Veteran Death Metallers Obituary return with possibly their most potent and ferocious record to date. Ahead of their New Year European tour John Tardy elaborated on what has been a productive yet traumatic year for the genres elder statesmen.

I think it has been great as we've had nothing but positive stuff said about it and we've been having a ball playing the songs live. We've been playing like six or seven of the songs on our US tour and the kids seemed to really like them then and they wouldn't have been that familiar with them. So far so good and I know we're really happy with it, it seems like all positives so far.

The recording of the album was very different from your previous releases. Why choose to record the album in your house? How important was Mark Prator to this process?

It was really Mark's idea. We'd been working with him down at his studio and it was kinda his idea to use the studio we practice in which is at my house, it's a nice size facility we jam in and we just knew with some of the recordings we'd done in there that we like the sound of the room. Even more so than we did at Mark's studio. Mark was like "just get your pro tools rigged and there is no reason you can't track right there", which was are goal to get the music tracked there. Our stuff mirrors Mark's and so all I had to do was unplug the hard drive and walk it down to his studio and plug it in and we were ready to continue on right there. The mixing we did down at his place, but you can't put a price on being able to walk out my door to my studio and sing whenever I wanted regardless if it was 10AM or 10PM, or if I wanted to sing for 5 minutes or 2 hours there was just so much freedom there. Also it had such a relaxing atmosphere, not that Mark's place isn't relaxing but if you don't feel like you're on form that day it kinda feels like you're wasting Mark's time if you walk him in there for just 30 minutes and then say you're not up for it today. So it was unbelievable the amount of freedom we have, we can record any given time that we want and when the guys come up with something we can just do it. Trevor had a couple of ideas so we put it on a quick track and let him throw those ideas down and even if he isn't there Donald and I can finish the song without him. All he then has to do is roll up and play his guitar for real when we are ready to mic it up in a full sense. It just gives us so much more flexibility I can't describe it. If we thought it didn't sound as good as it could have sounded, or Morrisound would have given us a better sounding record we would go there is a second. But the album came out sounding just great and so we'll be recording like this again.  

Due to us having so much time off before "Frozen In Time" everyone had so many ideas that these two albums went together so quickly. Both "Frozen In Time" and this record just came together effortlessly, we did not struggle to write songs at all. When we came to do something there were just so many ideas already there that all we had to do was work them out and put them together. Both the albums came together quickly which was nice because it wasn't stressful or tough, we didn't have to sit there and work for hours and hours with the stuff. We sat down and put songs together, it was awesome and easy to do. When "Frozen In Time" came out even I was surprised how it just sounded like us. I mean I hadn't been singing for years, so for it to sound totally Obituary was real surprising. "Xecutioner’s Return” really picks up from where "Frozen In Time" left off, obviously with the addition of Ralf and what he brings to the table with his leads just added a whole new aspect to the band. Another good thing about the studio was we could sit with Ralf and we could go over songs and would do lead after lead of amazing stuff to the point where everything just sounded so good. He was so good about listening to what we wanted, not to over play things or sound to pretty for our music and the whole nine yards.

Sorry to ask. The Obituary ranks were been split for the recording of “Xecutioner’s Return” with the introduction of Ralph Santolla in place of original guitarist Allen West. How difficult a decision was it to continue with recording the new album without Allen?

It's kinda an easy question to answer as we had no choice (laughs). People will have noticed if they have looked at our website we did some shows out in LA and Allen got his fourth DUI while he was still on probation for his third. So the judge rightly put him where he needs to be at this time because he was either going to kill himself or someone else. He was making our life pretty miserable for a while there. There were shows that he really wasn't in any position to be walking out on stage to play, and we weren't going to put up with that for to long. Eventually he got himself put in jail and we had to play some shows without him as a four piece which actually went over really well. As each month that went by we would talk with Allen and he would say his attorney had this idea or that idea that could get him out and it finally got to the point where we said Allen ain't getting out soon, so we will need to find a guitarist who could do the leads. It so happend that Ralf had left Deicide and we'd done some shows in Mexico and we were hanging out with Ralf and we just got along with him from the get go. It just worked out so well as Ralf if great at listening to what we want. I mean if someone where to tell me how to sing this part or that part it just wouldn't work for me, but with Ralf he is just so good. If I said to him not to do something too melodic here or blah blah he would just rifle through so much stuff that was all so good. So as I said we had no choice, it was a case of doing the album with someone else or not do an album at all unless we wanted to be the brakes on the band for a couple of years. With so much coming at us it just wasn't going to happen, not with the album already written.

Right now he is acting as a full time member but it is tough as we have been with Allen for a long long time but  there is no telling what his mind set is going to be when he gets out of prison after that amount of time. I'm not even sure what he is going to want to do, I think with some of his dependencies being on the road may not be the best place for him right now as it is thrown in your face every single night. I mean every night is like a Friday night and if you don't have that will power to know when to say when and stop yourself it is easy to get thrown back into that life, and so the road might not be the best place for him. All I can say is that when he gets out we'll talk to him and kinda see where things are going, but right now it's so hard to speculate and things are going so well with Ralf and the work that he does it's to tough to say.

You guys used Andreas Marshall for the album cover and what was produced was a real old school traditional Death Metal cover. Did the cover inspire the title or the title inspire the cover?

Donald and I discussed the title of the album first. Of course we've worked with Andreas in the past and he always brings idea right off the bat but like on "Frozen In Time" where we have come up with the concept but he always manages to take it to a whole new level. He has a knack of doing stuff you didn't discuss but something you totally love. His work seems to fit this band really well, we're not a blood and gore band per say but his art work is evil yet not corny. It just fits us. We had the idea after we split with Roadrunner as it felt like we were starting over again and the we those the "Xecutioner’s Return” title would be cool, and we had some ideas of what we wanted but then Andreas came up with that crazy looking Xecutioner guy and his landscaping is like no one else can do. So it was we all throw our two cents in there to get what we want and it came out simple but effective.

Since the bands revival you guys have done little else but record and tour. Was it your intention to undertake such a heavy schedule when you reformed? How has this impacted your lives outside the band?

When we initially decided to take a little break, it was supposed to be only a couple of months and just get away from things. Then six months went by then a year went by, then two years went by and everyone just kind of got busy doing other things and no one was coming to us asking if we wanted to do anything, so by the time we finally got together with one another and began talking it was a kinda gimmie that if we were going to do the record we'd have to get out there and do some work. Otherwise your just wasting our time. Our families have been around us this whole time and while it is difficult on them when we leave we have cut things down. We don't leave for as long as we used to, I mean we don't do the three month tours we used to do, we have cut it down to four or five weeks. Then we try to do multiple trips just to try and break up the touring and be back at home for a while.

The deal with Roadrunner just wasn't going to work as we'd become so aggravated and frustrated with them over the past handful of years it was just getting ridiculous. It was getting impossible to work with them anymore. They did nothing with "Frozen In Time" but just put it out. We had in our minds the deal we wanted and so we began talking to a handful of labels who were interested in signing us but Candlelight were the only ones to come with the deal we wanted, which was the deal we wrote ourselves; they just said "we'll do it"!! They might not be the biggest of record labels but they have their feelers out there and when they put their minds to something they get it done. We thought about all sorts of things from putting it out ourselves to approaching major labels but Candlelight were just so excited about the band and we were a priority to the label, which is what we wanted. It's just worked out well for everyone I think, and we're all 100% happy.  

The band has 3 dates in NY and NJ in December then you hit Europe in the New Year. How much are you guys looking forward to getting back on tour in Europe?

We always seem to hit Europe when it is cold out there. To be honest touring in the summer with all the festivals doesn't really work for us and is an impossible task. January when the holiday's are over, kids have some money in their pockets from their gifts and things and there isn't a lot of other bands out there at that time.

We're trying to work out the concept as we speak, we all have some different ideas here and there but we have chosen the director we're going to work with. We hope to get the thing shot and edited by January so it's out before or just as we get to Europe. You have to know you're talking to a band that doesn't even like to do photo's so when you try and throw camera's in our faces it doesn't work so good. It is just not fun for me to be on the other side of the camera, I'd rather be sat behind a computer editing the video myself. We often get stuck with photographers who just want to do crazy stuff with us and we're those kinda people. I mean I've not had long pants on in like six years, so when directors want me to wear leather and spikes and I show up wearing the gear I wear everyday it can be a bit of a challenge. I think the best thing for us, as boring as it sounds, is a live video. I thought the live DVD came out pretty good as it is just us playing live which we do good. Us trying to act and do crazy things just gets weird for me but we'll have to wait to see what happens.

You mentioned the live DVD, "Frozen Alive" just a moment ago, do you think the DVD is a fair representation of the band live?

I thought it was great, I thought it caught a pretty regular Obituary show. We've played a lot smaller places but we've played bigger places to. It had some extras here and there but we're planning on doing a twenty year DVD with a load of the old footage and stuff. Yeah I thought it by and large looked and sounded great.

For the live shows how does Obituary go about selecting it's set, I mean each song is considered a classic in it's own right?

There is a couple of songs you just can't get away from, you just have to play. We played "Cause Of Death" for so long we just got to a point where we stopped playing it and yet kids still wanted to hear it, so you can't please everyone. We just go through our songs, we pick a couple of fast songs mixed in with a couple of slower songs, so from way back when with some newer ones; you have to think about all that. There is a lot more things that go into it that just throwing it together, and we try to play something off every record and do the best we can.

It almost seems like our break came at the perfect time as we stopped putting out records the whole metal scene died down a bit. All kinds of music has it's ups and downs, Country music gets popular, gets over saturated then dies down again, and that is what happened to Death Metal. Death Metal is getting more popular again, but it is what it is you can't expect to get the same amount of crowds for some of the Rock bands. Death Metal bands get to play some of the bigger festivals but only because there are other bigger bands on the bill but you know we've been doing really good. I'm really happy with all the shows we've been playing and the shows we've been doing and the crowds that have been coming out to see us. The record is selling pretty good, so we're happy.

Yeah sure! We've talked about the new record, but I think it is the best record we've done. I mean every song just keeps punching you in the face the whole way through and we're looking forward to the tour in January, we'll be playing six or seven of the songs from the record and we're ready to go.