Silent Death

Photo by Angela Boatwright.
 

Obituary are crucial founding fathers of death metal. They are fucking royalty. If you don’t agree with that, you may as well quit listening to metal right now. Their new release, Frozen In Time, is a leaps-and-bounds progression in the genre. It is our favorite metal album of 2005 because it is narcotic death metal and when you listen to it, you keep going, “Whoa, what the fuck was that?” Seriously, it fucks with your head.

We thought that Obituary’s singer John Tardy, who founded the band with his brother Donald, would be into talking some nihilistic horror shit with us.

Nope. He is a super nice guy who likes football. What am I supposed to do with that?

Vice: Who’s your favorite horror movie villain?

John: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy with the chainsaw.

Leatherface.

Yeah. That guy’s pretty sick. I have chainsaws at my house and the sheer thought of a chainsaw grabbing a hold of your skin is just unbelievable.

It’s a pretty undeniable weapon.

And the sound that they make is scary to start with.

What do you use a chainsaw for at your place?

Just cutting firewood.

People stereotype your hometown of Tampa as being a super harsh and dark place.

It is certainly not that bad. There are beaches and golf courses and old people here. We have everything here that you could possibly want to do. We have three pro football teams, two pro basketball teams, and two pro baseball teams. I can easily go to any of those games. It’s not even a long drive to get to Miami. I’ll drive down there and go to the Dolphin games when I can. I’m a Dolphins fan because I was born in Miami.

What’s Halloween like in Tampa?

They have a thing called “Guavaween” in this part of town called Ybor City. It winds up being one or two hundred thousand people. There’s a huge costume party and if you go down there during that, it is quite an evening seeing all the people all dressed up in strange stuff.

Do you remember what your costumes were when you were a kid?

I don’t remember being anything scary. I think I was a bum sometimes. I could get away with that now.

Do you believe in ghosts?

Nope.

CYNDI TARRA
Frozen In Time is out now on Roadrunner Records. We have to do a lot of music stories every year, so we don’t often say it this emphatically: we love this fucking record and you should buy it.