Interviews : “I always get along with everybody from Australia” – An interview with Trevor Peres (Obituary)

Trevor Peres is the guitarist at the centre of Floridian death metal institution Obituary, and he is thrilled the band have an opportunity to tour Australia again. 

Obituary is performing in the capital city of each state, making this comprehensive tour a dream match for both the band and their many Australian fans.

Peres said that Floridians are like the Australians of North America, noting the similarity in lifestyle given we both live in the company of ferocious apex predators.

“We’ve got the craziest venomous snakes, alligators, hell, we even have Crocs, we’re one of the only places in the Northern hemisphere that has Crocs, it’s just a wildland, so we’re sharing fucking something!”

Should Peres ever decide to leave the deep south and relocate to the antipodes, his effusive praise of Australians should act as the catalyst for a heap of onshore metal fans to offer the guitarist a character reference should he ever need one! 

“If anybody brings up Australia, not just about me playing shows there, I love the people from Australia just as a general population”, he said. 

“I’m not just talking about the metal fans, it’s the people that I meet from Australia that are the coolest in the world, and I always get along with everybody from Australia, I don’t know what it is. 

“It’s like we have shared blood or something and I always have the greatest time down there, the shows are great, and the fans are just amazing”. 

Talking about the shows, Peres is the guitarist responsible for inventing mid-paced death metal through the monstrous riffs on Slowly We Rot (’89) and the big one, Cause of Death (’90), which is the album the lads will be performing in full during the Australian shows.

Peres said fans could expect to hear a broad selected of cuts culled from the band’s catalogue in addition to the Cause of Death tracks. 

“We’re playing the Cause of Death album, but it’s not going to be just that because that would be like 32 minutes or whatever it is, but we’ll play Cause of Death front to back,” he said.

“We will be playing some other classics from that time frame, and we will sprinkle in a few newer tunes as well.”

Peres is criminally underrated as a guitarist and guitar innovator, given it is his riffs that have given Obituary a platform for their prolonged death metal assault. 

When asked his thoughts on the matter, Peres said that he is recognised for his contribution to death metal guitar performance and shared an interesting tale from the road.   

“In the year 2000 I had a band called Catastrophic, and I was touring Europe with about six other bands, Dying Fetus who I am friends with are on that tour, and I was doing soundcheck with the busses are parked next to the venue,” he said. 

“I go back on the tour bus, and John, the singer from Dying Fetus is emerging from his bunk and wiping his eyes, and he’s like ‘Hey man what’s going on?’, and I said I had just finished soundcheck.

“He said, ‘I know’, so I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Dude, I heard your guitar, I knew that it was you in there playing!’

“That tour was probably the first time I realised that Obituary had influenced a lot of people.” 

Catch Obituary in Australia with special guests Wormrot throughout January 2020. Tickets on sale now via Soundworks Direct.

OBITUARY with guests Wormrot performing at:

Jan 14 – Adelaide, Lion Arts Factory* – TICKETS
Jan 15 – Perth, Badlands – TICKETS
Jan 16 – Brisbane, Woolly Mammoth – TICKETS
Jan 17 – Sydney, The Metro – TICKETS
Jan 18 – Melbourne, Max Watt’s – TICKETS
Jan 19 – Hobart, Altar – TICKETS
*Wormrot not appearing