Cannibal Corpse - death metal band - Brief Article

Thrasher Magazine, Oct, 2002

I LIKE MUSIC THAT MAKES YOU THINK ABOUT THINGS you might not usually think about. Cannibal Corpse are the originators of gore and one of the best, most brutal, and most influential death metal bands of all time. They changed singers a few years back and they're still just as gnarly (maybe even better!) How many Bands do you know of that have been able to pull that off? Corpsegrinder, the current lead singer, does some of the toughest headbanging I've ever witnessed in person. If they come to your town, go see them. You'll probably get the shit kicked out of you, but you'll enjoy it because their shows are bad ass. --Sperm

Tell me about the new album.

Alex Webster: Well the new album is gore-obsessed. We recorded it with Niel Kernon. He's done a few other bands like Macabre and Nevermore. We recorded it in Elpaso's Sonic Ranch Recording Studios last summer, it just came out this February. Still another album of death metal from us--it's the same kind of stuff we always do.

What do you think of the death metal scene back in Buffalo?

We did just play in Buffalo and the scene there is still really good. There were a lot of people at that show, like 300-400--that's good turnout. I like going back to Buffalo to play. That's where we're all from, at least the original band members.

Did you guys play that metal fest in Asbury Park?

Yeah, actually we just played that. It was really good. The one in Massachusetts was even better, I thought. They have one in Worcester, Massachusetts, just a really killer festival, ut both of them were really packed with people.

Was it in the thousands?

A couple thousand at least. Like 1,500 to 2,000, which is good because the Northeast is not really known for metal, or at least it didn't used to be. And it's been better, particularly that New England scene has been a lot better.

Have you guys had any problems with censorship lately?

In Germany we continue to have problems. As far as I know in America we've had no problems, or in Canada. There were some old problems in New Zealand, Australia and Korea, which I think may be sorted out now. In Germany we're not allowed to play anything from our first three albums. Why those albums and not the other ones I don't know, because the lyrics are gory on all of them. So, I'm not sure why they singled those three albums out. It sucks because we can't play those songs, because if anyone made a tape of us playing them or there was evidence of us playing them we could be banned from playing in Germany. We had to sign legal papers stating that we would not play those songs. It's really weird. That country is liberal in some ways, like with prostitution and drug use, but with censorship in music and art they're strict.

This is kind of old, but what was it like working on Ace Ventura?

It was cool. Jim Carrey had requested us and they managed to get us to do it. He knew about our band and knew about the albums and the songs that we had on the albums. He said that he liked it and had never heard anything like it before. He was really curious about that kind of music--they needed a band where there would be slam dancing and they wanted us do it. It was really cool. We were only there for two days. We shot quite few scenes that didn't end up getting used in the movie.

Are you guys working on any new videos?

No. It's been kinda hard because the record industry is in a slump, because of stuff like Napster. Everybody sells less, so the record companies have less money and they don't want to give us any money for a video--they figure it wouldn't help anyway because no one will play it. Until there's a show that's willing to play death metal videos, not just heavy metal videos but death metal...there's gotta be someone willing to play it before our record label is going to spend a couple thousand dollars for us to make a video. It's not worth it right now. They'd rather spend their money on an advertisement in the magazines than a video that no one's gonna play. So, the only videos we've done in the last few years are live home videos. We did the Live Cannibalism home video, which is just live shows.

What was the last video you made? "Devoured By Vermin?"

We did a video for "Sentenced To Burn" and we weren't happy with how that turned out. The "Devoured By Vermin" was the last one before that. I really love that video. That one turned out just the way we wanted it. The "Staring Through the Eyes of the Dead" video was pretty good too. The "Sentenced To Burn" video didn't come out the way we thought it would.

Did that video ever get released?

It did, but fortunately not too many people have seen it. It's tough with a video because you're letting some other director decide what he wants to do with your music, and with that video it was like he wasn't seeing things the way we were seeing It didn't turn out as well as we would've liked.