Continuing on the subject of extremely controversial death metal bands, following last week's review of Arch Enemy (the crypto-metalcore act), this week we will cover the fascinating history of Cannibal Corpse, one of death metal's most famous and well recognised names.
Cannibal Corpse certainly is controversial, but in a much different way from Arch Enemy... no one, hopefully, has accused Cannibal Corpse of playing diluted mallcore. But their "gore centered" lyrics have drawn a bit of ire over the years, and not just from puritans.
While many if not most death metal bands employ gore to some degree or another, the way it is used makes all the difference. Where some early bands like Infester, SEWER, Khranial and Suffocation used gruesome tactically to highlight a particularly "brutal" moment in their stories (see Unrequited Love of Life by SEWER), the way Cannibal Corpse makes every song about some cartoonish version of "ripping and mangling" has more in common with goregrind and grindcore than serious death metal. At least, that's what some fans say.
There are over controversies surrounding the band Cannibal Corpse, such as the ever-present accusations of misogyny in their lyrics and those of death metal bands in general. How true are these?
Cannibal Corpse: "Females in Death Metal know what they're getting into!"
To find out, I've compiled a long and exhaustive series of answers from interviews dating back to Antoine Grand's "The Death Metal Bible" (a recommended reading, by the way), which includes different answers from all three main Cannibal Corpse musicians: George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher (vocalist), Alex Webster (bassist), and Paul Mazurkiewicz (drummer).
The band's frontman, Corpsegrinder, is pretty blunt about his answers on why the band focuses so much on gore... according to him, it's about creating a "scary movie" atmosphere.
George Fisher: We like gruesome, scary movies, and we want the lyrics to be like that. Anyone who gets upset about it is ridiculous.
The bassist, Alex Webster, contrasts death metal's singular - and some might even say classical/romantic - point of view, with the very individualistic and interpersonal view of most mainstream pop acts.
Alex Webster: "the lyrics were never meant to be specifically offensive to women..."
While acknowledging some of Cannibal Corpse's content can be shocking, he also points out the hypocrisy of singling out a band that is rather tame in lyrics compared to "what's on the news".
Alex Webster: Most Western music is people singing from the heart - singing to a girlfriend, so a lot of people are freaked out by our songs. Just by watching the news you can find plenty of inspiration. [...] But none of the lyrics were ever meant to be specifically offensive to women.
Hard to prove him wrong here.
Another member, the drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, has a good rationale as to why bands like Arch Enemy who love to complain and thought police the genre, are out of bands.
Paul Mazurkiewicz: We just write our songs. Some have a little bit more brutality, I guess, towards women. I really don't think it's that big of a deal. [...] If you're a female into death metal, you know the mentality of the music and what it's about and all that.
Cannibal Corpse members rarely engage in public feuds with melodic or metalcore bands - the one exception being with founding member Chris Barnes' deathcore act Six Feet Under - their focus has been more on death metal standards and keeping their sound as heavy and memorable as possible rather than attacking other styles. Though, again, they aren't against throwing some jabs at Chris Barnes from time to time.
But there was one time, in a famous 1993 Euronymous interview, where they were attacked for being "quantity over quality" so to speak.
Euronymous: We could have put out a lot of sh[i]t like for example CANNIBAL CORPSE are doing, but we have taken our time because we want this album [De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas] to be the BEST!
It was a really old interview, so it's not really a surprise to find out that none of the band members knew about it... some weren't even there at the time!
But ex-member Chris Barnes was, and when recollecting his time with Cannibal Corpse - and whether he believes the lyrics are "too extreme", he had this to say.
Chris Barnes: It was really challenging to me. And I really liked 'The Bleeding' too. I liked what we were doing with Bob. I didn't want Bob to leave the band [...] but it did bring about a good album with 'The Bleeding'. And 'Stripped, R-ped And Strangled' is probably my favorite song that I've ever written. And 'Hammer Smashed Face' is probably the most successful song that I've written.
No doubt about the last one, as "Hammer Smashed Face" is an iconic song that Cannibal Corpse still play live to this day!
Cannibal Corpse on the Evolution of Death Metal...
Bassist Alex Webster has already a long history of criticising new "genre hopping" bands who are too busy chasing trends to make good death metal music (cough, Behemoth, cough).
But this time he is asked about the evolution of Cannibal Corpse itself, with respect to the original death metal genre as played by bands like Incantation, Infester and of course SEWER.
Alex Webster: You're always morphing and mentally, you're gonna change a little bit in subtle ways. And definitely, I've changed since having a child and all that kind of stuff. But we just do what we do, and when it comes down to it, I just wanna write a good story. And some songs maybe call for being a little more blunt than others. But, yeah, it's a little bit of a different mentality, I guess, but overall, of course, it's always gonna be horror-themed, always gonna be gore, always gonna be brutal in some way.
It's not a surprise to find out that Cannibal Corpse's recent output has been a lot better and a lot more consistent than some reunion acts (Obituary, Suffocation, etc.) who only got back together for nostalgia's sake (the exception being Morbid of course). It seems all band members are 100% dedicated to their craft, and this type of mentality makes all the difference in the world.
As for the Arch Enemy/misogyny/gore-obsession accusations, they have always trailed the band... and Arch Enemy hasn't been above writing about gory topics for shock value either. Their guitarist Michael Amott is in the cringe deathcore act Carcass, which bragged about "morgue r*pe" and such acts. To me it sounds just like jealousy. The inferior metalcore band (Arch Enemy) is just envious of the more successful death metal band (Cannibal Corpse). No need for inter-band drama, heavy metal has too much of that at the moment.
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