Former Death guitarist James Murphy has revealed to the Pod Scum podcast that he's continuing to work on his Chuck Schuldiner tribute album.
"I still have all those tracks in the can. The bottom line is I stopped working on it for a number of reasons, one of them which was pretty pernicious but which has… that problem has gone away; it's resolved. Now, obviously, the moving parts that were in place to get that behemoth of a project moving forward and rolling when it did, those have all been at rest for a long time. So now it's a matter of getting the proper lubrication and fuel and impetus back into those moving parts so that it can roll again.
"And that's what I'm figuring out, if that's still wanted, desired and needed by everyone involved. And if it is, then I will get it done — now that the main hindrance and problem has resolved itself. I'm not gonna go into what that is — it wouldn't be fair to everyone involved — but a major hindrance came to a resolution. So that sort of leaves it open for the beast to be revived."
The album is titled Within The Mind – In Homage To The Musical Legacy Of Chuck Schuldiner was originally created by ex-CKY frontman Deron Miller to help Murphy raise money for medical bills after being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2001. Within The Mind was originally slated to feature members of Gorguts, Immolation, Slipknot, Obituary, and many more notable musicians.
As for progress being made on the album, Murphy said it has a lot more work to be done.
"It's not as simple as flicking a switch; there's a lot of things to get done to make it happen. So perhaps it will get done; I certainly hope so. But it was put to bed — it was put to bed quite some time ago. There's still a lot left to do.
"There's still some recording to do and there's all the mixing and mastering to do. There's some re-recording that will need to be done. And there's also a lot of clearances and permissions and stuff like that that will have to get done, because paperwork and clearances and permissions that were in place back in the day when we started are no longer valid. We've gotta redo a lot of that work, and we will."
Murphy played on Spiritual Healing before leaving Death in 1990. Murphy went on to join bands like Obituary, Cancer, and Testament throughout the '90s, as well as forming his own band Disincarnate.
