CANNIBAL CORPSE

Brutality as their trade mark

A place of trial: backstage of Berliner Huxley’s Neue Welt club. The main defendant: CANNIBAL CORPSE. Age: 20. The charges of prosecutor: two decades of existing marked by blood, broken bones, severed heads and gutted corpses evidenced on the 11 of full-length albums and a few of DVD’s. The examining magistrate: a correspondent of Metal Portal. The verdict of judgement: exculpation. Why? A reason is very simple – all those things mentioned before are only the attributes of true death metal band, which staying uncompromised since the beginning of his career to this day kept a high form and probably won’t capitulate yet very long. Besides, to sentence somebody for the murder by music would be a little bit untypical, but at the same time quite original judgement in the history of law, isn’t it? Fortunately, the smartness, determination and enormous straightforwardness of main perpetrator all those crimes – Alex Webster – very effectively increases the discontinuance of inquiry. Here below you will find the comprehensive fragments of his evidences. Not only for lawyers, so – enjoy to everybody!

-Are you conscious that 20 years of your existence have passed practically like a one day? What do you feel now, what decided about it that you have survived so long?
It’s a lot of it’s luck, I mean… you know, of course we must be at least OK as a band or thus we wouldn’t maybe for so long, you can’t survive for 20 years only an luck, but a luck is definitely part of the equation that made us, you know, successful. Definitely it’s maybe luck and some hard work too.

-Yes, hard work… But observing the bands formed similar like you at the beginning of 90’s – much of them exists no more, splitting-up themselves, eventually changing the style of playing. Were they not so strong like you? Could you explain where lies the essence of your success? Why exactly CANNIBAL CORPSE and not the other of bands?
You know, probably just for us, just for CANNIBAL CORPSE there were a few things that came together. First as I said – like a luck, you know, having a some good luck asking to be, you know, for example giving into movie like “Ace Ventura” it’s a pure luck, but it certainly helped to band, but also… You know, if I try to work hard and do a lots of touring, you know, when we are on tour we are trying, you know, to connect personally with our fans as possible, you know, and then you combine there with the fact that were always try every album is heavy as we can. You know, we had never done an album that wasn’t death metal. You know, every album we did was death metal, we always tried to do and we did a little bit heavier each time as possible, so it’s probably we just can to have an system, we always been touring we vice the making albums and the albums are always death metal and I think that helps the develop of loyal fan base. When you are loyal to the fans, they are loyal to you, you know...

-Since the beginning of your adventure with music you are releasing still your albums under the banner of Metal Blade. Could you admit that the support of Brian Slagel is something very important in career of your band? How could it be, if you will release your albums for Roadrunner, Earache or another label?
Yeah, it’s hard to see. I think that being in Metal Blade is part of the reason we have done well on. Definitely being… having a good relationship with Brian Slagel, you know, he is a good friend of our, he is a main person in Metal Blade, so that has the help, you know, we have a good personal relationship with him. It’s a heavy metal label, you know, it’s a business of course, of course they want to make money like any other business, but they really are focused than heavy metal. You know, all the very is different kind of heavy metal they want to support, so I think… Even know every record label is a business, because Metal Blade was music first, so it was a good label for us.

-So let to talk about a little bit about your new work “Evisceration Plague”. What do you think about? Is it still typical album for the band like CANNIBAL CORPSE?
You know, it still sounds like CANNIBAL CORPSE I think, but it doesn’t sound exactly like the other albums. You know, there are some different things happening on the album, maybe a couple of riffs that might be a little unusual for us, maybe… You know, not so different, but different enough did has it the character a part of the other albums I think... It’s hard to say exactly what, you know what I mean, I think it’s still very much a CANNIBAL CORPSE album, it’s still death metal and we tried to make it heavier as we could. We want to be so heavy as possible, but still having some different ideas, the musical ideas, different musical ideas.

-Your newest album, the same like the previous anyway, was recorded with the help of Erik Rutan, naturally in his own Mana Recording Studio. Are you convinced, that sound reached on “Evisceration Plague” is a kind of perfectly sound for your band, comparing it with your earlier production from Morrisound or Sonic Ranch?
Yeah, I think Erik has been able to do production that is at least equal to our all productions and perhaps some people might have the opinion that made it some better than our old albums. That’s a matter of opinion, you know, I think that the newest album is the best sounding one, but some people might think “The Bleeding” is the best sounding one or “Vile” or one of the other our albums, but Erik certainly has the keeping buildy as the producer and he has the equipment in his studio to do albums that are the on the level with more sound like Sonic Ranch or any of the other good studios.

-And could you to mention although a one of CANNIBAL CORPSE albums being in your opinion the worst from your whole discography or do you like all of them the same?
I don’t think any of matter the worst, cause you know, it would be hard to call one there, because we have had, we have done a lot of hard work on all of them and we are proud of the all our albums. I don’t know, I think… I don’t necessary like they all the same like a feel… When our new album first comes out we always thinks that’s the best one, because it’s new and we tried so hard to make it the best one, but after time you can look back and see which one is a little bit better than the others and I think like “The Bleeding” is one of the best ones and then maybe “Bloodthirst”… “Kill” is still wanted I really like a lot, it’s a hard fully to say that “Evisceration Plague” is better than “Kill” now, but I am not sure yet. We tried to make it better, but I need some more time to decide about that.

-In career of CANNIBAL CORPSE can to specify two parts: first of them – the years with Chris Barnes as the singer, the second – the era of Corpsegrinder. Which of them estimates you as the more effectible?
Definitely I think that better with George in the band, I mean here the band’s improvement for us, personality vice and also musically. He has the voice that we prefer, you know, that mean that’s why we wanted Chris to leave in a first place, because we weren’t in 100% satisfied with the singing that he did, however I have to say that on the stuff with Chris we are still very proud of it and on the albums that he did. I think that Chris did a really good job and he wrote a some great lyrics, but I prefer the Corpsegrinder years for sure…

-And weren’t you afraid that after leaving of Chris a lot of your fans will say to you: “Ah, that will be probably not the same like in the past. Fuck yourself, we don’t like you anymore”?
I mean we… At that point we were so unhappy with having Chris as a singer. When we kicked him out of the band the decision that when we went to think: “OK, it doesn’t matter to us, it doesn’t matter if we lost every fan”, you know, like any with one of fans that love our band, but we have to love the band first, you know. And we knew that if we found the singer that we thought was good like George, that are fans with things so too, because we have the same source of musical tastes as the most of our fans. Not all of them, because every person is different, but I think probably 80% of our fans likes the same kind of music that we do. So if we like George they can like George too – that can to be too, so when we got George we thought that is a real improvement and that our fans probably like him and most of them did, unfortunately some didn’t, but… You know, we understand and respect the opinion and were least happy like the old stuff, you know… If somebody likes only the Chris Barnes stuff, that’s OK with me, doesn’t about there me, you know, that is still CANNIBAL CORPSE that I like, but we think that George stuff is better, that’s what we like better.

-From the original line-up plays today in the band of course you and Paul. As we know, Chris does his work in SIX FEET UNDER, Jack tried to test his skills in his own project ADRIFT and then in DEICIDE, but could you tell me for example what’s the matter with Bob Rusay, the guitarist playing on first three albums of CANNIBAL CORPSE?
I don’t think I can answer the question, because it’s a really question that only he can answer. You know what I mean, like if somebody kicked me out of the band I would join the another band, but it wasn’t a decision that he made, I don’t know why.