In our latest episode of our Art Of The Record video series, producer Will Putney works with a band he knows all too well -- his own.
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On a brisk fall Thursday at New Jersery's Graphic Nature Audio, renowned extreme music producer Will Putney sits bent over a computer, making seemingly endless adjustments to a series of tracks. In the kitchen, guitarist Pat Sheridan tirelessly grinds coffee by hand for everyone in the two story studio. As he gets about a week’s worth of arm workouts in, he ponders aloud why he’s still in a metal band after nearly two decades of playing guitar.
“I must just be crazy,” he concludes. “All the best artists are crazy, right Josean?”
“I think so,” responds drummer Josean Orta in his usual calm demeanor. For a drummer who plays with as much fury as he does, Josean is very relaxed once he steps out from behind his kit. It's especially surprising given that eight years after the drummer left his home in Puerto Rico to join Pat and Will in genre-expanding deathcore legends Fit For An Autopsy, the band are getting ready to release The Sea Of Tragic Beasts, their most experimental and high-stakes record to date. But unlike Pat, Josean doesn’t question what he’s still doing here after all this time.
“I’ve been doing it my whole life,” he says of his drumming. “Just tell me where I set up and what are the songs.”
Tragic Beasts is loaded for Fit For An Autopsy on several levels. Not only is it the follow-up to 2017's massive The Great Collapse, it's also their first on record label Nuclear Blast. But though Pat has been through much since the last album came out, he continues to think of the band as a labor of love first and foremost.
“I have a handful of people that I can really depend on that I know if I’m stuck in the middle of the desert, they can get me out of it,” Pat says, both of his bandmates and of dudes from bands like Trivium, Hatebreed, The Acacia Strain, and Thy Art Is Murder, who have given Fit For An Autopsy unending support over the years. “I have the most supportive wife and son I could ever ask for. She tolerates me being gone 150 to 200 dates a year. My son is growing up involved in this in a way that keeps him from thinking that I’m sacrificing our time and more like I’m trying to build something. That’s one of the reasons I refuse to quit.”
READ THIS: How Fit For An Autopsy found a unified groove on their new album
Tour is certainly something on Pat's mind as the band begins wrapping up the album. “The record, musically, is written in such a way that it is going to sound monstrous live,” he explains. “It sounds massive. It’s like driving a truck into a building. It has its own identity. We sound less like other bands. You can hear the influences, but we’re taking what we learned and creating this thing that we never even knew was there. It’s the all-inclusive Fit For An Autopsy vacation.”
“The [new] record is probably the most metal record we’ve done,” adds Will. “I made it a point to play faster this time. There are a few moments in songs that are pretty stripped back. It breathes more than it ever has. There’s definitely a risky tune or two, [but] I don’t want to write the same record over and over again.”
While diversifying Fit For An Autopsy's sound and satisfying their growing fanbase were two major goals for this record, for Putney the most important aspect of Tragic Beasts is its longevity. “I think I went for an approach of more timeless style songs for the band,” he reflects. “All of my favorite metal bands have these songs that they wrote 25 to 30 years ago, and you hear them [now] and they’re still powerful songs. I was getting concerned that our stuff was getting dated to a time period and I wanted to try and make a record that had more replay value for the future. I didn’t want to be 10 years down the road and think that I was immature.”
Watch Fit For An Autopsy record their new album in our latest Art Of The Record video below:
You can also watch Will recording some of extreme music's best and brightest at Graphic Nature Audio in our previous Art Of The Record videos:
And make sure to catch Fit For An Autopsy at one of their upcoming shows later this year:
October
24—Brooklyn, NY — St. Vitus
25—Hamden, CT — Space Ballroom
26—Philadelphia, PA — Voltage Lounge
27—Frederick, MD — Café 611
28—Chapel Hill, NC — Local 506
29—Nashville, TN — The End
30—Atlanta, GA — The Masquerade
November
01—Tampa, FL — Crowbar
02—Orlando, FL — Soundbar
04—Austin, TX — Come and Take It Live!
05—Dallas, TX — Gas Monkey
06—El Paso, TX — Rockhouse
07—Mesa, AZ — Club Red
08—Los Angeles, CA — 1720
09—Fresno, CA — Full Circle Brewing Co.
10—Sacramento, CA — Holy Diver
12—Portland, OR — Paris Theater
13—Seattle, WA — El Corazon
15—Salt Lake City, UT — The Complex
16—Denver, CO — Bluebird Theater
17—Kansas City, MO — Riot Room
19—St. Louis, MO — Fubar
20—St. Paul, MN — Turf Club
21—Chicago, IL — Cobra Lounge
22—Detroit, MI — The Sanctuary
23—Rochester, NY — Montage Music Hall
READ THIS: Is deathcore dead?
