Ralph [Santolla, guitar] was a part of [Xecutioner's Return and Darkest Day] – that was when the Pro Tools rig was brand new to us, so we needed engineers to help us. Mark Prator has been our right-hand man for the last 25 years. He was the Morrisound [Recording] main engineer there, with Scott Burns, for a long time, and he's still a good friend of ours. Mark was the dude that we would always have to call and say, "Hey man, we're stuck here. I don't know what's going on. It's supposed to be blinking red when it's blinking green." He'll say, "You right-clicked instead of left-clicked." Once we got through those two albums, we were pretty damn confident and feeling good about ourselves with the Inked in Blood album. That is the one that we, as a band, recorded ourselves. We engineered it ourselves, we edited, did everything we could, and then we mixed it ourselves. Listening back to that record, I can definitely hear that it was mixed by a band with not much experience with doing things properly. Once Joe Cincotta became a part of taking charge and taking the files from us and doing his magic, these last two albums were – in my opinion – pretty amazing-sounding records, for death metal standards.
The guitars explode out of the speakers. Also, your drums are clear, but they don't sound processed or triggered.
Well, there's a reason for that. There is no sound replacement, or triggers, or fixing everything every millisecond. For myself, drum wise, I made sure that I was happy with the sound of the drums in the room, like the snare drum sound and the rip that it had when I'm playing it without the Pro Tools rig on. Then, when we hit record, we made sure that we were super confident with the songs and our performance on the instruments. We made sure we played the songs well. When you hand over a recording to an engineer and they do not have to clean things up or fix drummers' parts, there's a lot they can do if they're not spending all their time quantizing parts, replacing snare drums, and stuff like that. We are super proud of that. I do think what you just commented on is a testament to exactly what we tried to do, which is to keep it as real as we possibly can.
What shape were these tracks in when you gave them to Joe to mix?
As a drummer, I'll start a song, and if I get one take and play it beautifully, that's awesome. That rarely happens. Of course, I'm going to make one mistake, whether I miss a cymbal punch or I'm not happy with one drum fill. I would get songs 99 percent finished on my own in the studio, and then I would text John and say, "I need your help. Just punch me in this last 30 seconds of the song. I want to do a little different drum fill than the one that's on here, and I think it's going to be better." Yes, it was some cleaning tracks up to make sure I was happy with the performance. Then we'd hand the absolute full, raw files to Joe. It was up to Joe to clean up any ends of songs, like where you still hear a ride cymbal ringing, or the end of a guitar part where you hear a sweep of fingers on the strings. He still had a lot of cleaning up; the trimming of the beard to do. Performance-wise, we were very precise and deliberate on everything we handed to Joe, so there was not much guessing on his part. He could dive straight into trying to get the best, ripping guitar tones that he could with what we handed him, and the same thing with toms, kick drums, and snare drums. A big challenge in the studio that we have is that [the studio is] a glorified garage. We do not have 15-foot ceilings. The challenge was cymbals, because it's only an 11-foot ceiling, and that's not 100 percent ideal. But, in today's times, I think the majority of bands don't have the money to go spend seven weeks in a studio, spending $100 an hour. We take the good with the bad. Joe knew he had a challenge with cymbals and the bleed through on the toms. He definitely had to do his magic. Again, it goes back to making sure I played the drum parts clean for him. There wasn't much he needed to do except to make sure that he was happy with the tones he was getting.
What always killed me [when building project studios] were reflections from the walls bleeding back into the cymbal mics.
Absolutely. We learned that from Xecutioner's Return and the Darkest Day albums. We learned that there was a lot of noise going on, especially if you want an ambient mic. We put a mic about two and a half feet away from the drum kit, maybe five feet high, catching the sound of the drum kit in the room. That's when we were learning that it does sound good, but there was definitely some slapback, as well as an almost "too noisy" noise. We hung curtains. We hung some foam in places that we thought was going to be smart to deaden some of that room, because it is just a square room. There were some lessons learned on, "What's the best we can do with what we have?" going on. Again, I love the sound of this new album. It's real, and it's a pretty fat sound we got.
I noticed that there's a printed lyrics sheet. You've probably been given a little bit of grief on this, but back in the day there weren't definite lyrics. John's vocals were more like a percussive thing.
Honestly, it was really just [the debut album] Slowly We Rot where he was doing whatever he possibly could to make an album. On Cause of Death, he had sentences and phrases, but he kept his lyrics and words away from the world, including his band members. Then, progressively throughout our career – from The End Complete on – he had his little magic notebook that he had all his lyrics written down. Back then, he was still allowed to – and wanted to – keep that mysterious and secret. Those were his lyrics. Some fans want to read it and learn exactly what the band is saying. When I was growing up, it wasn't until I was an adult and would listen back to [Slayer's] Show No Mercy or Reign in Blood and I realized I was singing completely wrong words. I never sat down and read an Iron Maiden booklet of what they're truly saying, or, for Slayer, what Tom Araya was really saying. I was like, "It doesn't matter. Listen to these drums!" Nowadays, with John and these last two albums, the world of internet, streaming sites, and the Spotifys are requiring lyrics to these songs when you are about to make a music video. Of course, if you're going to do a lyric video then the world gets to see the lyrics. On the last two albums, John had to submit his lyrics. So, it's no surprise that for the past four, five, or six albums, he's had lyrics. He just cares to not share them with the world. Now he has no choice!
When I'm listening to John's vocals, I hear so much creativity in his phrasing and all the different sounds he's making. Like that last track, "Be Warned," where he sounds like a swamp monster.
I think that's just years of experience. His voice and his technique are as strong as ever. He's got his voice mastered right now. When you're comfortable with that, like the rest of us with our instruments, and you're comfortable in the band that you're in, then the creativity can happen and you can listen to the song or the riffs that you have going on and get excited about it, and not worry too much about, "Oh god, am I going to be able to play the drums properly on this part?" John's so comfortable with his voice right now. Like he says, "I just allow the song to bring the lyrics to me." It's not necessarily sentences he already has written down. Like with "Be Warned," the minute that we wrote that he said, "I started saying that word for no apparent reason and it stuck." That was the same thing with the song "War." Whatever Trevor [Peres, guitar] and I were doing on those riffs, he felt [the words] coming out of him and he wrote it down. It made total sense to him immediately. John recorded a lot of this album on his own, sipping coffee in the morning before I made it to the studio. I'd get there, and he'd be like, "Yeah, I'm pretty much done with the song. I want you to listen to it and see if my syllables and my cadence is in time with your drums." I was hearing songs for the first time when he was nearly finished with it. We're not a band that practices a song 20 times with a PA system where John's singing the song. When we have new songs, he lets us know where he's singing. I was finally hearing songs with his voice, and how creative he was with everything.
What it was like back in the day to go to Morrisound Recording and work with Scott Burns?
We started at a super young age. Morrisound Recording was a different building and had a different facility when we recorded our first demo there. I was a 15-year-old child recording a demo when we were still called Executioner. At that time, Scott was not a part of Morrisound. Morrisound moved in 1987 or so, when they moved to the facility that they were at for all those years. We entered the studio again when I was only 17 or 18 years old, and Scott was there. He was one of those helpers plugging some patch cables in, grabbing the broom at the end of the night to sweep up, and changing garbage cans. It was the beginning of Scott's career as well. We got halfway through the Slowly We Rot record, and Rick Miller – the engineer – had some family issues, and he was not able to complete the album with us. The first thing that we said was, "What about Scott? He's in here every day with us, and we're getting along with him so well. Let's give him a shot at it." Slowly was actually his first attempt at pulling up the engineer/producer's chair, sitting in it for the first time, and being in charge. That was really cool, because I know he was probably as nervous as I was as a drummer. Our careers started together. That means a lot to me, and I'm sure it meant a lot to Scott as well.
There was always a huge difference between bands he worked with between their first album with him and their second album. It was a huge leap for Obituary between Slowly We Rot and Cause of Death.
Looking back, it was. But for me, at 18 years old, that album was released and then it felt like we immediately jumped into the studio to do Cause of Death. The band progressed with the songwriting, and our focus was on what we truly wanted to sound like. Individually – just as a guitar player, as a drummer, and as John singing – I think we got better, but we were still so green. We were like deer in the headlights when it came to getting into the studio. When that record button hit, there was nothing fun about it! It's so nerve-wracking knowing that all these people are looking through the window from the control booth, staring at you, and hoping you finish the song in a couple of takes because everybody's waiting to go to lunch. That kind of shit. It was a really cool experience; and it was awesome to see Scott's career start with us, and that we got to do that many albums. To see how many albums he actually was able to do, and then sadly how many he had to do. He was Morrisound's main guy and was bringing in a lot of bands. I can only imagine it got super overwhelming and super tiresome after so many years of doing it.
You bring up having all those eyeballs looking at you through the glass of the control room. Has not having that at RedNeck Studios made recording more fun?
Absolutely. I think if you ask ten musicians, they'll answer the question the same way I do. When you are alone, relaxed, and practicing the song and no one's listening or recording it, you play so well! You play so much better. Then, when you miraculously see that red record light come on, everything goes out the window. You can tell yourself five seconds before they hit record, "Just relax. Play it calm. Do it like you did it yesterday. Don't do it at 110 percent volume." That shit goes right out the window for me. For so many of my first albums I would listen back to the recording and go, "Man, I wish I would have had a chance to do it again." That was the majority of my career until these last couple of albums. It took me until I was in my late 40s and early 50s to where I'm now comfortable with telling myself what to do, and then actually executing that. Having my studio and knowing that no one's in the room – especially when John and the family go to dinner, and they're away from the property and I know that I'm by myself – that's when it's the most easygoing, light, feeling good about myself, and I'm staying calm. That's how I recorded a lot of this last record, and I'm 100 percent happy with this recording.
What was the first Obituary record where you were thinking, "Cool, I'm okay with this"?
Only these last two, to be critical. Honestly. Like once we jumped in for The End Complete, we were on fire. We were building our confidence. We were getting popular. We had people looking at us. We had a record label that was excited for us. The End Complete, I love that album. I love the performances on that record. For World Demise, the same thing. It's one of my favorite albums, until these last two, when it comes to my performance and some of the cool drum fills and styles on that record. I always walk into the studio the next morning, listen back to my take that day, and it's like, "Damn, man. Did I really struggle with that part? That part is so easy." It's because the damn record light is on! 
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