Cannibal Corpse - Music for serial killers

Cannibal Corpse formed in Buffalo, New York, in 1988, as a five-piece made up of singer Chris Barnes, guitarists Bob Rusay and Jack Owen, bassist Alex Webster and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. It was Webster, as stated in the video album Centuries Of Torment: The First 20 Years (2008), who chose the band's menacing name, which already sums up the aesthetic the group had settled on, centred on the most extreme splatter and horror imagery. Drawing their main inspiration from Slayer, Death, Morbid Angel and Carcass, they already landed a deal with Metal Blade in 1989, a label at the time extremely active in metal with acts such as Atheist and Angkor Wat.

1990 brought their debut, Eaten Back To Life, unveiled with the first of their iconic, stomach-turning covers signed by Vince Locke: a cannibal zombie, intestines dangling, eyes wild, surrounded by graves and spattered in blood. The fact that it's a bloody drawing, rather than the anatomical photographs Carcass had the nerve to put on their own covers, barely softens the sense of disgust generated by the whole composition, which pushes the splatter aesthetic to its limit. Then again, the band does everything it can to turn this debut into a statement of intent, dedicating the album to Alfred Packer, the Colorado cannibal who, during a gold rush expedition, found himself stranded alone in the snowy San Juan mountains and survived by feeding on the corpses of his companions.

Recorded at the legendary Morrisound studio in Tampa, Florida — through which Obituary, Sepultura, Death, Deicide and Atrocity, among others, also passed — and produced by a death-metal institution like Scott Burns, Eaten Back To Life is still tied to the vicious thrash-death-metal style of the late Eighties. "Shredded Humans", a gruesome, detailed account of a catastrophic car crash, is an opening track that still relies on very fast sections to heighten the violence of the lyrics, with Chris Barnes roaring and only occasionally sinking into the growl that would make him legendary. A transfigured but still audible hardcore punk and thrash-metal streak drives other nauseating, macabre fantasies like "Edible Autopsy", and resurfaces in the breakneck verses of "Mangled", "Rotting Head", "The Unded Will Feast", "A Skull Full Of Maggots" and in their Slayer-esque solos.

When they do slow down, they revisit the more majestic Metallica on the short "Scattered Remains Splattered Brains", but miniaturized into an almost grindcore format, a style they also evoke on the lightning-fast "Bloody Chunks".

Still raw, and often derivative, this debut stands out above all for its obsessive focus on the vilest imagery and for its exuberant drive to play as fast as possible, making the most deafening music imaginable while starting from thrash-metal and early death-metal. Rather than listening to a band of young New York metalheads, it feels like witnessing an unbroken sonic massacre, delivered to the listener with blind ferocity and rage. By the time "Buried In The Backyard" ends – yet another murderous fantasy and one of the most elaborate tracks on this debut – you come away dazed and, especially if you've actually read the lyrics, moderately disgusted too: Cannibal Corpse presented themselves as fit only for the strongest stomachs, and rather than pulling back to widen their audience, they would keep doubling down on the most brutal death-metal, paired with the most stomach-turning lyrics the human mind could conceive.

This extreme consistency of aesthetic, which after a few decades of activity could easily be dismissed as mere monotony, must have played a major role in cementing and growing the fanbase over the years, and it was central to turning one of the many U.S. death-metal bands into an institution of extreme music. From Eaten Back To Life onward, Cannibal Corpse laid down the fundamentals of their career: utterly indefensible lyrics devoted to limitless splatter, to the macabre and the disgusting, with frequent nods to the most shocking horror films; striking gore cover art that would make any parent worried about their teenager's listening habits do a double-take, and which, rather than merely introducing, completes the listener's immersion into a very specific aesthetic, crossing every boundary of good taste and, time after time, rendering the most detailed, unsettling and macabre scenario possible; death-metal music that pushes to the extreme – later on in more mature and refined ways too – what the genre's founders had started, using its stylistic devices with the explicit intent of shutting out anything melodic or accessible, and instead venting the most conflicted and obsessive impulses.

In this formula, fundamental to the whole career even allowing for a few partial exceptions, the most important musical elements are not so much the guitars as the vocals and the rhythm section: it's through the development of these two components of the sound that Cannibal Corpse would come to embody the death-metal institution they are, and would serve – despite the marginal role many fans would like to relegate them to – as a reference model for a whole offshoot, later duly labeled brutal, which owes them an enormous debt, especially in its earliest phase.

The sound of brutal-death-metal emerged in the early Nineties thanks to a handful of bands, among which Suffocation would prove particularly important, both for their timing and for their impact on this niche well into the following decade too. The first albums that can be filed under the genre are their "Effigy Of The Forgotten" (1991) and Cannibal Corpse's second record, Butchered At Birth (also 1991), though by stretching the definition a little one could also include Deicide's self-titled debut (1990), Immolation's "Dawn Of Possession" (1991) and a few other examples of ferocious, extremely violent death-metal from that period. Underlining the bond between the two bands, Suffocation's debut features a guest appearance by George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, Cannibal Corpse's second singer and the one who would go on to become the band's definitive voice, while Chris Barnes will be remembered as the frontman of the early years and, ultimately, of the period before their remarkable rise to, albeit relative, fame.

If "Effigy Of The Forgotten" is one of the most important albums in death-metal, something keeps it from having the same appeal that instead defines Butchered At Birth. One can start digging into the comparison with the cover art: Suffocation's is dystopian and unsettling, very elaborate in its design, but it simply can't compete in impact with Cannibal Corpse's, also drawn by Vince Locke, depicting a pregnant woman brutalized by two zombies, her fetus about to be added to the other small corpses hanging in the background (here's the link to see it, if you dare…). Unsurprisingly, such cover art was widely censored and still feels far more confrontational today than Suffocation's, and indeed than anything else in the scene at the time. Another thing that sets Butchered At Birth apart is, quite simply, the title: "Butchered At Birth" is a far more shocking title than "Effigy Of The Forgotten".

Cannibal Corpse's second album also boasts song titles with immediate impact, revolting and gruesome: "Meathook Sodomy", the opener, is infinitely more direct than "Liege Of Inveracity", the opening track of "Effigy Of The Forgotten". Alongside the titles, the songs themselves also go straight for the most exaggerated gruesomeness, without offering the kind of philosophical, social or (anti-)religious readings that many other extreme-metal peers propose. To draw a comparison with one of the genre's milestones, "Human" by Death, also released in 1991, grapples with the nature of man and our relationship with our body, pain and emotions.

Cannibal Corpse's music, while Suffocation from the start push toward a very high technical level and sprawling, tentacular songs, instead aims for a devastating physical impact that puts the brutality of the sound front and center, ahead of compositional sophistication: the songs cut back on the lightning-fast bursts of the debut, favor death-metal's cadenced groove over thrash-metal's frenzy, and revolve around Chris Barnes's voice – more guttural and bestial than ever – rather than machine-gun drumming or searing guitar solos. Barnes's growl, by now a grunt almost impossible to decipher, represents a fundamental monstrous transfiguration of death-metal: man's mutation into a murderous beast.

Another detail not to be underestimated: from Butchered At Birth onward the band starts inserting sections into their songs designed to draw the listener deeper into the splatter imagery, creating continuity between the covers, the titles, the lyrics and the music: this isn't just death-metal, but a reconfiguration of it dripping with blood and violence, so extreme it becomes dissonant, obsessive, recklessly wicked. To draw a legal analogy: what we're witnessing isn't simply a killing, but a murder carried out with cruelty – that is, inflicting "on the victim physical or psychological suffering not necessary to carry out the criminal act, or [demonstrating] a particular insensitivity to any human feeling" (here is the source of the commentary on Article 61 of the Italian Penal Code). What matters isn't the message, which amounts (so to speak…) to pure murderous fantasy, but the sophisticated, exaggerated, overflowing way in which such atrocities are imagined, described and turned into music.

Another possible analogy is with splatter cinema, to which this aesthetic can so easily be traced back: in this comparison, Cannibal Corpse are much closer to the visual brutality of Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust" (1980) than to the gore of early Peter Jackson's "Bad Taste" (1992), so exaggerated it becomes hilarious. There are also affinities with the – much later – strand known as torture porn, that branch of cinema that places the most elaborate human suffering, physical and psychological, at the center of the frame, in a kind of sadistic exaltation (Eli Roth's various "Hostel" films are a famous example). In Cannibal Corpse there is no irony, and violence is not a vehicle for some relevant social, political or philosophical message – it is itself the whole point of their musical career. On their palette, there's only blood red.

Butchered At Birth opens, as already mentioned, with "Meathook Sodomy" and, specifically, with a jumble of dissonant sounds and distorted voices. It's the album's most striking track, whether because of the impact guaranteed by opening the tracklist, or because of the obsessive intensity it sustains across almost six minutes. The rest of the album, meanwhile, never lets up for a second: as the title suggests, it's a sonic slaughter that drags you from one atrocity to the next all the way to the closing "Innards Decay".

Glen Benton of the aforementioned Deicide guesting on second vocals on "Vomit The Soul" opens the three-track run that makes Butchered At Birth one of the most annihilating listening experiences in early-Nineties death-metal: the swirling title track, featuring a masterful performance by drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz and Scott Burns's elaborate production, almost merges with the following "Rancid Amputation" in a climax that, in a splatter film, would correspond to the final massacre scene, and which ideally culminates in the closing chainsaw-solo. The already-mentioned "Innards Decay" is the sonic manifestation of the cruel relentlessness described above, and its unusually slow final section arrives like a release from murderous instinct. A temporary reprieve, though, because Cannibal Corpse would go on to build the rest of their career on this very model.

On the third album, Tomb Of The Mutilated (1992), everything we've analyzed essentially holds true, with a growing preference for themes of necrophilia and sadism over the butcher's ravings of the previous record. The cover art, again by Locke, shows two mutilated corpses having sex. The classics – on an album where Scott Burns refines the production even further and Alex Webster's bass sounds more devastating than ever – are the "Hammer Smashed Face" we mentioned at the start and "I Cum Blood" (another all-time great title, at least within brutal-death-metal). Barnes's voice is by now six feet under, the focus on groove even more central, and the sonic assault even more monolithic. Without ever becoming anything less than bestial, the band actually increased the complexity of their songwriting without sacrificing the power and physical impact of the tracks.

On "Post Mortal Ejaculation" the massacre briefly pauses, a gothic streak gives the band a moment to show they can shift shape, recalling the dark wickedness of early Kreator. It's only a momentary detour, though, because the very essence of Cannibal Corpse seems to lie in continuing to savage the victim even after death, experimenting with ever new tortures.

If Tomb Of The Mutilated is the snapshot of Cannibal Corpse at their absolute peak, though, The Bleeding (1994) marks a dip, and also a bit of confusion about which direction to take. Barnes shifts back toward a higher-pitched tone than the grunt of the recent past, toning down the bestial side of his growl, and even attempts a few screams, like the one at the end of "Fucked With A Knife". Burns's production goes for a more defined mix, giving space to Webster's excellent bass as well as to the guitar of newcomer Rob Barrett (ex-Malevolent Creation), who replaces Bob Rusay with a more technical approach. Thrash-metal elements rejoin the brutal-death-metal they helped coin.

The most atrocious torment, at least in terms of elaborate musical staging, is probably "Force Fed Broken Glass", complete with a cinematic clip at its core and a constant alternation of accelerations and sepulchral slowdowns; there's even a coda that's atmospheric in its own way, where a guitar arpeggio echoes.

The impression is that Barnes wants to push the band to broaden its style, perhaps moving in the more rhythmic, less brutal direction of the project he was developing right around that time, Six Feet Under. Other sources also point to growing difficulties in replicating the old vocal lines and to friction with the other members. In the end, Barnes leaves the band in 1995, for good.

That The Bleeding was a different kind of album was clear right from the cover, unusually restrained by their standards and far less shocking than what they'd accustomed their listeners to.

Killers by trade: the censorship, the second life with Fisher, the line-up changes

The unexpected fame that arrives between 1994 and 1995 puts Cannibal Corpse under the spotlight of international censorship. US Senator Bob Dole accuses them of being a national menace, setting an example for other political and media campaigns against the band. The group is also banned from the Australian market between 1996 and 2006, and partly from the German market. In Russia too, it was made clear that their music was not welcome.

Vile (1996) is the occasion to introduce new singer George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher and his vocal style, far more dynamic than Barnes' and equally prone to growls and higher-pitched screams. Musically, the fifth album moves away from the temptation of more cadenced midtempo passages, favoring instead a predominant blend of thrash and death metal of moderate complexity. The intensity remains devastating, as the new barrages "Devoured By Vermin" and "Disfigured" prove, but overall Vile sounds like a transitional album between the band's two lives, the one with Barnes and the one with Fisher. The fact that this cover too turns out disappointing, and that this is the last album with longtime producer Scott Burns, confirms a period of general settling-in.

Pat O'Brien is the new guitarist, replacing Barrett, for Gallery Of Suicide (1998), which focuses on the theme of its title. The formula remains the familiar one, so just a few tracks are added to the brutal songbook. The most curious entry in the tracklist is "From Skin To Liquid", an instrumental with a macabre atmosphere that serves as a showcase for the guitars.

Overall, though, the shock value of the old days is giving way to craftsmanship, with Cannibal Corpse now simply holding down territory that is rightfully theirs, but which has also grown much closer to mainstream tastes: while at the start of the Nineties it's hard to find any common ground between the general public and death metal, by '99 Slipknot, who are certainly influenced by those sounds too, debut with a self-titled album that sells over two million copies in the United States alone (as of May 2023, the band's monthly listeners on Spotify exceed 12 million).

Bloodthirst (1999), the live document Live Cannibalism (2000) and Gore Obsessed (2002) are releases from a band that is increasingly tight-knit, now firmly committed to a brutal death metal anchored in the early Nineties, retaining thrash-metal influences but also having upped their technical game by a notch; after all, it's easier to do so when you keep offering a sound that stays true to itself, simply adding new tracks that are often interchangeable with the previous ones.

Not even the departure of longtime guitarist Jack Owen, nor a stretch of the career that avoids gore covers after the ninth album, The Wretched Spawn (2004), shifts the balance much: Kill (2006) shows that advances in production among extreme metal bands, years of accumulated experience, and unshakeable consistency are turning these metalheads into killers by trade, professionals of musical ultraviolence.

In this latter case, the tracklist is particularly brutal, with the lightning-fast "The Time To Kill is Now" and the brutal thrash death metal of "Make Them Suffer" opening the carnage. The band is at the peak of its form, with Rob Barrett back on guitar alongside Pat O'Brian, and with Fisher, Webster and Mazurkiewicz able to draw on hundreds of hours of shows and recording sessions together. In some passages, the intensity is truly annihilating ("Purification By Fire", "Necrosadistic Warning", "Barbaric Bludgeonings"), even if the innovation clearly lies elsewhere.

After the success of the Kill formula, which revives interest in the band, the following albums are produced by Erik Rutan as well: Evisceration Plague (2009; with a Locke cover that avoids gore) and Torture (2012; marking a return to gore-laden Locke artwork), which close out a trilogy of maturity without any particular surprises.

The subsequent A Skeletal Domain (2014), Red Before Black (2017, with Rutan returning as producer), Violence Unimagined (2021; with Rutan replacing O'Brien on guitar) and Chaos Horrific (2023) prove that change is no longer a viable option for a band that has turned its own formula into an identity recognizable even within such a crowded scene.

After all, a number of events have also occurred that have complicated the course of the band's releases. On December 11, 2018, O'Brien was arrested in Tampa for trespassing and assaulting the officers who responded to the scene. The guitarist was wielding a knife, and the officers involved had to subdue him with a taser to prevent the situation from escalating further. Drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz's wife launched a fundraiser on the guitarist's behalf, who was in any case released on bail the following December 14.

In O'Brien's possession, police found enough weapons and explosives to arm a small army, including two flamethrowers and 50 rifles, as well as three skulls. One of these weapons, a sawn-off shotgun, is illegal in Florida.

It all came to an end on March 16, 2021, with a sentence of 150 hours of community service, almost $24,000 in restitution and five years of probation.

It was precisely in the wake of these events that, as already mentioned, Erik Rutan stepped in, this time as guitarist as well as producer.

And yet, despite its lack of originality, Violence Unimagined is extremely tight, produced with surgical precision to deafen and annihilate; an album that hardly sounds like the work of a band in which one of the longtime guitarists was suddenly replaced. The peak of this new professional-grade sonic butchery this time is the pairing of "Condemnation Contagion", a relentless, blood-soaked anthem colored by a melodic solo, and "Surround, Kill, Devour", a new massacre howled with uncontainable rage by the legendary George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher.

This time there's the gruesome account of a person describing, in the first person, what it's like to be slowly sawn to pieces in "Slowly Sawn": it's the most sadistic moment among many others, yet another example of the torture-and-violence pornography fundamental to the band's identity.

Rutan is a new element who, thanks to his long experience first in Ripping Corpse, then in Morbid Angel and above all in his own Hate Eternal, manages to help enrich these otherwise rather tired efforts. Even on the aforementioned Chaos Horrific, his contribution is key in shaping one of the most technical albums of the band's entire career, one that combines fast thrash-death slaughter with more measured, cadenced assaults at slower tempos. The guitars take center stage from the opening "Overlords Of Violence" and naturally carry through into the following "Frenzied Feeding". The more Cannibal Corpse slow down, the more the two guitars get to work on denser riffs, as "Vengeful Invasion" makes clear. The intensity remains relentlessly over the top, and by the time you reach the midpoint of the tracklist with the collection of atrocities that is the title track, it's clear that on this front "Chaos Horrific" works perfectly: the same old bloodbath in musical form, courtesy of the veterans of this sound.

The slowdown in studio album releases, accompanied as it is by new live documents (Global Evisceration, 2011; Torturing And Eviscerating Live, 2013), suggests that sooner or later even their murderous madness will burn through its bestial energy. Or perhaps, as in classic slasher movies, they're like the villain who, just when he seems finally subdued, opens his eyes again and finds the strength for one last, devastating killing spree.