Frank: I definitely feel that we're better off without them. They haven't at all done anything really for us. You kind of really look at our history in the beginning, they marketed us, they put us out there for people to get us, but then we kind of grabbed a fanbase and took it to as high of a level as we could take it - to get it to the next level, we'd have to play with other bands, get a little more advertising, a little bit more promotion - they weren't really willing to do that, so after time, we felt like they weren't family to us and that's really what you need to have in a record label. They've got to be there to support you, they've got to be fans of the band - to me, Roadrunner really wasn't a fan of ours; they were a fan of the fact that we were a part of their history and anything to kind of promote that, they were totally well into with us, but as far as just us trying to carry on as a band, they didn't really seem to give a rat's ass.

Frank: Figures. (laughs)

Frank: Yeah, you'd think. Exactly. But that was the relationship we had with them; it was just like they kind of felt the vibe with us and it picked up right off the bat and if they'd just kept with us, pushed us… it's like they'd forgot about us once the Nirvana thing kicked in and they were trying to sign Grunge bands and then trying to do metalcore and then trying to jump on every bandwagon that was out there, we were just a death metal band straight through and we probably should have signed with a death metal label that would only put out that kind of music back in the day and we would have done better as a band and we would have been probably mentally better as a band. A lot of the reasons why we decided to take a break was because of all the crap we had to deal with through the record label - everything we would do would go back to "well, it's because we're not making shit on the records, so now we really can't do a lot of touring because we're not making good money on the road, but if we were making good money on the record, at least to tour, would make it worth, you know, the fact to just get out there." It's a whole evolving cycle. Hopefully now we're opening up a whole new door with something different.

Frank: We talked… pretty much every record label that's out there in the metal world we've talked to or talked to somebody that's affiliated with it, so we've definitely got our feelers out there. We want to step back and look at "who do we feel comfortable working with?" right off the bat. We want to really get a vibe from somebody and really see that they're going to be behind us, because what's to say we can't do it ourselves? You know, Slowly We Rot Records. And like Monte said, we're going to sell as many records as we're going to sell, it's just that's the genre we're in. But maybe when we're selling thirty-thousand records, but we're making ten bucks a record, then yeah, it's making sense to us, not giving that money to some idiot that has no idea what the hell he's talking about.

Frank: We have a lot of riffs and that's kind of like how we go through stuff; we have a lot of different ideas. The cool thing about today is that you can record everything you're doing very simply; everything in out jam room is already set up so that as soon as somebody does something, you can record it. So by having that, it helps us out a lot. When we're done with the European stuff we've got coming up in June, that's when we're going to kind of sit back for a good five or six months, at least up until December, and just put everything together and create, I'm hoping, the best Obituary album we've ever done.

Frank: Well, I think it's going to be hectic, probably. (laughs) But it should be a killer show - there's going to be a lot of bands on there and we haven't played in Seattle since 1995 or something like that; it was a long, long time ago. But I do remember every time we go to Seattle, it's mayhem. I think we'll have a good time.

Frank: We worked a deal with the artist, actually; we just went direct through the artist. It was just really one record, "Cause of Death," that was Michael Whelan, had the artwork. Roadrunner found this guy and found a bunch of his pieces and they submitted them to us and we looked at them and said "wow, I really like this one." There was like a cockroach or something in the picture and we wanted that removed, but other than that, the picture, to us, was perfect. So I really didn't read any of the H.P. Lovecraft books, so we weren't really into that, just the art.

Frank: To be honest, there's not a lot that I listen to today of new death metal bands that I can say that have really changed it for me. If I'm going to pick something up, I'm going to buy the new Bolt Thrower record or Unleashed or the classic heavy hitters from back in the day. I've not really heard anybody lately that I fully think can claim to be a true death metal band.

Frank: Pretty much from what I've seen. I mean, there's a few bands I could probably saw; like we played in Phoenix called A Job For A Cowboy - they're kind of grindcore, but they definitely had some heavy death metal breakdowns. There's other bands that are doing well now that maybe when we were around weren't doing too well, like Cryptopsy is pretty good. They've been around for awhile, though, so it's hard to really say that they're new and groundbreaking or anything. I hear a lot of good death metal in bands, but it's a mixture - like this band we're playing with tonight, Dead To Fall, they have death metal parts, but then they also have a lot of melodic, kinda thrashy parts and stuff that I can't really say is straight-up death metal. You see a lot of that in bands today. Not to say that they're not good, but it's just that I don't see one out there that I can say "that is a true death metal band."

Frank: No! Lynyrd Skynyrd. (laughter) If that's the case that Limp Bizkit is the most, yeah it does suck, big time. (laughs)

Frank: No, I wouldn't say so, because a zombie is alive. So yeah.

Frank: Awesome.