special introductory
paragraph!
Eaten Back To Life
Butchered At Birth
Tomb Of The Mutilated
The Bleeding
Vile
Gallery Of Suicide
Bloodthirst
Live Cannibalism
Gore Obsessed
Worm Infested EP
The Wretched Spawn
Kill
Evisceration Plague
I love both cannibals and corpses, so it's not surprising that I'm pretty fond of a Florida-via-Buffalo rock and roll band called Cannibal Corpse. They play vicious, brutal death metal - fast, dynamic, grotesque, mutilation-and-necrophilia-obsessed and just plain CATCHY! And what kind of asshole wouldn't enjoy such touching poems as "Bent Backwards And Broken," "Mummified In Barbed Wire," "A Skull Full Of Maggots" and "Entrails Ripped From A Virgin's Cunt"? Their idea of entertainment may not be for the meek or weak, but it's tailor-perfect for the bleak, the geek and anybody who likes cool death metal riffage and a guy howling like a muppet with a big beard. And whoever decided that they were to be considered a 'lesser' or 'joke' death metal band needs to be turned into a corpse and eaten by a cannibal, if you ask me. I can't help you with the "corpse" part, but supposedly Melissa Etheridge eats a lot of women, if that's any help.
Man, reviewing death metal is HARD! Even thrash bothers to stick to the traditional "intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle part/verse/chorus" pattern, but once you cross the tippy point into death metal, suddenly you're looking at "intro/another part/another part/another part/another part/another part/another part/one of the first five parts again, but with a different drumbeat/another part/intro again/one of the first five parts again, but not the same one as before, and this time played as notes instead of chords/another part/another part/another part/dead stop." And that's okay; I can certainly describe Cannibal Corpse's music as such and feel fine about it. Where the real problem comes in is when I try to figure out whether I like the goddamned songs or not!
See, with normal music it's pretty easy to tell. I listen to a song a few different times on a few different days in a few different states of mind, and I can basically get a good feel for whether it's creative, catchy, difficult, and/or pleasing to me personally. But with music like THIS, I have to listen to each song like 6 times before I can even figure out how they're supposed to go, let alone whether I actually like them or not! And it doesn't help matters that when you put 52 different parts in a song, 6 or 7 are bound to be somewhat dull. And when those 6 or 7 parts are placed all in a row, it can make the song seem like it stinks when actually it mostly kicks ass! So you see my problem as a conscientious observer of today's top musical styles.
But I'll tell you this: every song on this album features the same assortment of sorts of parts, just in different orders. Every song includes (a) high-speed thrash section (doop-CHICK doop-CHICK), (b) pummelling speed-downbeat section (THUB-ba THUB-ba), (c) blastbeat section (CRASH-CRASH-CRASH-CRASH), (d) midtempo headbanging mosh section (doop-CHICK doop-doop-CHICK), (e) slower swinging straightforward metal section (doop doop-CHICK-CHICK ba-doopa-doopa-CHICK). You'll also hear variations between black metal-esque high-speed note-picking, Slayer-style doodly-doodly finger-tapping note runs, chord thrashing and squealing noisy solos - all played on two distorted, evilly reverbed electric guitars. And I guess there's a bassist. The changes come very fast, so don't get too attached to ANYTHING you hear.
What so appeals to me about early Cannibal Corpse is that the surprising majority of the riffs are either METALLICALLY ASS-KICKING or out-and-out SICK. DEMENTED. Not "evil" and "spooky" like some of your evil spooky metal, but just psychologically ill. That's it -- the mood is "Psychotic"! Obviously, not every single one of the 4,000,000,000 riffs on the record hits the ass-kickin' or insane spot, and some of them sound like placeholders - but hey, they're SHORT placeholders! And as a whole, Eaten Back To Life is a GREAT album for headbanging, with lots of neat rhythmic accents and changes throughout the compositions.
Please though - I don't mean to sound like a dimwit, but you must play this album loud to enjoy it. The riffs really get under your skin the more you listen, but if you have the volume too low, all you'll be able to make out are the blastbeats. The playing is tight, fast and rigid, and a few times even the BASS gets into the act by playing in harmony with the guitar rather than just playing the root notes. And it sounds n-gr-eat!
This is an aggressive extreme metal album created by intelligent and skilled musicians. Not that you'd know that by song titles like "Shredded Humans," "Edible Autopsy," "Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains," "Born In A Casket," "Rotting Head," "Bloody Chunks" and "Buried In The Backyard."
And therein lies the most recognized and infamous thing about Cannibal Corpse -- the cartoonishly gory, repetitive, over-the-top lyrics, all full of zombies, murder, rape, mutilation and cannibalism. As a public service to those of you who are or own impressionable children, I will include in each album review on this page a brief summary of each song's lyrical content. Here we go with Eaten Back To Life:
"Shredded Humans" - A psycho smashes his car head-on into a family driving home from a nice day out. The lyrics are a graphic description of their deaths. The killer plans to eat their one still-alive child. Sample rhyme: "The father of three was impaled on the wheel, as his skull became part of the dash/His eyeballs ejected his sight unaffected, he saw his own organs collapse"
"Edible Autopsy" - The employees of an evil hospital torture and eat their victims. Sample rhyme: "Mutilated beyond belief, but still kept alive/Pathologist of death gouging out your eyes"
"Put Them To Death" - Death penalty for evil people! I think they're actually SERIOUS in this song! Sample rhyme: "They should be caught and punished for what they have done/Torture them slowly, it would be fun!"
"Mangled" - Born through science, a death-dependent psycho eats humans, even when they're still alive. Sample rhyme: "Crawl into the cadaver head first, eat your way through the guts/The pungent smell of decaying innards is enough to drive you nuts"
"Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains" - A psychotic coroner rips corpses apart. Sample rhyme: "Like laboratory mice, splatter brain matter/Pound on the skull until it shatters"
"Born In A Casket" - A guy fucks a corpse and somehow manages to impregnate it. Then the baby is born and it eats its mother's corpse. Whee! Sample rhyme: "The taste of formaldehyde, smell of the rot/Suck out the goo, feast on her crotch"
"Rotting Head" - Another cannibalistic torture hospital - this time, a mental hospital. Sample rhyme: "Cranial excavation, cerebral liquidation/Brain turned to soup, ears are dripping goop"
"The Undead Will Feast" - The narrator is a ZOMBIE! Sample rhyme: "Blood I want to drink, I want to suck/Brains I want to eat, the rest I'll chuck"
"Bloody Chunks" - The narrator finds a chopped-up body in a garbage can, and admits that he's a cannibalistic murderer too! Sample rhyme: "What I have found, what should I do/Take it to the police or make it into stew?"
"A Skull Full Of Maggots" - Maggots devour a murder victim. Sample rhyme: "Dead in a grave, your final place/The maggots infest your disfigured face"
"Buried In The Backyard" - An occulty devil-worshipping murderer cannibal rules the zombie kingdom! Sample rhyme: "I drag the carcass home, it feels stiff and cold/Incantation of the devil to rob it of its soul"
The problem isn't volume; the vocals are plenty loud. It's his choice of delivery style. Wrongly believing that bubblegum pop harmony vocals would be inappropriate for such gore-drenched lyrics, Mr. Chris Barnes intones every song in a deep, guttural, indecipherable growl of heavy doom. Critics would describe them as "Cookie Monster vocals," but seriously, if the Cookie Monster sounded like this, Sesame Street would have been taken off the air 30 years ago for terrifying toddlers into a catatonic state. This is Hell's vocalist. As is the vocalist of every other death metal band in the world.
So way to go, guitarists Jack Owen and Bob Rusay, bassist Alex Webster, drummer Paul Mazurkwieickslekzkelskdlw and vocalist Chris Barnes. You've done a service to orphans with your hot debut album!
Oh by the way, the Corpse’s first album borrowed a lot of it’s musical pattern from the first Corrosion of Conformity album..(Eye for an Eye). Just thought I’d throw that in there
Butchered By Bees is stylistically similar to the first album, but with a heavier and less reverbed guitar tone. The murders are more sexual this time, and simply filled-to-busting with warm mutilation! The tracks feature lots of blastbeats, fast downbeat pounding, speedy individual-string picking, midtempo headbanging, sharp-fingered doodly-doodlies and fun time signatures. There are surprisingly few propulsive thrash backbeats to be found, but The 'Corpse makes up for it with tons more great twisted chord changes.
From the minute of double-guitar DARK NOISE that begins the record to the gutturally low chugging chords of the final track, Butchered At Birth is just as musically disturbed as its predecessor. Again, most of the songs feature a couple of dull moments, but they speed by so quickly that to dwell would be sheer nitpickery. This is cerebral music, I'm telling you. If you try to treat it as background music, all you'll hear is a bunch of fast drum pounding. It takes attention to make out one piece of music from the next, and the pieces fly by faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. They're SUPER pieces!
There's really not much else to say about the music. These first three Cannibal Corpse albums all deliver the challenging, ass-kicking, warped goods in fairly similar ways. So let's move on to my special lyric analysis service for parents of children or babies, sperm:
"Meat Hook Sodomy" - A murderer inflicts suffering, reshapes muscle tissue, etc. Yech. Sodomizes them with things. Sample rhyme: "Butchery my meat hooks sharpened to penetrate/Emasculate/Gouging crotches I will eat"
"Gutted" - A murderer guts children, ejaculating. He will eat them too. Sample rhyme: "Guts are strewn from the children/Splintered bones, poke through skin"
"Living Dissection" - Frankenstein monsters - but they're psycho murderers! Sample rhyme: "Lymphatic nodes implode/While the brain corrodes"
"Under The Rotted Flesh" - Cannibal necrocoprophile. Sample non-rhyme: "Coprophagia, consuming feces of the dying/As their bowels let loose, defecation flows down my throat"
"Covered With Sores" - The narrator is covered in pus and sores. Moreover, he fucks people with knives, mutilating them. Sample non-rhyme: "A bleeding sac of infection, years deceased/I hide my slobbering skin, covered by a victim's flap"
"Vomit The Soul" - A devil incarnate zombie guy mutilates humans. Sample near-rhyme: "I take away your life, and leave you lying cold/Decapitated body searching for its head"
"Butchered At Birth" - Narrator kills an expectant mother, then slaughters her unborn child. Sample rhyme: "Birth is always painful, decaying in the womb/Trapped within this body, a bleeding human tomb"
"Rancid Amputation" - Narrator chops off body parts while the people are still alive, then fucks their corpses, etc. Sample rhyme: "My muscles tighten as I feel the rush/I look at your body starting to gush"
"Innards Decay" - A murderer slaughters, sews himself inside his victim's body, then rips his way out. Sample semi-rhyme: "Sodomize the carcass, chew the anal rot/Sewn within the body the dark becomes my light"
Their most offensive lyrics ever! The top of the heap! I'm a High School Principal and I'm gonna make "Entrails Ripped From A Virgin's Cunt" your daughter's prom theme!
This is the third and final installment in the "Cannibal Corpse playing 5 billion different deranged parts in every song" CD series. After this one, with the loss of Bob Rusay, things would unfortunately take a turn for the less interesting. So enjoy it while you can, Nibal Corpse!
Good old Nibal Corpse. He's from Lebanon, and I try to do a shout-out to him whenever possible.
The guitars are heavy as mud, but the drums and voice are foolishly mixed so loud that you can barely make out the riffs half the time. Also, let me warn you again that with music of this type (the "changes every 10 seconds" type), you are never, ever going to like every single part of a song. But when the good parts outweigh the bad parts, THAT'S when you know you've got a Winner. And if these first three Cannibal Corpses were from Georgia, they'd be Winn(ers) Dixie.
Funny thing though. The most successful CC song ever - "Hammer Smashed Face" of Pet Ventura: Ace Detective fame -- is on here, and it SUCKS! What a slow crawling dull false harmonic-ridden pile of gunk! So if that's the only Cranberry Corpse song you've ever heard, don't judge them by it! Listen deeper into the record for the odd up-note things, the thrash thrash thrash, the good dark hooks, the 7/4 time, the doodlies, the funny speaker-to-speaker growled word, the Slayery lead licks, the Black Metal-style speed-string-pick-repetition, and the slower jug-jug-jug mosh parts. This is underground death metal! It sounds like it, at any rate. The next one doesn't, and, in a related note, stinks.
You wanna hear how much of a complete fucking asshole I am? Last night I (here's a shocker) got drunk, and it somehow felt appropriate to email "Weird Al" Yankovic to tell him (a) I love him, (b) his new album's no good, and (c) he should be happy his parents died of carbon monoxide poisoning. WHEE! Have you ever heard the Nomeansno song "I'm An Asshole"? Well, "I'm An Asshole!" However, I sent an apology this morning so I'm sure we're good buddies again.
In other news, one of my clients is trying to get us fired, another is being reamed left and right in the press and will probably fire us too, and I don't even know if we have any others at this point! So 2007 is turning out to be a real zinger in the Employment Dept.
In other news, I have more than 250 MySpace friends now, which is awesome because MySpace friends are REAL friends, and I'm having everybody over for a bar-be-que this weekend.
That reminds me - why are there so many people on MySpace pretending to be celebrities? What kind of a complete no-talent no-future failure do you have to be to do something like that? Check out the Ric Ocasek page. That's not Ric Ocasek! Check out the Tommy Ramone page. That's not Tommy Ramone! Check out like five different Glenn Danzig and Micky Dolenz pages - NOPE, NOT THEM! Why would somebody waste their time pretending to be a celebrity? Just so they can laugh behind the backs of people who respond? "Can't create so they must destroy"? Jello Biafra said that. Or at least the person pretending to be him on MySpace did.
This next portion is only for parents. If you don't have children, go fuck some girl and come back in nine months:
"Hammer Smashed Face" - The narrator smashes a guy in the forehead with a hammer over and over. Sample rhyme: "Lifeless body, slouching dead/Lecherous abcess, where you once had a head"
"I Cum Blood" - The narrator has sex with a corpse, performs the titular activity, then rapes and murders a woman. Sample rhyme: "One month in the grave, twisted and half decayed/She turned a putrid yellow; I pissed in her maggot filled asshole"
"Addicted To Vaginal Skin" - A shaman turns the narrator into a zombie, and the spell can only be broken by the eating of vaginal skin. But oh no! After the curse is lifted, he finds that he has become ADDICTED to it! Sample rhyme: "Even though now I'm dead within/My mouth drools as I slice your perineum"
"Split Wide Open" - A mother goes crazy after giving birth and dismembers her newborn son. It turns out that she does this every nine months, and her husband is in on it too! Sample rhyme: "Bones and skulls of sons and daughters, genitals ferment/In jars inside the cupboards for father to dissect"
"Necropedophile" - The narrator has sex with dead children, then hears their ghostly voices haunting him! Sample rhyme: "She's already dead/I masturbate with her severed head/My lubrication?/Her decomposition"
"The Cryptic Stench" - A vampire! Is it God? Is GOD a vampire? Sample rhyme: "One of my sons died for your sins/Resurrect him so I can drink his blood again"
"Entrails Ripped From A Virgin's Cunt' - The narrator shoves blades into virgins, then rapes, mutilates, murders and eats them. Sample rhyme: "I ram my fist inside her hole/From her crotch piss now flows/Rectum filled with shit/I fucked her emptied body until she became stiff"
"Post Mortal Ejaculation" - The narrator masturbates while hanging himself. Then he comes back as a zombie to rape and mutilate women! Sample rhyme: "Acid burning through her crotch/I baptize her face with my rot/Then venom foams from her throat/On my discharge she will choke"
"Beyond The Cemetery" - The narrator is possessed, and in a dreamlike state rapes, mutilates and slowly murders his own daughter! He screams to be awoken from his nightmare. Sample rhyme: "Slow strangulation/Her neck twisted and broken/Abdominal lacerations/Blood pouring from abrasions"
Don't you feel filthy now? Like your brain could use a good washing? Well, you're in luck because here at the Church of Scientology, we
With the addition of guitarist Rob Barrett, Cannibal Corpse herein adopts two lazy musical gimmicks that drive me up the G.Damned wall: (1) false harmonics out the wazaaaaap, and (2) ugly harmonized dual-guitar riffs. If you don't know what false harmonics are, go grab any Ozzy album with Zakk Wylde on it. Hear that annoying high "gwooo" noise he keeps making? That's a false harmonic. If you don't know what ugly harmonized dual-guitar riffs are, listen to Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town." Hear the bit in the middle where the two guitars simultaneously play the same exact riff but at different places on the neck? Now imagine that, but with one of the guitarists so high on opium that he's placed his fingers one fret away from where they're supposed to be. THAT'S WHAT THIS ALBUM SOUNDS LIKE! Why Phil Lynott hasn't sued yet is beyond me. And don't give me that 'dead' crap - that didn't stop Jim Morrison from working for Bank of America all through the '70s.
Now, I'm an objective man. Every one of my reviews on this site - from A to Zed - is based entirely on the objective value of a musical artwork; my personal opinion has nought to do with it. From my opening salvo referring to 40 Grit as "Fifty Shit" through my haunting final summation of ZedZed Top's latest stylistic relic, my site contains not one word of hyperbole, opinion or untruth. So don't blame the messenger when he returns home from his long odyssey to report that The Bleeding literally smells like a menstruation.
The guitars are pleasingly loud, but the songs now only have 3 or 4 different parts each. To add insult to an actual injury, most of these parts are neither ass-kickingly mean nor brainscrapingly insane, but simply generic or ugly. Seriously, just when you think you can't take any more stereotypical heavy jiggidas and dark doodlies, one of the guitarists will launch into a wicked cool note line -- followed seconds later by the other guitarist simply playing the exact same line at a different, wrong place on the neck. And they do this OVER AND OVER AND fucking OVER again -- and not just on this album, either! For some reason, the Corpses came away from The Bleeding with the idea that they should promote this asinine, unpleasant contrivance (along with the 'false harmonic') to Vice President, Songwriting Division, Cannibal Corpsoration (NYSE: ARRRRH!). In the process, they ruined not just one potentially classic death metal record, but several!
What on earth happened to the wonderfully twisted old band I so endured in my youngerness?!? This doesn't even sound like the same band! Their raw brutal chainsaw massacre ambience has been tragically mansformed into repetitive 'main-xtreme metal.' Evidently, Chris Barnes agreed with this assessment because he left the band soon afterwards to focus on his side project, "Growing Nauseating Dreadlocks And A Big Dumb Beard."
I realize I've just torn the living pants off an album that I rate a perfectly average '5 out of 10.' So let me do something crazy and point out the positive things about it. Firstly, "Fucked With A Knife" is one of the fastest and most vicious songs the band has ever recorded. Secondly, "She Was Asking For It" intriguingly intersperses super-fast jittery high notes with heavy-as-a-coffin detuned chords before welcoming in a series of swoopy, slightly off chords (and returning again). But these two tracks are honestly the only parts of The Bleeding that live up to the ferocious, unhinged promise of its three predecessors. Actually, "Force Fed Broken Glass" would too, if not for those omnipresent false harmonics.
The bottom line is that when a band falls back on the same one or two musical stunts over and over again, they come across as not very bright (after four or five songs, you'll literally be screaming at the turntable, "THERE ARE MORE THINGS TO DO WITH TWO GUITARS THAN PLAY THE SAME FUCKING PART A FEW FRETS AWAY FROM EACH OTHER!!!"). And this is the first time that Cannibal Corpse had ever come across as less than intelligent. The fact that it wasn't the last sadly suggests that perhaps Bob Rusay was the band's brain rocket in the first place.
Good old Charles Rocket. He certainly was 'the new Laraine Newman,' am I right? Who's wrong?
Hey little babies and toddlers! Please read the lyrical summaries below to decide if this CD is appropriate for you:
"Staring Through The Eyes Of The Dead" - The narrator is alive and aware, but he appears dead. An autopsy is performed on him while he's still alive! Sample rhyme: "Screaming into deaf ears/Now they stop and see my tears"
"Fucked With A Knife" - Self-explanatory. Sample rhyme: "I'm the only one you love/I feel her heart beating/My knife deep inside/Her crotch is bleeding"
"Stripped, Raped And Strangled" - The narrator has performed the titular acts on seven women, and has no plans to stop any time soon. Sample rhyme: "Strangulation caused her death just like all the others/Raped before and after death, stripped, naked, tortured"
"Pulverized" - The narrator is addicted to murder, but then he is murdered, I think? Is that what's happening? Or is the narrative voice intended to represent both the murderer and the victim? Sample rhyme: "I won't sustain these injuries/Pick up the pieces of me"
"Return To Flesh" - The narrator was murdered, but cannot rest in peace. He's trapped between life and death. Sample rhyme: "Move on to the other side/Rotten - I have died!"
"The Pick-Axe Murders" - Self-explanatory (and he has sex with a severed head) Sample rhyme: "Dead like the rest, molested and left/Limbs split in half, I rupture their flesh"
"She Was Asking For It" - The insane narrator strangled his lover and is tortured by his action. Now she calls him from the grave. Sample rhyme: "The fear in her eyes the night she died/It left me empty, hollow inside"
"The Bleeding" - Zombies! Sample rhyme: "Slicing through the flesh/A knife stuck in your neck/Stabbing out your eyes/Cutting through the spine"
"Force Fed Broken Glass" - A very descriptive account of what happens to the digestive system when one ingests broken glass. Sample rhyme: "Severed esophagus/Tongue split in half/lungs fill with blood/As vocal chords collapse"
"An Experiment In Homicide" - The narrator kills and experiments. Hence the title. Sample rhyme: "Homicidal experimentation/I set the dead on fire/To decay in flame/Homicidal desire"
And that's the last of the Chris Barnes-penned masterpieces. From here on out, the lyrics would all be by INFILTRATORS and CHARLATANS!!!
By which I of course mean "the other members of the band."
But this album is neat in my opinion.
You're 100% right about the guitar playing. I thought I was the only one
who noticed how out of tune the guitarists are with each other. The
harmonies don't work, neither do the pinch harmonics that they must've
learned from either Zakk Wylde or Tommy Victor.
I saw these guys in '94 and they were awesome. But the guitarists
could've been playing anything and no one would've told the difference. The
sheer volume of the band was amazing, plus they were tight as hell. But you
couldn't tell one note from another, especially with the midrange at zero.
I guess they chose to revamp their sound due to the success of some of
the heavier bands of the era. In that time, (1993-1994) you saw bands like
Pantera selling good numbers of records. Pantera sounds like the Partridge
Family compared to CC's earlier work, but they were selling albums. Chris
Barnes's side band Six Feet Under sounds like this album, so maybe he had
something to do with it.
I guess it's no coincidence that Vile spelled backwards is Evil!
(don't write in about that)
As overstated in the previous review, singing minstrel/balladeer Chris Barnes told the band to "Eat a dick" after their fourth and worst album together, so who did they find to replace him with but none other than may I introduce you to the legendary Monstrosity vocalist GEORGE 'CORPSEGRINDER' FISHER! Fresh from pairing adjectives and nouns into such impressive song titles as "Immense Malignancy," "Definitive Inquisition," "Imperial Doom," "Ceremonial Void," "Darkest Dream" and "Final Cremation," George brings a more human-sounding yet even gruffer death metal shout/roar to the band (and by "human-sounding," I mean you can hear him straining his throat - Barnes' vocals, in comparison, at times seemed to come from a bottomless diaphragm). (God, can you imagine how awesome it would be to ball a titperson with a bottomless diaphragm? You could thow it all the way up to her throat!)
The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "Of or denoting the sex that produces ova or bears young." But to the rest of the world, it's simply "A Titperson."
The other band members collaborate to fill the songwriting void left by Mr. Barnes' departure, bringing a surprising level of guilt and victimhood to the proceedings! Where Chris generally wrote in the voice of an unrepentant murderer, this album is full of descriptions of self-mutilations and shrieks of horror from those being mutilated. In fact, 6 of the 11 songs feature narrators who experience pain rather than dish it out, 1 of the songs is a 3rd person narration of zombies, and an 8th is an instrumental -- leaving a mere THREE unrepentant murderers to tickle your earbone. A kinder, gentler Cannibal Corpse? Perhaps. And even if not, isn't it awesome that I'm still referencing George Bush like two decades after he made that stupid "a kinder, gentler nation" comment? In fact, you might say this review is "a thousand points of shit!"
Vile also presents the thrashiest Cannibal Corpse yet, replacing the endless THUBBA-THUBBA-THUBBA downbeats and blastbeats with quite a surprising few high-speed "doop-chick doop-chick" backbeats for all you speed metal fans out there in the audience. However, the songcraft tunesmanshippery seems to be taking a backseat to the headbanging energy. At too many points, it sounds like they don't even care what they're playing! And yes, thrash rules but even a delightful speedy 4/4 drum attack can't infinitely disguise the fact that there's nothing interesting going on underneath. There are some interesting quirks here and there, but nothing like the depraved insanity of the first three albums. In short, these riffs don't sound deranged -- they just sound metallic. Their overuse of ugly dual-guitar harmonies and false harmonics doesn't help either.
Still, unlike The Bleeding, there are no "bad" songs on here. It's just that only a few of them maintain their aggression and creativity all the way through. "Mummified In Barbed Wire" is a terrific Accused-style thrash assault with constant rhythmic jerk-backs, "Disfigured" makes like a bitter midtempo Slayer piss-off with a slithery-slide chorus, and "Eaten From Inside" starts off surprisingly poppy before turning into a dark, seething chugger of pure malice. The others all seem to bury one totally awesome riff within a morass of generic thrash, boring sludge and vomitous dual-guitar harmonies. "Bloodlands"' music sure fits its lyrics though, creating a labyrinthine, seemingly directionless note riff to accompany its lyrics about waking up lost and confused in the desert... before ERUPTING INTO SLAUGHTER!!!!!
At which point they cover "Fly To The Angels," but up til then things are r
We've been getting bucketfuls of letters here at Amazon.com Proudly Presents The Mark Prindle Record Review Guide asking that we stop summarizing every song on every Cannibal Corpse album. Although I can certainly understand and appreciate the ennui of the childless as their eyes glaze over yet another set of interchangeable gore rhymes, my paying clients are the Parents Of America (TM) and I cannot let them down. How would you feel if a baby came to your house and murdered your family because its parents bought it a Cannibal Corpse CD thinking it was a lullaby album? We'd all feel guilty in life. So go gather up all your babies from the bottom of the swimming pool and bring them in here to read this:
"Devoured By Vermin" - Rats devour the narrator alive. Sample rhyme: "Ruthless gnawing vermin feed/Cleaning off my bones while I breathe/Stenching greasy rodents swarm/My body is losing its form"
"Mummified In Barbed Wire" - Narrator wraps a living victim in barbed wire until he bleeds to death. Sample rhyme: "Lacerate, sharp spikes rip/Mutilate, pierce the skin/Mummified in barbed wire/Breathing stops, life expires"
"Perverse Suffering" - Narrator wants to suffer and be mutilated. He craves it! Sample rhyme: "Wretched abnormality, condoning inhumanity/Suicide carnivorous abusiveness, boiling sawn-off testicles"
"Disfigured" - Narrator, a killer of women, responds to his self-hatred by slicing his face up, filling his tub with alcohol, dipping his face in, and setting the tub on fire! Sample rhyme: "The flint ignites, the flames erupt/I'm consumed in the inferno/Cauterize, my skin is charred/Regenerate, more loathsome than before"
"Bloodlands" - Narrator wakes up lost and confused in a desert, begins getting visions of a massacre, and is forced to feel the torture experienced by the victims. Sample rhyme: "My mind cannot conceive, the massacre I behold/An infinite river of cadavers, buoyant in their own blood"
"Puncture Wound Massacre" - Narrator kicks door in and uses knives to murder every person in the room. Sample rhyme: "Stabbing, disfigure, knives puncture/Blood gushing from their wounds/Rivers run deep red/Down faces of people in the room"
"Relentless Beating" - Instrumental. PERFECT for little kids. Advised for use in kindergarten music courses.
"Absolute Hatred" - Narrator kills his enemy's family, member by member, to make him suffer. Sample rhyme: "I am the judge, jury, executioner/And pallbearer all in one/Process of elimination/Affirmative action has just begun"
"Eaten From Inside" - Narrator's anger itself rips out of his body. Weird! Metaphorical? Sample rhyme: "Originating deep within, a heart that is now cold and dead/Tearing its way through my organs, leaving nothing but shreds"
"Orgasm Through Torture" - Narrator is tied down by a sexy woman, who proceeds to eat his penis. Sample rhyme: "Masticate, gnawing and chewing the stump/She regurgitates, I'm covered in my bloody chunks"
"Monolith" - Zombies! Sample rhyme: "Cannibals!"
I guess it's no coincidence that two copies of Vile spelled backwards is Elvis!
When Cannonball "Adderly" Corpse decided to release their sixth album, Gallery Of Suicide, in 1998, I thought, in 2007, "Wouldn't it be funny if I reviewed this one by listing the Top Yahoo! News Headlines of the day and then responding to them as if they were ACTUALLY referring to this album?" We all thought this idea was hilarious so let's get started with today's CrAzEe box of comedy:
"Gunmen attack Somali president's palace in capital" - Yeah, I know! They're sick of all the stupid dual-guitar harmonies and false harmonics on this album, which the Somali president keeps blasting on his palace turntable every morning really early.
"Israel unfreezes $100M before Mideast summit" - Yeah, I know! That's because they love the heavy guitars and ultra-downbeats on this album, and want to purchase another 5 million copies of it on ebay. Or 10 million, if they can find them used.
"Pelosi calls Iraq a 'stark blunder'" - Yeah, I know! That's because our War in Iraq, like this album, starts off really strong but then has a bunch of songs on side two that all use the same 'depressed' guitar chord harmonies. Plus our soldiers keep raping girls and setting their families on fire.
So far this is going really hilariously, so let's move on to another great "post-modern" record review idea. I'm going to write the rest of this review using only words that have 'w' as a vowel. Okay, here we go:
Crwth? Cwm!!!
Well, that went fantastically. Unfortunately the Welsh do not have any similar words for the statement "The mix is incredible -- everything's loud as shit but you can hear all the instruments perfectly clearly. Also they replaced Rob Barrett with guitarist Pat O'Brien on this album and, as George 'Corpsegrinder' Fisher once observed, Pat is a much more technical player. This alone helps Gallery rise above the straight thrash and predictable chord changes of the last two albums, with Pat introducing ridiculously fast note-picking, sick mad neck runs and crazy speed diddling (see tracks 1, 2 and 4 for excellent, intelligent examples). Furthermore, they actually return to and repeat these awe-inspiring passages as if they were actual verses or choruses (rather than playing them once and never letting you near them again). It's just too bad that side 2 has so many similarly-mooded songs in a row because side one ranks among the most memorable music this band has ever produced." Fuckin' Welsh. First they 'welsh' on a bet and now this.
On a related yet entirely different note, reader reaction to my Adult Supervisory Catalog Of Lyrical Matter has been thorougly heartening, with parents writing in left and right to say, "Thank you for informing me of Cannibal Corpse's dirty and ribald subject matter. I bought my toddler the entire Deicide catalog and now he's 'pulling a Jeffrey Dahmer' with his Big Wheel. But now that you're here, I sense that everything will be okay. All thanks to you, Mark Prindle. God bless you, Mark Prindle, and all of those whose hearts you've touched with your daily ruminations on life, love and happiness, sharing with us your hopes and dreams of a brighter tomorrow filled with crickets and tadpoles, turtles and frogs - down by the creek bank, by the old holler log. Here, enjoy this $20 bill I've enclosed." I've already received nearly 150 different letters, all with that same exact text. Thank you, thoughtful readers. And thank you, boneheaded superstition and whoever thought up the chain letter. Now for today's Brutality Advisory:
"I Will Kill You" - A man gets bloody revenge after years of oppression and pain (But revenge on who? Society at large?). Sample rhyme: "Pull out your heart/And let you watch/Shove in your mouth/Then stab your crotch"
"Disposal Of The Body" - Describes how a professional killer disposes of his victims' bodies to avoid capture. Sample rhyme: "If you don't cut open the stomach/The corpse will rise and float/The victim is discovered dead/Rotting organs bloat"
"Sentenced To Burn" - Details what happens when idiot citizens blindly follow a charismatic (and secretly psychopathic) leader. Sample non-rhyme: "Warfare begins/Cities are ablaze/Tortured screams/Skin turning black"
"Blood Drenched Execution" - Narrator rips an unborn child out of the womb, then kills it and its family. Sample rhyme: "Young blood is so pure/Unborn infant is dead premature/The executioner has to mutilate/A fetal pulp is all that remains"
"Gallery Of Suicide" - Instead of Heaven or Hell, suicide victims go to an afterlife where they constantly endure the pain of their suicide, over and over again. Sample rhyme: "Lurid interment in the hellish abattoir/Impetuosity and horror, after-life is tortured/Entrails, guts, and blood is this museum's decor"
"Dismembered And Molested" - Narrator mutilates for sexual pleasure. Sample rhyme: "Sever the limbs/Decapitate/Yank out the teeth/Then masturbate/Pounding the face/Ejaculate"
"From Skin To Liquid" - An instrumental, though you wouldn't know it from the introduction to my almost aggressively ignorant George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher interview at www.markprindle.com/fisher-i.htm
"Unite The Dead" - Zombies impregnate female zombies, and their children grow up to lead the Zombie Kingdom to victory over mankind. Sample rhyme: "Maggots crawl on their rotting cocks/Into her cunt, rigid like rock"
"Stabbed In The Throat" - Narrator kills to eat; he's a cannibal, you see. Sample rhyme: "Vocal chords twitching, esophagus severed, a haemorrhaging brain/Your lacerated jugular vein is spurting away"
"Chambers Of Blood" - Religious zealots brutally punish those who have sinned. Sample rhyme: "Heaving lungs/Severed tongues"
"Headless" - Narrator plans to cut a woman's head off, but she cuts his off first! Sample rhyme: "Preparing for medieval demise/A make-shift guillotine out of butcher knives/I'll watch her body quiver from the chaos/Peel off her face and frantically chew her eyes"
"Every Bone Broken" - Narrator avoids capture by breaking all of his victims' bones to dust and eating the skin and organs. Sample rhyme: "Every bone broken enhances my soul/Your twisted corpse is confronted dead rot/Every bone broken, your life I stole/I'll kill again and I'll never get caught"
"Centuries Of Torment" - Narrator is reincarnated again and again, and is a brutal murderer every time! Sample rhyme: "Defy
redemption/Time and time again/Spit upon it!/My soul thy cannot claim"
"Crushing The Despised" - Narrator brutally slaughters a man he hates. Sample rhyme: "Chopped off the tongue that told the lies/I spit on him and laugh while he dies/Lying there helpless I throw bricks at your head/Starving for violence and now I've been fed"
And there you have it - another great Topps baseball card!
Fantasy beasts, zombies and singing victims abound here on Cannibalc Orpse's Bloodthirst, along with tons of fast technical note riffs -- thankfully doubled rather than uglily harmonized. The 'Orpse throw in some awfully bizarre note combinations too, reminiscent of the band's screwball early material. On the down side, there is some straightforward dull thrash in there, and the songwriting does start to feel awfully samey after a while. Still, the overriding effect is that of an extreme metal band working hard to deliver new material that is challenging both to listen to and to play.
Did I mention "palm muting" yet? Cannibal Corpse sometimes use "palm muting" when playing heavier note sequences ("palm muting" = with the picking hand, rest the soft part of the palm lightly against the strings while playing, so that the notes sound, shockingly, 'muted' rather than ringing out loudly), which certainly sounds evil and rigid but also -- when combined with the heavy distortion effect and detuned strings of the instruments -- results in instrumental tones located so low the in the human hearing spectrum that it's nearly impossible to figure out whether they're playing a single note or alternating between three or four! That was an unnecessarily long sentence.
As they are wont to do, the band nearly destroys the power of their at-the-time current obsession (fast rhythmic chugging notes) by using it in almost every song on the CD, but at least it's not an annoying obsession (I'm lookin' at YOU, false harmonics!), and believe me you - more than once or twice, you'll lift your eyebrows and think, "Say.... That's pretty fast." "I mean, you know.... it's not slow, at any rate."
"You know what I mean." "In my opinion."
Only a couple of songs fall back on the predictable ugly old Bleeding sound. Strangely, these are also the two songs I like least on the album. Crazy, isn't it? That I wouldn't 'get a plastic boner' for the five billion false harmonics of 'Dead Human Collection" or the wild, unruly harmonized guitars of "Sickening Metamorphosis"? These are crazy revelations about oneself and somebody should look into them. On a related note, the excellent final track ("Condemned To Agony") finds the two guitarists experimenting with a heretofore non-existent musical concept entitled Actual Guitar Interplay!!!! (A.G.I.)
And yes this review sucks, but so does your dick.
Actually that didn't make any sense.
But hold on - wouldn't it be awesome if your dick was somehow capable of suctioned inhalation? Think about it - you could actually suck someone's dick with YOUR DICK! It'd almost be WORTH going gay just to do something that stupid!
You know, doctors often say that an 85-year-old man has the mental faculties of a little boy. As such, if you are the parent or parents of an 85-year-old man, please read this next section carefully to determine whether Bloodthirst is appropriate for your elderly child.
"Pounded Into Dust" - Attackers murder all the people in a town. Sample rhyme: "Blood soaks the ground/In their own, they will drown/Surrounded by disgust/Pounded into dust"
"Dead Human Collection" - The narrator is being mutilated and murdered by a serial killer! Help him! Sample rhyme: "I cannot scream, my mouth is wired shut/I cannot see, my eyes are filled with blood"
"Unleashing The Bloodthirsty" - Buried bodies reform and become murderous zombies. Sample rhyme: "Kill with speed/Victims bleed/Wretched souls/Headless on poles/Savage thirst/Vessels burst/Torn apart/Eat the heart"
"The Spine Splitter" - The narrator kills people by separating their backbone from their skeleton!? Sample rhyme: "Animus from perpetual authority/Contumacious bone displacement surgery"
"Ecstacy In Decay" - A guy loves living among sloppy piles of guts, pus & gore. Sample rhyme: "One thousand years of compiled waste/Frenzy in muck intoxicates"
"Raped By The Beast" - A beast in a forest rapes a woman. Sample rhyme: "Brutal attack, the innocent are unprotected Hellish fury, deviance provides conception/Vicious onslaught, its primal lust instinctual Macabre fuckfest, inside her cunt the brute's erection"
"Coffinfeeder" - Zombies dig up graves to eat the dead. Sample rhyme: "Exhume the rotted casket, robbing graves but not for wealth/Cloaked in moldy rags, hunting dead decrepit things from Hell"
"Hacksaw Decapitation" - The narrator keeps killing and decapitating people, for, you see, he's insane. Sample rhyme: "Sawing the neck, I am engulfed in fantasy/Chew the esophagus, cannibal delicacy"
"Blowtorch Slaughter" - The narrator is being murdered with a blowtorch! Do something! Sample rhyme: "Pre-destined to incinerate/The flesh is dripping from my face!"
"Sickening Metamorphosis" - A man metamorphosizes into a beast. Sample rhyme: "Tentacles extending from the face/Eyes are growing on his hands and back/Spikes and fangs cover his body/Skeleton re-shapes, bones pop and crack"
"Condemned To Agony" - A murderer dies, only to find his dead victims waiting in the afterlife to torture him for all of eternity - in the same ways he tortured them! Sample rhyme: "Heads of his victims have returned to haunt/Dripping with blood, rotted and gaunt"
And there you have it! The Beatles.
hAVE YOU EVEr seen a band live? They fuckin' ruled. They came out with their instruments and went "NEOWR NEOWR NEOWR" and then songs came out and you were all like "Holy Schlitz, I like music performed by fuckers." And then another time they rocked you hard with their drums. But that's all in the past. And all we're left with now is a videotape that's a CD. This CD has Cannibal Corpse on it, regardless of who you saw live. I'm drunk.
This live album features live in concert renditions of live songs that are live versions of songs that weren't live when released as such: 4 from Bloodthirst becaUSE it's their newest album and people always want to hear all the songs on the new album, especially Iron Maiden's fans who had to sit through every last shitty piece of shit song on A Matter Of Life, Death, And No Good Songs during last year's tour. But also 3 each from The Bleeding, Butchered At Brith and Gallery Of Suicide, 2 each from Tits Other Tit Man and Vile, and one from Eaten Back To Life. I can't reemm - NO WAIT, it's not Tits Etc. - it's Tomb Of The Mutilated. I had just written its initials down. But also
The singer sounds ridiculous! He must be ShREDDING his throat doing this! Interestingly though, the blastbeats feel like ENERGY in the live setting, instead of just noise. And even the less interesting parts don't seem as dull live, because the band's energy level is so incredibly high!
Cannibal Corpse is a death metal band. Sometimes they do things with their guitars that make you say out loud, "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" but other times they inexcusably play a bunch of boring go-nowhere shit. This live album mostly sounds like "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" because even the DULL fast parts are fast, mean and sound a lot more less like a studio band boring but fast drummer, when live it's all exciting and speed makes things happy today. That's something in today's life that people misunder.
But you still have to listen very close with much attention to make out why the riffs are killer. Otherwise you're like, "This shit's fuckin' noise and the drums are reverbed" (because it's live, and drums always sound reverbby live because the guy is literally hitting them so hard!). The mix is fine, and the sicko and anger-filled guitar riffageage does its gnarly Dude.
Wjem you mix up the letters in "I'm Drunk," you get "Rim Dunk," which is a pretty awesome basketball move.
But you also get "Rum Dink," which is a tiny little man drinking alcohol. I'm not tiny; stop laughing at my gigantic ballsac.
You're looking for something to get you through the day. Here goes: DO NOT DROP OUT OF SCHOOL. GRADUATE COLLEGE. GET AN ACTUAL JOB THAT REQUIRES A COLLEGE DEGREE. THAT'S HOW MONEY HAPPENS, ALLOWING YOU TO LIVE A NORMAL LIFE AND BUY THINGS. DO NOT TRY TO BECOME A ROCK STAR. YOU WILL FAIL. There, i tried to help. Kurt Cobain didn't listen though, and now he's working at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. And don't get me STARTED about Paul McCartney!
(Or should I say "Paul 'Sucks Everybody's Dick At Penn Station For $5 A Squirt' McCartney.")
There were a lot of wet panties out there in the audience the night Gore Obsessed came out. But enough about Cannibal Corpse's incontinent fan base; weren't we all just a little bit Gore obsessed back in 2002? When George Bush stole the 2002 election and enacted his "Warm That Globe" initiative? Thankfully, history's most extravagant Vice-President is once again in the limelight with his hit film Saw III, so we'll never have to miss Gore's Vidal signs ag - never mind.
Unfortunately this album is a near-worthless piece of shit I gave a 5 out of 10 to.
Hey here's a joke I'm sort of in the process of making up:
Q. What word starts with "Hand" and describes a physically gratifying outlet for pent-up stress and gross body mucus?
Handkerchief!
(Or Handjob, if you guessed Handkerchief.)
These riffs are much less memorable than those of the last few albums; they're basically just a bunch of generic metal chord changes. The chugging is pleasingly heavy, but the band plays far too many tedious slow sections and repetitive 'just okay' musical themes. Also, the guitars' hissy metallic distortion makes it really hard to tell what they're playing underneath the loud, constant drumwork. The band maneuvers their way through lots of difficult, ultra-technical rhythmic changes and breakneck shifts/stops/starts, but the actual 'melodies' (or 'riffs') are just not memorable at all.
One thing though -- it has been unfair of me not to point out something interesting about George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher's vocal delivery. He doesn't just do the gruff low growl/groan thing all the time; he in fact alternates it with occasional higher-pitched anguished screams that sometimes go on for days. Not like Black Metal ethereal "Aaaaah!" high screams, but like what you imagine a gruff low death metal growl/groaner would sound like if you started hammering a nail into his hand. A hoarse and tuneless, yet slightly higher-pitched and more desperate "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!" So that's something about which we should all be proud of Mr. Fisherman.
Two stand-out tracks:
- "Mutation Of The Cadaver" - More like "Mutation Of The SONG FORM" if you ask me! There is so much rhythmic weirdness in this song that it's impossible to dislike. Literally impossible. Even opera singers and classical BMs are always talking about how much they love this song.
- "When Death Replaces Life" - A slow, depressed, dark, evil song reminiscent of Slayer during their slow years. Certainly a stand-out on this particular album in that it has a hook!
One other near-stand-out track:
- "Grotesque" - ACTUAL GUITAR INTERPLAY AGAIN!!! For about a minute and a half. Then they replace the good part with slow boring garbage. Nice hammer-on bass solo though! You don't get THAT on your Father's Death Metal Album! This sure ain't your FATHER'S Death Metal Album! Try again, because this sure ain't your Father's Death METAL Album!
Huh? No no, this sure AIN'T your Father's Death Metal Album!
Thrash? No no, this sure ain't your Father's DEATH Metal Album!
Me? No no, this sure ain't YOUR Father's Death Metal Album!
That one? No no, THIS sure ain't your Father's Death Metal Album!
Videotape? No no, this sure ain't your Father's Death Metal ALBUM!
But one thing's for sure -- this SURE ain't your Father's Death Metal Album!
If you're as exhausted as I am right now, you need the Government to tell you what music you shouldn't be allowed to listen to. As such, the following Lyrical Overview is brought to you by the Government:
"Savage Butchery" - The narrator butchers people for revenge, like the insurgents in Iraq. We are a country at war, and we must prevail. Sample rhyme: "Veins spray blood it splashes in my eyes/Impulse of my rage will dictate how he dies/Chopped up while alive or killed with the first strike/What's left of his life is dripping from my knife"
"Hatchet To The Head" - The narrator is driven by hate to kill people with a hatchet to the head. The same way President George W. Bush put a hatchet to your taxes! Sample not-even-close-to-a-rhyme: "Slit open crushed eyeballs dripping hanging from the sockets/Steel cracked bone with fatal trauma to the cerebellum"
"Pit Of Zombies" - The new Democratically-controlled Congress! Ha ha ha, no I'm kidding. Actually, the narrator is dangled above a pit of zombies, who tear him apart and eat him. And it takes him forever to die! And it HURTS! Luckily, real deaths, such as those of our soldiers in Iraq, take place instantly and without pain, and they go to Heaven. Sample half-assed-attempt-at-a-rhyme: "Their jaws await me/A gruesome end the/Pit of zombies"
"Dormant Bodies Bursting" - All the dead bodies are bursting, coating the Earth in blood, and spreading germs, disease and pestilence from here to nigh! Experts predict that this is exactly what will happen if we don't achieve victory in our War On Terror. Sample rhyme: "The sky and the earth are now tainted by blood/Death is to blame for this enormous flood"
"Compelled To Lacerate" - A man abducts people, chains them to his wall, and tortures them alive to create works of art. This sort of torture, conducted merely for aesthetic purposes, is frowned upon by the Administration. Sample rhyme: "His prey screams in pain writhing under his knife/Driven to improve his victims through gruesome design"
"Drowning In Viscera" - The narrator is drowning to death in the guts of cadavers! Vote Cheney '08. Sample rhyme: "Engulfed in the innards of rotting cadavers/A rancid gore sea - asphyxiation/Tangled intestines become my reality/Choking on guts - morose sensation"
"Hung And Bled" - A maniac hangs his victims upside down from the ceiling to let their blood drain out. He then drinks the blood and eats the flesh. Also, he's Moslem. (Probably) Sample rhyme: "Corpses dangle lifeless gray and cold/Rotting flesh the meat hooks lose their hold/Stenching body falls onto the ground/Bones and flesh form a mound"
"Sanded Faceless" - This song provides a graphic description of a person's face being sanded down to a completely smooth surface. Yeah, I bet Hillary Clinton would (something something)! Ha ha! Sample rhyme: "Everything gone from the head/Miasmal menace/All curves of a face are now smooth/Forced a new surface"
"Mutation Of The Cadaver" - A coroner watches in awe and fright as a cadaver's face mutates... INTO THE CORONER'S FACE! And if Iraq and the War On Terror are left to the Democrats, all of our servicemen will wind up as cadavers -- and mutate into YOUR face! Another reason to vote Republican. Sample rhyme: "Shocking evolution/Mutation of the cadaver!/Hideous conversion/Mutation of the cadaver!"
"When Death Replaces Life" - As on January 4, 2006 in the halls of Congress. Ha! No no, I'm kidding. We all need to work together on the issues that are important to all Americans. Actually this song discusses what these misled young people believe to be the 'evil' and 'false' propaganda spread by God's Chosen Ones, America's Christians. Sample rhyme: "How can humans play God when they are all slaves?/Their lack of souls will lead them to an early grave/Condemned to live a life of unrelenting praise"
"Grotesque" - The narrator has killed all his friends, but can't figure out how or why. He hopes that it's just a nightmare, but he can't tell! Gay marriage is also grotesque, while we're on the subject. Sample rhyme: "Life long friend/Cut off his head"
And there you have it! "Cannib" Al Gore's Corpse Obsessed.
There were some pretty excited prog rock fans out there the day this hit the stands, but alas the anticipated musical portrait of Worm Infested ELP turned out to be a typo. Still, Cannibal Corpse certainly did their fans a liquid by releasing this quickie tribute to newer days, older lays and their early rock'n roll influences. It features two new compositions (both extremely brutal, one oddly hookfull, the other completely hookfree), a re-recording of a gleefully rancid Eaten Back To Life classic, and covers of Accept (straight-up old-timey HEAVY METAL!), Possessed (fast mean catchy THRASH!) and Metallica (back when they didn't SUCK YET!).
But were these bands really Cannibal Corpse's influences? You certainly wouldn't think so to hear them. These covers are far simpler, more straightforward, less assaultive, less cerebral and (let's be honest) CATCHIER than the band's original work. Maybe they're really paying tribute to the bands they loved back when they were teenagers or something, because their direct musical influences were surely more along the lines of Chuck Schuldiner's Death. (No hilarious gags please) Either way, it's neat to hear their difficult originals paired side-by-side with songs that sound absolutely dimwitted (but GREAT!) in comparison. George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher even IMITATES the Possessed singer during "Confessions"! Indeed, he sounds like a human being in this song! Hear it and wow! Unless it's some other member of the band singing, which I guess it might be.
If you're a fetus, please read this next part before you're born, in case your mother gives birth in the 'C' aisle of a record store and you're not sure whether this is an appropriate CD to wrap in your umbilical cord and sneak out:
"Systematic Elimination" - An insane man must kill, kill, kill! Sample near-rhyme: "Die human thing rot eternally/One, one by one are left to bleed/Cries bellowing instant misery/Gone, life is gone lying in death's bed"
"Worm Infested" - The narrator digs up a corpse in order to fuck it. Sample ridiculously over-thesaurused rhyme: "Despicable degradation, excoriate her/Inimical depredation, disseminate her/Ignominious domination, demoralize her/Presumptuous defecation to sodomize her"
And there you have it! An album recorded by Emerson, Lake & Palmer as carnivorous worms ripped them apart from the insides. (Check out "Karn Evil AUGUGHHH!" for some exce ah fuck it)
It's the craziest thing - my wife doesn't like this band. Which is fuckin' weird considering how much she likes the Pixies. Nevertheless, I shall continue my insightful retrospective regarding a band I've long considered "The Pixies of Florida" - Cannibal Corpse.
When Frank Black sat down to write "Rotted Body Landslide" in 2003, he li - wait a minute! No, I didn't mean "Frank Black"! Ha ha! Can you believe that? Ha ha! I've made a fool of myself live on the Internet in front of billions of (pending) markprindle.com readers! But let's move on.
Say, you play the guitar. How the hell low is this band tuning anyway? Their low chords just sound like guttural growls! Is that what they are, you think? Just some dying people in the studio emitting guttural growls in time with the drums? Somebody post that on Wikipedia.
You know how in my review for that last EP, I say something about how Cannibal Corpse couldn't possibly have been inspired by traditional heavy metal and thrash bands like Possessed, Metallica and Accept, because their music sounds nothing at all like them? Well, I guess the band felt the same way, because this album finds traditional non-death metal influences popping up all over the place -- even in otherwise completely 'death metal' songs! Straightforward speed metal blasts through in tracks like "Cyanide Assassin" and "Severed Head Stoning," midtempo '80s balls-to-the-wall headbanger music is channelled through "Decency Defied" and part of the title track, and even Black Sabbathy sludge-stoner rock makes an appearance in "Festering In The Crypt"!
Refreshingly (after that Gore Obsessed stinker), The Wretched Spawn starts off very, very strong with bouts of hyperspeed technical thrash, lots of bizarre guitar sounds and styles of playing, and some very strange, unorthodox note sequences. Unfortunately, about halfway through, the songs inexplicably start getting slower, uglier and duller. They bring back those dual-guitar harmonies I've raged about in previous weeks, and infuriatingly simple trudge sections suck all the energy out of some almost-not-terrible compositions. There are still a couple of great songs during the latter half ("Slain"! "Blunt Force Castration"!), but it's still quite a depressing letdown after the clever ideas and ultra-technical speed-note playing of the first six tracks.
Wasn't that awesome how I just threw out the names of two songs there without bothering to describe them at all? From now on, I'm going to do that in all my reviews. In fact, from now on, my reviews are going to consist solely of song titles and euphemisms for 'penis.' Here's my new review for OK Computer: Paranoid Android! Airbag! Squirtpipe! The Tourist! Tickly Balls-A-Lot! Lucky! Fucky! Climbing Up The Walls Of Your Vagina Thing!
Okay let me know when Da Capo Best Music Writing 2007 comes out because I'm pretty sure that'll be in there about six times.
A few interesting things to note while listening to and potentially enjoying The Wretched Spawn:
- The cool upwards swooping guitar chords and polyrhythmic chugging sections in "Severed Head Stoning"
- The lovely descending arpeggios during a later section of "Frantic Disembowelment." When was the last time you heard arpeggiation on a Cannibal Corpse album? If ever? Ever? Never?
- The bizarre series of 'WTF!?' guitar-playing decisions in "The Wretched Spawn"
- The sicko harmonized hammer-on breaks in "Cyanide Assassin"
Say! I hate to interrupt such a scintillating list of bullet points, but you know how sometimes in high school health classes, they make the kids walk around with an egg all week pretending it's a baby? This next section is for kids who don't know whether or not this album is appropriate for their egg:
"Severed Head Stoning" - Executioners bury a man waist-deep in the ground and then stone him to death with the severed heads of his family. Sample rhyme: "His wife's head breaks his jaw/Bruised flesh becoming raw"
"Psychotic Precision" - Two psychopatic murderers are killed the same day in the same way (capital punishment? suicide? killing each other?) Sample rhyme: "Horrific perception that enters the brain/An abnormal psyche, insanity's pain/Cemented beyond immeasurable doubt/Psychotic or not, they need a way out"
"Decency Defied" - The narrator slices tattoos off of people to put on display or wear himself. Sample rhyme: "You mark your skin, it gives you pleasure/I take your precious art, it becomes my leather"
"Frantic Disembowelment" - The narrator mutilates people for fun. Sample rhyme: "Kidneys exploded/The pancreas flew/Stomach deleted/The spleen I did chew"
"The Wretched Spawn" - A child created by rape is already doomed by genetics to become, like his father, a psychotic killer. Sample rhyme: "Spawn of the wretched cunt defiled/Pawn of the darkness, blasphemous child"
"Cyanide Assassin" - The narrator kills people by putting cyanide in their food, cyanide gas in their rooms or cyanide injections in their veins. Sample rhyme: "A sloppy job must be finished/Can't leave him in a coma/With my mask I won't smell/The almond-like aroma"
"Festering In The Crypt" - A murderer, probably executed by the State, festers dead in his grave, mourned by nobody. Sample rhyme: "Flesh has now turned to grey/As the larvae gnaw away"
"Nothing Left To Mutilate" - The narrator keeps murdering girls and eating them, but his obsession never ceases. He keeps thinking "She's the one I've been looking for" but she never is. Sample rhyme: "Gradually consumed/She was foredoomed/Body one big wound"
"Blunt Force Castration" - A woman uses a sledgehammer to smash a man's groin parts. Sample rhyme: "Detatched genitals/Mangled between the thighs/Gelded painfully/Transformed before his eyes"
"Rotted Body Landslide" - The narrator is trying to dig his way out of a pile of 10,000 genocide victims, but then there's a body landslide so he suffocates. I can't tell you how many times I've been in this same situation. Sample rhyme: "Suffocate/Corpses' weight/Seals my fate"
"Slain" - A man goes from town to town raping and/or murdering every single person he sees. Sample rhyme: "There is no escape, he holds your fate/As the death rate climbs to the fullest extent/One more town, slowly going down/This is the comming of endless torment"
"Bent Backwards And Broken" - A man (possibly a mob victim?) has every joint in his body forcibly pushed the wrong way! Sample rhyme: "Torque on the neck/Structure is wrecked/Amorphous blob/An end Macabre"
"They Deserve To Die" - Who are 'they'? Why, STUPID PEOPLE of course! Sample rhyme: "Brains spill out/The skull is split through/Mind vacant/Now cranium too!"
And there you have it! A perfect holiday gift for your very own wretched spawn.
(Note to parents: little kids love it when you call them jocular names like "wretched spawn" and "botched abortion attempt" and "sperm, egg and some undefinable rotten substance".)
Eaten - 9
Butchered - 8
Tomb - 7
Bleeding - 7
Vile - 8
Gallery - 7
Bloodthirst - 6
Gore - 6
Wretched - 9
Kill - 7
Since my opinion matters and all: I think that 'The Wretched Spawn' is probably their best release to date, at least out of the five or so albums I have. It has all of the classics: 'Frantic Disembowelment,' 'Decency Defied,' 'The Wretched Spawn,' 'Cyanide Assassin,' 'Blunt Force Castration,' 'They Deserve to Die.' It is almost everything that makes me, a 16-year-old female (I'm attractive, btw, and this email is actually just me trying to sell myself to you), love Cannibal Corpse... all in one album! 'Frantic Disembowelment' and 'Decency Defied' alone would give this album at least like 9 stars. Relevantly, I saw CC last week and I was kind of disappointed that they didn't play 'Decency Defied.' But I still saw them, and now I can die happy. I kind of thought it was gonna be scary after watching some of their youtube videos, but when you're up there in the very front and they're like two feet away, windmilling like crazy, it's really not too intimidating.
Also, I pretty much died laughing at your opening sentences. The little thing about your wife, and the Pixies. I even read that part to my mom. She laughed.
So, yeah, I'm gonna go read some more of your stuff now. I love the extreme diversity of your musical taste! I never thought I'd see Cannibal Corpse, Crass, and Eminem reviews on the same page! And that's just in one column! I also love how sometimes your ratings seem to be inversely related to the amount of praise that you shower upon the album (or the comparative lack of insulting comments, I guess I should say.) I guess it's just part of your charm. Yeah, I'm done kissing your ass now. I love you, baby; don't ever leave me. Plz reply with naked pics.
There is a point in many bands' life when you're tempted to ask, "Wait - is this even the same band anymore?" For Pink Floyd, it came with the firing of Richard Wright before The Final Cut. For The Ramones, it came with Dee Dee's resignation after Brain Drain. For Napalm Death, it came when they replaced the entire band between side one and side two of their first album. Well... I'm afraid to say it, but for Cannibal Corpse, that time is now.
Okay, it passed.
Nevertheless, that time a few seconds ago marked the point when founding guitarist Jack Owen said, "I'm sick of all your smelly, hairy asses" and left the band for parts unknown (his own project, Adrift). The surviving Corpses tried to keep it 'all in the family' by rehiring old The Bleeding/Vile guitarist Rob Barrett, but that doesn't mask the fact that the rhythm section is all that remains of the magical line-up responsible for Eaten Back To Life, Butchered At Birth and Tomb Of The Mutilated.
And it doesn't help that Kill is one of their most frustrating records yet. After kicking off with three mean-as-nails, fast-as-dirt instant speed/thrash/death classics, it suddenly retreats into an endless stream of negligible riffs buried under oppressive, irritating downbeats and blastbeats. Ugly dual-guitar harmonies are again trotted out to no positive end, slow passages drag every song out far past its deserved length, and the whole point of the record seems to be to annoy you to death.
The unexpectedly hypnotic trudger "Death Walking Terror" and delightfully chunky instrumental closer "Infinite Misery" provide brief respites from the skull-pounding, but it's not enough. It's never enough. I don't stand a chance to fill your sweet loving cup. Hi, I'm Micky Dolenz and those were some terrible lyrics I wrote for the terrible Monkees reunion album Justus. Other awful lyrics I penned for the terrible album include "You're dyin' of a broken heart/It really wasn't very smart/I lived through Nixon and a drug or two/Just to get your due" and "You wanna hit the big time, yeah you wanna strike it rich/I think you're gonna end up bakin' burgers for some bitch." For more of my abominable musings, visit http://www.myspace.com/144970278 for a guy pretending to be me!
This album is appropriate listening for children of all ages, as most of the songs are about a magical cow and his friends in the barnyard.
I don't know...Maybe I have too much personal bias/hatred towards death metal...Though I like some bands like Slayer, Nocturnus and Napalm Death (though I guess not much can be said for that band, seeing as I only like a few of their 90's albums). But even then, this band ranks high on my list of the biggest atrocities in the world of noise and music.
Don't get me wrong: These guys have incredible instrumental talent. I don't think people who call them off as 'shitheads with no talent whatsoever' really have bothered to actually listen to the band, because they really are technically adept with their instruments, and that shows on just about all their albums. I'm an aspiring drummer, and I would kill to be able to drum as well as any of those who drummed for Cannibal Corpse can/could. And sure, the band has had a history of writing some nice, mean riffs. But what these yo-yos seem to fail to realize (or maybe they do realize it and are really just playing as a cartoon metal band, which wouldn't surprise me given that all their lyrics are so excessively and obnoxiously disgusting and gut-wrenching (and since if they were actually serious about lyrics, they wouldn't write so many lyrics that seemed to be out there just to offend people and lure people into reading them because you can't understand a single syllable that Barnes is growling) that there's no way they could generally be taken seriously) is that instrumental talent and good riff-writing isn't everything. At least, that's my opinion. As far as I'm concerned, any group of stupid and pretentious jackasses with adept instrument-playing skills can mindlessly string together a bunch of different heavy, thrashy, 'kick-ass' segments of shredding death-metal riffs, blastbeats and a vocalist who sounds like a broken toilet with no real upstanding form of structure to it. But to give a song the proper ring and catch needed to bring it up to is a whole new level altogether.
I'm not saying that existential music is bad, either. I listen to a lot of ambient/noise and classic music, and a lot of music featured in those genres have no real structure, and simply go about through the motions. But that was different: With ambient/noise and classic music, there was a constant, composition-like flow to it. It didn't seem thrown together or abruptly switched about (at least not all of it), but rather it was rather like watching a beautiful flower slowly bloom, gradually progressing into completely different worlds and maybe even flowing back to previous ones. But with this Cannibal Corpse music, it feels like they're stubbornly FORCING themselves through an attempt at non-conformity. It sounds as if they're desperately trying to create structure out of non-structure, and the results are bland, annoying and unlistenable. It's like computerized trash being performed by robots, what with all of the abrupt tempo changes in a rhythmically disorganized song, the shit vocals (I don't care how much 'exceptional' vocal talent it takes to be able to growl like Cannibal Corpse's vocalist, it still sounds unbearably shitty), and the unnecessary hassle of constant plodding bursting into ridiculously fast thrashing with a bunch of random (though good) riffs...Which is even further blown to hell by the vocals, which often times don't even sound like they're in sync with the song, and that the instrument playing is just a background noise for listening to Corpsegrinder the Broken Toilet growl a bunch of nonsense (as if what he has to say was the least bit eloquent, important or to be taken seriously, even in the comedic sense). Even the few songs they've written that DO seem to have some structure in them fail because of this.
In my years, I've heard a lot of horrible, horrible music, most of which has been found in my all-time favorite genre: Metal. But this has got to take the cake. I think I'd rather listen to St. Anger, or The Great Southern Trendkill (which, interestingly enough, people seem to hail as the 'saviour' of metal). But this has got to take the cake.
Could Jerry Cantrell pull off the shredding riffs of ultimate technicality like Rob Barret? Doubtful. Could Tony Iommi pull off that of Pat O'Brien? Doubtful. Could Dave Mustaine hold a deep, gutteral toilet growl as consistently as George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher? Doubtful. Could Duff McKagan doodle the contorted spiral to hell and back again like Alex Webster? Doubtful. Could Lars Ulrich...Um...Well, sadly speaking (from the perspective of someone who has been very influenced by Lars in ways beyond just drumming for years now), Lars can't really even drum properly anymore. He has the ability to redeem himself through PRACTICING, but he doesn't practice. He hasn't in years, and thus, he has sucked at the drums since St. Anger. Still, even considering his talent on, say, the Justice album, he probably couldn't hold up to Paul Mazurkiewicz. But I'm still far more impressed in how bad Lars is nowadays than anything these morbid creeps have tried to do in their entire career as musicians.
In conclusion...Cannibal Corpse have a LOT of talent, more than a lot of people give them credit for. But they don't know how to use it.
And I'm a little surprised on how you seem to have no problem with the structure of Cannibal Corpse, in which you mention you have to listen to songs about 6 or 7 times before you get what's going on, yet you rag on albums such as GBH's Punk Junkies as stupid albums that sound like 'they were thrown together in a drunken fit of stupidity' in which 'nothing goes together'. Then again, I don't know how long it has been since you wrote those reviews, but still.
By the way, I listened to those GBH metal albums, and I've got to say that they are neat. Hell, they're the only GBH albums I even listen to anymore (though all of their albums are great in my opinion). Give them another chance, pwease?
Loved them.
And chuckled when reading this line :
"And I hope you appreciate this service I'm providing, because there's
no way in Hell you'll be able to understand any of the words on your
own. In fact, I literally laughed out loud my ass off rolling on the
floor in the middle of track three when I finally heard the very first
audible words on the album: "FUCK YOU!""
Funny, cause it's true. Along with "MAH-GOTS !", it's the only words I
recognize off the whole album.
I agree with the assesments, although I rate Eaten best, and all the
rest below. Tomb of the Mutilated is just far out, it's unlistenable.
In an interview with Terrorizer magazine, drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz stated his thoughts on the album saying: "yeah I mean it's not a bad album."
"Yeah," says a MEMBER OF THE BAND, "I mean it's not a bad album."
Really, what greater endorsement could you possibly need? If ONE OF THE FIVE PEOPLE WHO WROTE AND PLAYED ON THE RECORD insists that yeah he means it's not a bad album, I think we're all in agreeance that a Grammy can only be in the offing.
Evisceration Plague features 12 songs with titles like "Beheading & Burning," "Evidence In The Furnace," "Shatter Their Bones" and "Skewered From Ear To Eye." Each of these tracks features roughly 600,000 different parts, the least interesting of which seem to get the most air time. If a song begins with a killer sicko riff or speedball thrash attack, don't worry because it will either get slow and boring or turn into zero-momentum blastbeat bullshit within about 15 seconds. Tight and mean? Sure. Interesting? Only intermittently.
A mere 3 of these 12 songs 'work' for me all the way through: "Beheading And Burning" distinguishes itself by pitting slow note changes against high-speed drumbeats, "Scalding Hail" manages to stay fast for its entire 1:45 running time, and "Shatter Your Bones" sounds like they actually put effort into writing the Slayer-esque guitar lines. The rest of the record ranges from song-length compilations of unrelated passages to lengthy, draggy compositions so astonishingly unmemorable that it's difficult to understand why they bothered writing them.
There are definitely some great recurring bits here and there (the disturbed four chords that start off "Priests of Sodom," the chunka-chunka-chunka parts that sound like a guy hammering a body in "Evidence In The Furnace," the dark descending note riff that starts and ends "Skewered From Ear To Eye"), but it takes a patient metalhead to sit through all the forgettable downbeat thuggery that lies between them.
But yeah I mean it's not a bad album.
If you like SHIT!!!
That was stupid. Let me end the review better, by offering you a bunch of 'First Sentences For Your Novel.' I know a lot of you people are budding novelists who need help getting started, so here are some potential 'Opening Sentences' to get you cracking on your 'Great American Novel':
1. George couldn't believe his luck this morning, for the sun had exploded into a bunch of donuts.
2. Music's okay for some people, but Bob wasn't 'some people' and if he wanted to cram a jar of mayonnaise into his ear, that's exactly what he'd do.
3. Redmond, Washington was a sorrowful land of fallow, where nary a plant would grow and never a thing did come (aside from Microsoft).
4. "Tits!" he shouted at the nun, mistaking her for a naked woman.
5. "Call me," Ishmael -- now that's a great Blondie song, my Hebrew friend.
6. The dog walked forward, sneezed, checked his stock portfolio, ate a piece of poop and prepared for a long day at the sperm bank.
7. "Gift my Gallagher!" shouted the insane crazyman in his loony bin cell in Wackyville State Crazy House For Weeeooo-Weeeeooooos.
8. The first time Jane Sullivan saw the sunset, she was sitting on top of a cake shooting little balls of ice cream out of her vagina at a little kid's birthday party.
9. As the termites dug their needling teeth into his bones, he was all like, "Man, screw this."
10. The dictionary defines it as "The act of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally," but to the rest of us, it's simply "diarrhea."
That being said I might buy it for "Priests of Sodom" now that I have Ratzinger's approval.
HAHA.. pretty funny that someone who gives Simon and Garfunkel any light of day for review would actually take the time to listen to the sonic macabre that is Cannibal Corpse. I used to have a truckload of death metal as a young lad, but have since grown out of it.
I hate this band. You were right about all the different parts and having to
listen to every song like 6 times to know if its good or not. I remember the
first time I heard a Cannibal Corpse album (Butchered At Birth) I sat for
like 3 minutes trying to remember anything that happened in the beginning
songs. There is too much shit going on, and this is coming from a Dillinger
Escape Plan fan. But I guess this is a biased opinion since I only like 3
Brutal Death Metal bands: The Swedish supergroup Bloodbath, Egyptian
mythology band Nile, and Goatwhore ( PLEASE dont confuse them with Goatlord,
this is the guitarist band of the defunct Acid Bath sludge metal band, they
kind of sounded like Soundgarden and Pantera.) Okay, back to CC: I hate
them.
I never listened to these guys, I just had to congratulate you Pringle for being able to work Weird Al, Nomeansno and Myspace into a Cannibal Corpse review. I don’t know if these lyrics are more sick or just more stupid than most people can conceive. I seem to think that most people who listen to CC would be young white males who are into backyard wrestling. Ever see that movie The Backyard? Check it out, its really good.
Funny, this is my favourite CC album. I guess I prefer my death metal
catchy, with riffs & parts that are played more than once in the course of a
song. Actually, I don't care that much for CC generally, and don't listen to
them that often. I find the vocals more entertaining in Obituary, the riffs
sicker and the drumwork more powerful in Morbid Angel, the harmonies
catchier in Death, the lyrics funnier in Carcass.
I can't agree more on your review of this album. It seems that they
dumbed down their approach a little when it came to writing. I was a big fan
of the first few albums, but this one was a letdown. They still had the same
ferocity when it came to executing the songs, but something is indeed
missing.
This is probably the best of their Corpsegrinder era stuff, and one of my favorites along with Eaten and Butchered. Even more technical and more cool titles. Alex Webster shows he is still one of the most shredding bass players ever, and even though he was allegedly getting bored with death metal, Jack Owen (now in Deicide by the way) also contributes some good songs to his final record with Cannibal. P.S. I think Cannibal Corpse tunes to B or B flat. Or maybe both, varying depending on the song, but you might wanna check with someone closer to the band on that one. Anyway, 9/10 for the Wretched Spawn. Plus some copies come with a good DVD showing the human (?) side of the band in the studio as they craft their latest opus.
How do you know which album reviews to associate your emails with? This has confounded me for a while. And by 'for a while,' I mean for the past hour or so, ever since I accidentally stumbled upon your site while looking for Spock's Beard sheet music. Anyways, this is a reply to your review of 'The Wretched Spawn,' in case this saves you trouble!
I've always hated Cannibal Corpse since I first gave Eaten Back to Life a chance. I've never understood the whole hype with them.
Corpse reviews:
I seem to like all the wrong records! This kicks my derriere and I'm grateful for it. Has to be heard to be believed.
Its a testament to your humor that 8 of those 10 of those novel-beginning sentences made me laugh out loud, and that by the end of the list I had tears in my eyes. I think I'll start off my novel with #10.
I was thinking of picking this one up, until I thought, "Didn't Mark Prindle review this as well?" Strange, his was the first mediocre/negative review I could find. Makes me wonder since he's not directly selling cds or (I assume) giving a crap about promo discs, I somehow trust his opinion more. With all these newer music review blogs & websites it seems 8/10 is the new 5/10.
Cannibal Corpse product for children can be purchased here at The Children's Store