Words and live images by Simon Milburn
I’m no spring chicken when it comes to metal. I grew up on ‘80’s hard rock and thrash and by the turn of the decade, I was getting into death metal. Well and truly “back in the day” as they say. Whilst my parents thought I’d grow out of it at some point, here I am some 20 plus years on still listening to metal. Being a fan is one thing, but for some of these bands that I grew up with to still be going now is another. Now, I’m not having a go at their age or whatever etc. Just consider for a minute that being a metal band isn’t – for the most part – a career choice that will give you regular income. I’m sure the guys in Metallica or Slayer never thought it could amount to that back in the very early ‘80’s. Then consider bands that have never made it to the same level as Metallica or their peers. Take for example, Tampa (Florida, U.S.A.) death metal pioneers, Obituary.
Now, I remember seeing the vinyl cover to Slowly We Rot in my local record store way back when. It was expensive as hell back but I had to have it. The cover alone grabbed my attention initially but my interest in metal began to head to another level all together when I first heard the album. I still rate Slowly We Rot as one of the best death metal albums from the genre’s formative years and Obituary are still one of the leaders of that pack as far as many are concerned.
The band are touring on the back of their eighth studio effort, Darkest Day and are about to return to Australian shores for their second tour down under. Who’d have thought they’d still be going hard at it at this point in time?
“That’s a good question,” laughs bassist Frank Watkins as we begin our chat prior to their tour down under. “Y’know, yeah, actually I did [think I’d still be playing in Obituary 20 years on]. Even back when I first started with the band, I just kind of pictured myself as this is the band that I’ve always kinda wanted to be with. The guys in the band, me, Donald, John and Trevor, have always been great friends from the moment we met each other. We’ve always got on really tight with each other, never really had any major issues between one another and it was just something that I saw in the future as what I want to do for the rest of my life, and I really didn’t want to do it with anybody else but those guys.”
Watkins and I sat down to have a lengthy chat about the band’s forth coming return to Australian shores, the massive amount of momentum the band have behind them right now, the impact of Ralph Santolla joining the band and what really happened with former guitarist Allen West, the real story behind Frozen In Time and Roadrunner Records, and band’s unique style and sound in a very crowded genre.
“See, the thing is with us is when we write music and we put stuff together, we try not to be like anybody else. That’s our goal – our biggest thing. People would be like, ‘You guys sound like Celtic Frost’ or, ‘You guys sound like Slayer’ but we’re always trying not to sound like anything. We want to sound like our own distinct thing. We’ve never tried to sound a little bit like Metallica or a little bit like Slipknot. We’ve just always wanted to be just so heavy, so brutal, we had this idea in our heads that we wanted to be old school and we wanted to keep true to what we do and I think that has a lot to do with how our style and how we evolved to what we are. We’re definitely into metal. We’re fans of old school metal and thrash and stuff like that but we really don’t keep up with a lot of new stuff that’s out there now. New death metal, it’s almost like it’s saturated there’s so much stuff out there. So we kinda just keep it to our own vibe and what we do. When we get together to write a record, we just have this vibe of evil brutality and it just kinda flows out of us. It’s crazy when we get together. It kinda just pours right out of us and it’s that unique style. We know what that style is. We know what we have and when we sit down a put a record together, and we listen to it when it’s all finished, we’re like ‘Yep, that’s Obituary. No doubt about it.’”
It doesn’t matter whether you’re listening to Slowly We Rot (1989), Cause Of Death (1990), World Demise (1994) or Xecutioner’s Return (2007), it’s clear that Obituary have a formula or style that works and has truly because the band’s signature over the years. But Watkins assures me there is still some room to try new things without straying too far from what defines the band’s sound and style.
“We’ve messed around with it in the past. Y’know, like with the World Demise record we got a little bit of an industrial feel to our shit. We’ve messed around with different things – more punk, more hardcore vibes on certain stuff but I think our whole sound is that stuff as well in a an overall aspect. We have an industrial feel to some of our music, we have a punk rock/hardcore kind of feel to some of our music … so we definitely just have something that we turned up. We feel that we our bound by some things. Like, changing the vocals, then it really wouldn’t be us. Or if we tried to do the guitars a little more melodic, it wouldn’t be us. If we tried to slow things down or speed things up to like blast beat style, that wouldn’t be us. So we have kinda experimented through the years, we’ve messed with certain things here and there, but the old formula that we’ve always had from the first time we ever started writing music together was brutal, evil, heavy, as old school as we can possibly get and when we keep to that formula it comes out like we want it. That’s what we did with the last two albums – Xecutioner’s Return and Darkest Day. We were like ‘I want to write this album like this old school, heavy, brutal … I don’t care what’s going on in the world right now… I want this to be the most brutalest Obituary record possible.’”
It’s interesting that Watkins failed to mention the band’s 2004 comeback album Frozen In Time.
“Well, Frozen In Time was a record that we got back together after not playing together for a long time and we had Allen West in the band with us and he wrote a lot of the riffs for that album. It was almost like we had this whole new fresh thing coming up and then we realized we had to put out another record with Roadrunner which was a big nightmare for the band prior, and that really was like a kick in the balls to us. Like, ‘Aw, shit! We gotta put a record out with them now?’ So, when we were doing the album, I mean, we put what we had into it but it was still kinda like very solemn and we were quite discouraged about what was going on although the record company kept on telling us, ‘Don’t worry! Even though we have masses of big bands – Slipknot, Nickleback – don’t worry – we’re gonna make sure things work out for you.’ Then Allen West at the same time was dealing with alcohol and drug problems and really wasn’t putting his all into the record, and it was really a discouraging thing. When the record came out, the record label pretty much turned their back to us and we were doing shows and stuff and we weren’t getting much support from people in the industry and it was almost like lots of people were turning their backs on us… and at the same time, Allen was so messed up, he was messin’ up shows. He wasn’t able to play right. It was ridiculous how bad things got with him. We were always chasing after him making sure he played the right songs and do the right thing and it got to a point that he went to prison. Right when he went to prison, it was just like a big weight got lifted off of us. At that point, we had no record company, we didn’t have this drunk guitar player to deal with anymore and we were like, ‘Wow! This is the four of us. We’re fresh. We want something new. Let’s grab it by the balls and really go for it.’ We went in the studio and we finished up Xecutioner’s Return and Ralph Santolla happened to be in the studio. He threw some leads in, hung out with us for the night and we were like, ‘Man, this is new. This is fresh. This is feeling back to the Cause Of Death days.’ It just flowed. It was like, boom – a breath of fresh air. It really felt good to have control of our records, to have control of our business as Obituary and to have control of our members and make sure everything in the band is running smoothly. No one is up there drunk and they can’t even play which is a huge embarrassment to us. I mean, we all party, we all drink, we all do whatever. But at the same time, it’s not good to have kids pay money to see us play and the last thing I need to be is past drunk on stage.”
As someone who’s been a fan of the band since Slowly We Rot, I think that Xecutioner’s Return should have been the band’s return album.
“I feel the same way and I really do like Frozen In Time. I think there’s some amazing songs on there. It’s just like it’s missing something, and I think maybe a lot of it is if maybe Ralph had played on that album, maybe that woulda done something to it. I also think if Trevor wrote more music on that album – it was like Allen wrote eight or nine songs and Trevor wrote like three songs on that album – and then we found out we had to put that record out on Roadrunner, we were like, ‘Alright, well, this is what we got. Let’s do it.’ It kind of sucks to the fans but at the end of the day when we sat down and listened to the record, we liked the record and everything was good, and we didn’t really want to throw Allen out and find a new guitar player. That was the last thing that we wanted to do. We were like, ‘Y’know what? I guess this is the best that Allen can do right now. It sounds good. It’s brutal. Let’s just do it.’ It’s hard to look back and kind of dismiss that album but at the same time, I really feel that from Xecutioner on it kinda gives the whole new breath. And I’m really excited to hear what’s gonna happen after Darkest Day because we’re still writing new songs. We’re tighter than we’ve ever been as a live band – we just toured Europe with Amon Amarth and we totally kicked ass! Every night I felt our band was so spot on and we did amazing jobs and it feels good to feel like that. We were touring with Allen West and it was like, ‘Man, you guys sounded crappy tonight.’ We were like ‘How can we sound shitty?’ and it was because the one guitar was really bad and people were hearing that. The whole vibe was just destroying the band. It’s unfortunate ‘cos Allen’s a great friend of mine. I love the guy to death – I’ve known the guy for 25 years – and I’ve lost family members to alcohol and drug abuse and he’s another one that I hate to say that I’ve pretty much lost to that realm. It’s really fortunate. It’s sad ‘cos he’s a great guy and a great musician. It wasn’t the right time for him to be going back and doing what we were doing.”
It’s clear to those on the outside looking in that Santolla has had quite an impact on the group. It can only be magnified ten fold or more for those in the band.
“Like I said, when he first plugged in, and started just fiddling with things on the Xecutioner record, I had tingles on me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was like, ‘Wow! This is fuckin’ amazing. This guy has his shit, he knows what he’s doing, he feels our vibe.’ I mean, we didn’t even have to tell him stuff like ‘Do something here a little bit more like Eddie Van Halen style’, and he would do it. Or, ‘Do something here like Randy Rhoads,’ or ‘Do some riff in here like fuckin’ Yngwie.’ He would do all kinds of shit. The guy is an amazing guitar player and he’s a great guy. He’s from Tampa (Florida, U.S.A.), he’s right from the area that we’re at and it’s like, we’ve known him for 20 years – he’s like a brother of ours that never was really in the band, and it’s so odd that he was just like there – it was like it was meant to happen. It was never really said, ‘OK, well, now you’re in the band.’ It was like, we do a show, we do a tour, we do festivals, we did the next record and people say to me, ‘Is he in the band?’ It’s like, ‘Well, of course he is’ but we’ve never really said anything or made any kind of permanent thing that he’s in the band, just because it’s so comfortable and he feels the same way. He’s like, ‘This is my band that I’m in now. I love you guys and I love what we’re doing,’ and he’s putting all of what he can into this music and I think it’s working out really well.”
Some Obituary fans have always been divided over the noise/dive bomb lead style of Allen West versus the melodic lead style of James Murphy (who played on 1990’s Cause Of Death) and now Ralph Santolla. But Watkins insists that the band has a healthy balance of both these days.
“What’s kind of a cool thing is that Trevor has been doing leads as well and Trevor kind of has an Allen West style – he does a lot of dive bombs and the dive bomb kinda thing, and a lot of kinda eerie lead guitar playing, Mercyful Fate kind shit. That has definitely been coming out. At the same time, we have to look at this in perspective – if we kept Allen West in the band, we’d still be getting embarrassed playing live, so we’d be disappointed. We were so nervous with Xecutioners Return, because the album was done and we were so nervous about what he was gonna do on the album. We were afraid that he was gonna do the same thing as on Frozen In Time – just barely do any leads, barely do anything, show up to the rehearsal space drunk … we were just like, ‘Oh my God! What the fuck?’ It was driving us mad! Like I said, I love Allen and I really wish Allen could be in this band. We were even saying that we would like it at this point if we had three guitar players. Be like a Lynyrd Skynyrd of death metal or something! But for Allen, this is just not an environment for him. He should not be in a band. He tried when he got out of jail. He was in another band called Low Brow who did some tours in Europe and he ended up being kicked off the tour for being inebriated every night up on stage. It’s unfortunate that that aspect of it in that for us, we want this band to move and we want the train to roll, and when Ralph came in, and I see it all the time on our MySpace and on our website, people are like, ‘Get Allen back, Get Allen back.’ But people don’t realize the hell that we’ve been through with Allen and it’s really not fair to Allen either to throw him into a situation like this where he’s just gonna hurt himself.”
It’s easy for fans to lose sight of things. It’s one thing to want West in the band but it’s another all together if it’s a situation that is not conducive to his general well being.
“Exactly! And that whole time that we were on tour with him, or were doing things with him, I was saying to myself, ‘This guy is either gonna die or go to jail,’ and I hate to think that about another band member of mine. In the same instance, this is a living that we’re all committing ourselves to. Nobody in the band has a real job. We all do Obituary one hundred percent and put everything we got into it. We all have families, we all have kids, we all have bills, house payments, rent payments, all this kind of shit, and for me to put my life on the line for a guy who is not being there and is not doing things, it was a situation that we had to take by the horns. And honestly, if you look back at it too, we gave him every chance possible until he was actually locked up and put in prison. We never kicked him out, y’know? It just got all the way to the point where he got arrested and that was it. He couldn’t come with us anymore. I was even writing letters to his probation officer to let him come on tour with us when he was arrested and they would let him leave the country with special paperwork and stuff. He had a lot of chances to really kind of get himself back on his feet and he kept messing it up. It’s unfortunate and I wish him the best for the future and I hope one day he’ll get better, but in order for Obituary to keep moving, this is what we had to do.”
The band certainly is moving forward with this album being the third since reforming and we have even seen the band tour Australia for the first time a couple of years ago as well.
“That was sick!” exclaims Watkins describing their first ever tour of Australia. “That was right before Allen went to prison. We were so excited to go down there and that was another disappointment. We were like, ‘Oh my God! We might have to cancel our first time in Australia ‘cos the guy went to prison?’ We all looked at ourselves and went, ‘Y’know what? Fuck that! We’re gonna go and we’re gonna play as a four piece and be brutaller than ever!’ I really think that the four shows that we did down there at that time without Allen were probably some of the tightest shows we’ve ever played in that era. Right when we got back and when we got Ralph back in the band, it was like all the stuff we had been doing, that was his element and I just can’t wait to get back to Australia!”
There was speculation by Australian fans right up to just before the band took the stage as to whether West would be on stage with them or not.
“It was crazy because he literally got arrested maybe days before. He called me from jail and asked me to see if I could talk to his probation officer to see if they would let him go to Australia. I was like, ‘Dude! You’re in prison now! They are not gonna let you out just to go play a show in Australia. You’re done! It’s over.’ The last thing we wanted to do, especially Australia because we’ve never been there and I remember getting letters from Australia back in the ‘90’s and back in the Slowly We Rot days we were getting letters from guys over there, and the first time to go down there, we were like, ‘You know what? We can’t disappoint!’ We sat together in our jam room and we played, the four of us, and we were actually playing songs that Allen couldn’t play with us. We were like, ‘This is gonna be better than Allen being with us. We’re gonna go down there and do shit that we wanna do, we’re gonna sound great, we’re gonna be as tight as shit!’, and I think the shows came out amazing! But we’re really excited to come back this year because I think we’re a whole new kind of experience now especially with Ralph!”
It certainly seems that the band has a lot momentum behind them right now and that there’s no sign of them taking another break anytime soon.
“We kind of pumped out Xecutioner’s and Darkest Day really fast and I think it was just because we were touring so much and we were playing so many gigs and everything that when we stopped, it was like, ‘I gotta do something!’ It was like – boom – and we did a record, and we plan on doing a lot of touring for Darkest Day and it’s probably gonna be the same thing. We’ll just keeping pumping records out until we get sick of it. Like I said with Frozen In Time, we were at that point for a second, we were like, ‘Is this what we should be doing?’, and that scared me because maybe this is it. We reform, we do Frozen In Time and we re-freeze ourselves. Thank goodness things happened the way they did and we’re gonna carry on and like I said, our train right now is moving so smoothly, we have no issues and I see us doing a hell of a lot more records down the road.”
Obituary’s latest record, Darkest Days, is out now through Stomp Entertainment. Obituary hit Australian shores to play the following shows: Wed 18th November, The Hi Fi, Brisbane (18+); Thurs 19th November, The Corner Hotel, Melbourne (18+); Fri 20th November, Manning Bar, Sydney (18+); Sat 21st November, The Gov, Adelaide (18+); Sun 22nd November, Amplifier Bar, Perth (18+). For more information on Obituary, check out www.obituary.cc.
