Death metal legends Obituary have gifted fans a brutal way to ring in the new year. Professionally filmed footage of the band’s entire performance at the Dynamo Metalfest has been released online. The set, captured on August 16, 2025, in Eindhoven, Netherlands, showcases the Florida veterans in peak form, delivering their signature sludge-ridden grooves to a massive European crowd.
The footage serves as a testament to the band’s enduring power as a live act, a reputation they have upheld relentlessly throughout 2025. This past year also saw them traversing North America to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their seminal sophomore record, Cause of Death, with a stacked support bill featuring Nails, Terror, Spiritworld, and Pest Control.
With their latest studio effort, Dying Of Everything (2023), now nearly three years old, questions about a follow-up are beginning to surface. This past summer, bassist Terry Butler gave a tempered update to “RichardMetalFan,” suggesting that while the gears are turning, the machine isn’t fully in motion yet.
“We’re just kind of talking about, hey, maybe by ’26 or ’27 we’ll have another album out, possibly,” Butler revealed. “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.”
The chemistry visible in the new Dynamo footage is the result of over four decades of brotherhood. In a 2023 interview with Invisible Oranges, drummer Donald Tardy reflected on the band’s incredible longevity, attributing their survival to the bond he shares with his brother, vocalist John Tardy, and guitarist Trevor Peres.
“My brother and I moved to Tampa, Florida from Miami, Florida in 1980. Within minutes, I met Trevor 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,” Donald explained. “And we’ve been best friends for 40-something years… 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 emphasized that at this stage in their career, quality control is paramount. Discussing the gap before Dying Of Everything, he noted: “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.”
Part of the band’s stamina may be owed to their time apart. Obituary famously went on hiatus in 1997, a break that lasted several years. Speaking to Kerrang!, Donald Tardy admitted that stepping away was crucial for their current “second career.”
“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,” he said. “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… Our ‘second career’ has lasted longer than a lot of bands’ entire existences.”
