Obituary’s Terry Butler Says the Band Could Have a New Album in 2026 or 2027

If you were hoping for a new Obituary record anytime soon, you might want to chill the fuck out for a bit. In a new interview with RichardMetalFan, bassist Terry Butler gave a classic non-update about the Florida death metal legends’ next move:

“We’re just kind of talking about, hey, maybe by ’26 or ’27 we’ll have another album out, possibly. We haven’t set any kind of release date. There’s really no songs even recorded yet or anything like that. It’s just kind of just amongst ourselves kind of kicking ideas around. That’s it.”

Obituary just wrapped up a North American run celebrating the 35th anniversary of Cause of Death, with support from Nails, Terror, SpiritWorld, and Pest Control. Their most recent LP, Dying of Everything, dropped in January 2023 via Relapse Records.

If you need more Obituary lore to tide you over, there’s always Turned Inside Out: The Official Story of Obituary, which Decibel Books published in 2022. It was penned by David E. Gehlke, the guy who also wrote Damn the Machine: The Story of Noise Records and No Celebration: The Official Story of Paradise Lost.

In a 2023 chat with Invisible Oranges, drummer Donald Tardy explained the six-year gap between 2017’s self-titled album and Dying of Everything the only way anyone explains anything post-2020:

“COVID had everything to do with it. We’ve been sitting on this album for two years; we started writing it five years ago. When we did the Slayer tour in Europe, we were hell bound to get home and write an album. The plans were to obviously ride the coattails and get back to Europe on a headlining tour and talk about a new album. But then COVID took everything out. So we realized that we had a fucking awesome start to an album, so what are you gonna do when you realize you’re gonna be home for more than just months? We were home, so we just really focused on the songs that we had; wrote some more songs and really focused on, how can you make them killer? And then the recording process… we really took our time because we knew that we were not going to put an album out when we’re sitting on our couches because of COVID. So a lot of bands released records when they were sitting at home.”

Tardy kept it real about how much juice Obituary has left in the tank:

“I’m not 20 years old anymore, and there’s not that many more albums coming out of Obituary. This was the 11th one; this was the one we knew was super important. And so we’ve been sitting on it for two years. It’s been finished and in our back pockets waiting for the world to open up, especially Europe. Because Europe hadn’t seen us since 2016.”

As for what keeps Obituary from totally imploding like half their peers? Apparently, it’s just a bunch of old friends vibing:

“My brother [Obituary frontman John Tardy] says it a lot of interviews, and I don’t often repeat him, but we’re doing something that we’re having a good time doing. And if we don’t have a good time doing it, we’ll find something else to do. I think that’s a great way to put it.

“My brother and I moved to Tampa, Florida from Miami, Florida in 1980. Within minutes, I met Trevor [Peres, Obituary guitarist] and I was only a 10-year-old kid. And by the time we were 12 years old, we already had the bug and we knew what we wanted; we wanted to be a band. And we’ve been best friends for 40-something years. And the longevity of the career with this band is simply that we’re all brothers, we kind of get along, beyond just bandmates. We’re lifetime friends, and, genuinely, we have a good time together. We’re fortunate that we found each other in life, and we’re good friends. And that’s the success plan that kept Obituary together now for going on 35 years.”

He also told Kerrang! back in the day that their extended break in the late ’90s was actually a blessing in disguise:

“Hindsight is 20/20. At the time we didn’t know if that break was going to be one year, two years, six years or whatever it was. But, looking back, it was fantastic for us to step away and recharge, to get away from the music industry and that scene at the age that we were. And we were gone for long enough that we were hungry again when we got back onstage. It’s weird to look back at how long ago that was. Our ‘second career’ has lasted longer than a lot of bands’ entire existences.”

So there you have it: Obituary is alive, well, and thinking about making another album… eventually.