Cannibal Corpse - Alex Webster And George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher
Posted on October 23, 2007 at 3:41 pm by admin
So far, I think Cannibal Corpse measures up as the biggest band on my website. As always, the people at Metal Blade like my attention, as I do theirs, and my thanks goes out to Sarah, Kelli and Vince for putting some effort forth to get me hooked up with this interview. One person not mentioned is drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. Even though I didn’t interview him, he helped get things started. I should also mention that I believe this is the longest interview I’ve ever done, so be prepared for a long read!
Way Too Loud: You’ve got a long of songs in your discography. Do a lot of them fall by the wayside, never to be played again?
Alex Webster: Off of each new album there’s ten new songs, give or take a few, and we’re only going to be able to play a couple of them live because we have so many other albums. You can’t play everything, so we pick out the ones that work out the best live and that fans seem to be requesting the most. Some of them are easier to play well live, and others, we’ll choose the ones that are going to sound the most convincing live, and have the best live response. Some of them [the songs] never get played after they get recorded.
WTL: After Sounds Of The Underground, has anyone talked to you about doing any more support tours? I’d love to see that, where you scare the headliners!
Alex: We’ve had a little bit of interest from some people, but nothing has panned out yet to anything that we’ve been supporting since then. We’ve done a few festivals in Europe, but other than that, we’ve been headlining since that tour. It does seem to open up some doors though, because some people have been talking to us about doing some things, where before, it was hard to get anybody even to think about having us open for them.
It’s been tough. If you look at our tour history, very rarely have we done supporting tours. There’s probably been less than five tours where we were the support band, as opposed to being the headliner. Our first two tours that we did were headliners, so right off the bat we were headlining.
WTL: Is there any chance with Lamb Of God? The reason why I’m asking is because they opened up for you in… was it 2000?
Alex: 2001. Lamb Of God, Dimmu Borgir and The Haunted opened for us on a North American tour. I think except for The Haunted, all those bands are bigger than us now, which is cool by us, and we would be happy to open for any band that’s bigger than us, even if they haven’t been around for long, just because you want to introduce your music to new fans and all that.
Lamb Of God have asked about having us open for them, but the timing didn’t work out. They were a band that did ask about it. I think it would be great! I would love to open for those guys. We really appreciate that they’ve had us in mind, even though the scheduling didn’t work out in the past.
WTL: I think in just about every interview, I see you talk about every new country you’ve played in. Is that a really important thing on the agenda, to play in new countries as often as you can?
Alex: I like to do it. I think all the other guys like it too. It’s a lot of fun to just go to different places because you just don’t know what to expect. It’s exciting. It’s also something we like doing because people are going to be excited to see you if they’ve never seen you before, and that makes it even that much better for us, to have a crowd that’s really frothing at the mouth when you hit the stage. It’s not like they’ve been waiting three years to see you, they’ve been waiting pretty much since the band started, if some of them are older fans. We played Peru for the first time, El Salvador for the first time, Equador for the first time, and there were definitely some old school fans there that have been following the band for well over a decade that have never had a chance to see us before, so it’s a lot of fun. Same thing with Iceland. We got to play Iceland earlier in the year, and that was fun as well.
This year we’ve had at least those four countries that I listed. And Guatemala, we’ve never played there before, so that’s five countries that we’ve done this year that we’ve never done before. All of them were well worth the trip. Great shows.
WTL: From the appearance of things, metalcore seems to have helped out every kind of real metal there is. Do you guys think that you’ve benefitted from this?
Alex: Any kind of metal we support, even if we don’t necessarily listen to it a whole lot. A lot of the metalcore bands are pretty good. I think they have enough of an element of death metal to them that they’ve helped attract fans to the death metal scene. Like if you have metalcore bands occasionally doing a tour with a death metal band, it’s kind of a fan exchange, where the fans of one scene can learn about the music of another, and I think it’s positive because those fans wouldn’t have made death metal a first stop. It wouldn’t have been their first choice to check out death metal, but once they’ve had a chance to see a band like us like at Sound Of The Underground or whatever, it got them more interested in death metal.
If those bands didn’t exist, then Sounds Of The Underground probably wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t have done that tour, so we wouldn’t have had that chance. I definitely think that metalcore bands have probably opened some doors for the death metal scene, and maybe the black metal scene as well.
WTL: Horror movies seem to be gaining some interest in the current decade. Do you think even that’s got some fans onto Cannibal Corpse? It seems that now, people understand the connection between your band and horror movies.
Alex: Yeah, sure. This isn’t exactly an answer to the question, but something I’ve noticed, and I’ll insert it here. Horror movies are way more popular than death metal, and the gore metal variety, like what we do, or Exhumed, Severe Torture, or some band like that. The gory lyrics are probably not, as much as people say that’s what would keep us from being mainstream, like “death metal would never go into the mainstream because the lyrics are too gory”, I think it’s really the music, because violent entertainment is totally mainstream. Violent video games sell more than any death metal band ever will. Violent movies, like “Saw” and “Hostel” for example, those movies sell more than any death metal band probably ever will. I should never say never, because there are already bands that have blast beats that have made it into the top ten [editors note: while our North American readers might not have seen any bands with blast beats in the top ten in our area, there have already been bands in other countries with blast beats that have] you just never know. So far, I would say that violence in entertainment is totally mainstream, I mean totally, as mainstream as anything else. I don’t know why that is, you could probably write a whole book on it! It’s totally mainstream, so it should be no surprise that it’s also in music. I think the reason that people get so offended for it being in music, is because music is generally a medium where people are singing from their heart, and singing about the emotions that they feel, and this and that, and with death metal we’re not doing that, well, I mean we are sometimes, but the emotions are all aggressive emotions. The lyrics that we write don’t reflect the things that we want to do, or that we want anybody to do, that’s not what we’re trying to do at all. We’re just trying to make really brutal sounding stuff, and it’s got to have scary lyrics to go with it. The lyrics need to be as menacing as the music, I think. It’s not the same as well some regular guy writes a love song. We’re looking at it the way a horror movie is made. We are making horror music.
George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher: Love songs are to make money. That’s what their there for. Anybody that buys into some fucking dude singing a mushy love song, get the fuck out of here! They’re somebody trying to get into your pants! (Laughs) I’m not trying to kill people! We all get angry about certain things.
Alex: It’s good to have anger music as a release.
WTL: That makes me wonder about something. Do you think now, even death metal bands themselves are changing. I think it was a guy from Vile who said he liked the music, but even though he was playing it, he never liked the lyrics, and he really wanted to go in a more positive direction. It almost seems like there’s a couple, I guess it already has been done actually, death metal bands doing stuff that’s positive, and in a different direction.
Alex: I guess if you look at bands like Napalm Death, at one point those guys those guys sounded very much like a death metal band, and they still do have a lot of elements of death metal to their sound, even though most people would call them a grindcore band. Especially around “Harmony Corruption”, they sounded very similar to death metal on some of their riffs, but they always had lyrics that were political, and some of them were proudly positive lyrics. I’m not that familiar with their stuff, but I know none of it was gore. I think the music and the lyrics can be separate, but in our opinion, if you ask any of the members in the band, we’ve always felt that really dark and negative lyrics were the way to go for the kind of music we’re doing. It just seemed appropriate for the riffing style we have. The style of riffing is dark, aggressive and violent, and there’s nothing else that we felt would fit well. The music and the lyrics had to be match, and to us, the music was violent, so the lyrics had to be violent.
But if someone else wants to do it in a different way, that’s fine. There’s no rules in music. There might be some rules in death metal, on how you define it, and that’s ok, but in general, if someone wants to take some sounds from death metal and us it for something, and try and make positive lyrics on top of it, we’re not going to complain about that.
WTL: I haven’t had a chance to see you live yet, but I’ve heard that there’s been fans coming to your shows that sport a more contemporary fashion style, something that’s a slight bit more trendy, and some of them have connections to slightly more mainstream music. Some of your other fans don’t like that, and I’m wondering how you feel about that. Because of course you’re not going to tell people who like your music, and who paid to see you, and who want to buy your merch, and who want to support you, you’re not going to tell them to get out.
Alex: No, of course not! Anybody who comes in, if they look like their from a different scene, what that says to me is that they’re giving death metal a chance, like their giving it a listen. Chances are if they kept on going to shows again, and again, and again, they’d probably adopt a more death metal look. It’s like the old S.O.D. song, it’s not what’s on your head, referring to hair styles, it’s what’s in it, like united forces, right? We welcome anybody to check our music out, and of course we feel the closest connection to other full-on death metalheads, because that’s what’s we are. We’re full on death metal fans, so when we see some dude who’s full death metal, wearing a vest with patches, with death metal bands all over it, that’s somebody that we automatically know we have a lot in common with. We certainly welcome anybody from any style of music to come check out what we’re doing. It doesn’t matter how somebody dresses to me. But like I said, we feel more in common with full-on death metal fans, because that’s what we are, but everybody’s welcome.
Geroge: Some people feel, that somebody who is not a part of the scene, or who looks different that comes to shows, they feel that their… you know… Like most people would say “mall” kids or “mallcore” kids, or whatever you want to call them, they see those kids wearing their shirts, and they feel like the one band that hasn’t sold out, that hasn’t turned their back on their music is more popular, unfortunately they see that band as selling out. That’s not our fault at all. We don’t control who comes to our shows. We want everybody to come to our shows, we don’t care if it’s Joe Schmoe or some kid in a hospital. We have a very diverse audiences. I know that tonight we’ll have a diverse audience, and of course part of that is because we have a diverse bill, there’s bands that aren’t pure death metal on this bill, but some people feel like their little thing has been taken away.
It used to be Slayer - nobody knew who they were, now Slayer’s huge! People feel betrayed by that. To me, I’ve always thought that if you’re going to feel that way, then you should just listen to the band. If the band sounds like they’ve turned their back on you and you don’t like them anymore, that’s fine because everyone else likes them now.
What I would always say about bands that I liked that were getting bigger, I started seeing more kids wearing their shirts, and I’d think “They stink now!” But people feel like their little things been taken away. I used to try and get all my friends to listen to Kreator, because all my friends used to listen to Bon Jovi and all this crap, and I was like “Listen to this! Kreator!” Then a few of my friends would listen to it with me, and then more and more people started listening to it, and you want them to listen to it. Not me, but some people feel like their little things been taken away. You wanted everybody to love them - why don’t you like this, it’s the best thing ever? But when everybody else likes it, then it’s not the best thing ever.
We know a guy who likes only the bands first demo ever. “Only their first demo, the rest is shit!” (Laughs) C’mon, it’s like dude, what are you talking about? It’s ridiculous.
Alex: There’s definitely guys out there who want to like a band because sort of because nobody else knows about them, and they want to show of that “Hey, I know about this band, and you should listen to this band because they’re great!” but then once everybody does listen to that band, because they actually are great, the guys like “Oh well, they sold out. Now I have to listen to something else that nobody else knows about.” and then they basically go through all these bands until somebody else knows about them, and then stop liking them. It’s sort of an underground snobbery thing. We can’t take it too seriously! (Laughs)
George: An elitist mentality. I can be stupid.
Alex: And funny ! I would say there’s guys that get stuck!
George: If you looked in any one of our CD collections, you’d see bands that might surprise you. That doesn’t mean because we have a certain style of music, and we like one band in that genre that we’re die-hard fans of that. Most of the stuff you’ll see is death metal stuff, or old thrash metal, so that tells you what we’re fans of. If I have an Enya CD in my collection, it doesn’t mean I’m an alternative fan. I like that one CD. That happens. There are people who like us who maybe don’t have any other death metal band in their CD collection, or fans that like say, Dimmu Borgir or something, and they’re not particularly black metal fans, they just like what they do. It’s music, you know?
I mean, you can try and define things, and say this is death metal, no this is death metal, this is that, no it isn’t, you argue with your friends. In the end, there are people who like one band out of a certain genre, but that doesn’t particularly mean they’re a fan. Or maybe they will be? When we toured with the Misfits, all these punk rock kids came out, and of course all these old thrashers came out to see Anthrax, and didn’t even know who the fuck we were, you know? We probably scared a bunch of them, and I know for a fact that we came back around with Immolation, and a lot of those kids came to our shows. Now they’re not just getting to see us, they’re getting to see Immolation, who are gods as far as we’re concerned. I know we turned those kids on to death metal. Maybe now, they’re death metal kids, and it’d still be great too if they were listening to whatever they were listening to before. That’s the reason we do tours like this!
The Red Chord are going to bring in people that would never listen to us, and maybe we can turn them on to something new. Maybe they won’t become a die-hard death metal fan, but maybe they’ll get into us and a couple other bands, or give it a chance at least. Buy our record! Just give it a chance!
WTL: It’s pretty cool that you see both sides of the coin there!
Now, you’re not known for experimentation, but every now and then something different will sneak in, like the odd instrumental. There’s one song that stands out to me, “Festering In The Crypt”, because there was a weird melody/harmony thing going on where there’d normally be a guitar solo. I’m just wondering if we can expect anything with any experiments in the future, like say, solos traded off a dozen times, an eight minute song, or maybe a concept album with a single gory concept. Those are just examples I’m using, there could be something I don’t see coming at all.
Alex: It’s hard to tell what we’ll wind up doing. I think that we’re always open to try different things. There’s probably been a little bit of experimenting on every album in little bits and ways that might not be obvious to the listener, but it’s obvious to us. We’ll try something different on one song or another, maybe it might be a different scale, or a different type of arrangement, or something like that. But yeah, we’re open to try different things as long as, well, we’ve kind of drawn guidelines for ourselves on what we think death metal should be, and what we think Cannibal Corpses music should sound like, and we want to stay within those guidelines, but there’s a lot of room within that. As long as the music is dark and aggressive and evil sounding, we’re willing to play with it in that range, and see what we can make out of it, and how interesting we can make things. So on the next record, there maybe some stuff that might surprise some people, or maybe they won’t be surprised. Regardless, it’ll be heavy, brutal death metal, we’ll just see if we can surprise people while remaining heavy, brutal death metal.
WTL: I’m wondering about the next Hate Eternal album…
Alex: Oh that? I did bass on that, but I’m not going to be able to tour with them. We actually just talked about it the other day, and it’s just not going to work out. I mean, Cannibal Corpse is my full-time band, and it is a full time job. We don’t take time off from Cannibal Corpse. When I get home, I’ll start writing new material almost immediately, and we’ll start practicing maybe a month after this tour, maybe two months at the most, and we want to record by next summer. In order to do that and have a really great album, it has to be my main focus.
But yeah, I did have some time to work on the next Hate Eternal, and I really tried to write the best bass parts I could for it, and make it really interesting.
WTL: So you made some writing contributions?
Alex: Just on the bass parts. The songs were all written by Shaune and Erik, the guitar players in Hate Eternal. Mostly Erik actually.
WTL: So they gave you free reign on the bass parts?
Alex: Yeah. They were just like “just write what you want”. I learned the guitar parts, and I wrote a bunch of bass parts, and some of them I changed, and then Erik also wrote some of the bass parts for me, and then I just played them. I tried to do my best to keep it interesting contribution. I mean, I don’t consider it writing to just improvise some little bass parts here and there on the record. The songs are theirs, I just tried to put some cool bass stuff on top. I think it’ll sound really great. They came up with some awesome material. Those guys are awesome, and it was a really honor to work with them, and I hope that my bass playing on the record helps make it a better record. That’s why I wanted to do it. Eriks my friend, and so are the other guys in the band. I really wanted to do a good job for them.
WTL: One thing I was really wondering about, Hate Eternals really focused on the dual vocals. Do you have any idea what’s going to happen with that?
Alex: Shaune, their rhythm guitarist, well actually he’ll probably be doing leads too. Shaune Kelley, back in the Ripping Corpse days, when Eirk and Shaune were in the band together, Erik and Shaune both did backing vocals. I never asked him about it, but maybe that’s why Hate Eternal maybe has a leftover influence from Ripping Corpse, which by the way you should check out! “Dreaming With The Dead” is one of the all-time classic of death metal, but a lot of people don’t really know about it because it wasn’t on a label that had very good distribution. I think it might be re-released soon. Shaunes probably quite capable of doing the backing parts and vocals that the old bass player used to do, and maybe when they get another bass player for touring, maybe he’ll do that too, but I’m pretty sure Shaune will do it. You’re better off asking Erik Hate Eternal questions, I don’t want to step on his toes or anything! I’m not official in the band, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it’ll work.
WTL: I think you covered your tracks well there! I guess that makes Paths Of Possession a band that may never tour.
Geroge: I don’t know. For me, it’s more just, we had time off, and I want to spend time with my family, but we’ll see. I’ve talked the bass player, Randy about it. It’s possible, but nothing really extensive, you know? I we can work a tour in, maybe something small in Europe or something. Right now, I’ve been touring so much with Cannibal Corpse, I don’t want to come off this tour and start doing a bunch of tours next year, and then when Cannibal Corpse starts touring again, there’s no break! That’s just too much! I would say we’re planning to do something, but it’s not going to be five tours or anything close to the scale of Cannibal Corpse. We’ll be doing an album next year too, so obviously there has to be room for that. Maybe something. We’re going to try, but it’s not going to be for awhile, because I don’t even want to hear the word fucking “tour” once we get back. Once we’re done this show, we get three days off, and then we’re going to do four shows in Brazil. I know you’ve got to plan a tour months ahead, but I don’t even want to hear the word tour for a little bit after we’re done. We’ve talked about it, we’ll see what happens. Their new album is coming out next month, so it’s just a matter of working something out that works for me, for them, and around Cannibal Corpse.
WTL: Did you make writing contributions for the lyrics for Paths Of Possession?
Alex: This one [“The End Of The Hour”] is a concept. Randy did most of it since I was with Cannibal Corpse. I did stuff on the last album, “Promises In Blood”, but we were home, but Randy wrote everything for this one. It’s a whole goofy crazy story. There’s a cover of a band called Cancer Slug [editors note: It was slightly hard to hear, so the band name may not be correct] they’re from Alabama. Most of what I did was arrange things in the studio, like re-arranging how a song went, because I didn’t practice with them once for the new album. We’d be out on tour while they were writing, and Randy would e-mail me some of the lyrics to practice. I’d listen to some things and tweak it here and there. We’re on the road for weeks, so I’m not going to practice with them. I barely practice with Cannibal Corpse! (Laughs) Besides, I have two daughters, and when I get home, I don’t have anybody watching them when my wife’s out working.
WTL: I was wondering about your vocals. You’re really known for really pronouncing your words, using proper diction, there’s a really long scream in one song, 14 seconds. I guess the perfect way to describe you is clear, extremely clear. Was that just lots and lots of practice, or any lessons at all?
George: I’ve never had any kind of lessons for singing, just doing it in my room. It’s mainly from Kreator and Chuck Schuldiner who taught me, but not directly. I’ve never heard of anybody singing death metal who took lessons, because I don’t think there are..
WTL: There is actually somebody -
George: Yeah, I’ve already done three interviews with this, and if it was that fucking easy, everybody would be doing it who wanted to do it. A lot of people tell me they sing for half an hour and can’t talk after that. You can hear how I sound and I do this for a living. I don’t want to sit here, and make… Here’s what I should do, I should get this DVD, or tape, or whatever the hell it is from this woman, and listen to it and see what she’s saying. I will say this, it seems like come on, give me a break. I mean, all these years of doing this, and now this one person in a year or two of research can fucking mimic anybody they want, or do this, or do that. I’m not exactly sure what the thing consists of, and that’s why I should just get it, and then I can probably answer this question without being, you know, an uninformed jerk and bashing somebody. This is all I have, is my voice, and then someone comes in and says here’s how to do it, like I’m a fucking shyster? You know what I mean? I didn’t work to get this way? Give me a fucking break.
As far as pronouncing stuff, I always listened to Slayer, and bands that sang fast, even S.O.D., he was singing really fast, but clear. They weren’t singing brutal, like in death metal. It is harder to understand a lot of death metal singers, because some of the styles and how they do it, and I always wanted to mix that. I always felt that. Like “Necrophobic” from Slayer, I always used to go into my room and sing it deep. That was a good song for me to practice pronouncing things and speed singing. Some people think that if it’s too clear, it’s not a brutal, but I’m not sacrificing any of that. I would rather it sound deep and heavy, or brutal and attacking that words I pronounce. That’s what the lyric sheets are for! I think I somehow accomplish both. Some people can understand more of what I say without a lyric sheet, and I’m proud of that, you know? It’s mostly that I listened to a lot of bands that sang fast, so if kids ask me, I say listen to this, or listen to that, and listen to what we’re doing, and just keep doing it. It’s hard because we have some parts. “Disposal Of The Body”, the guy in the studio was just laughing because of “under tons of concrete”, I can’t even say it fast like this! But I did it singing death metal. He always used to tell me that he couldn’t believe how I nailed it. It’s just years of doing it. There’s been lots of people that were doing it before me, and I wanted to do it brutal.
I don’t know who this lady is though. I’ve been doing a lot of interviews where people will tell me there’s this tape out, but I don’t hear everybody all of the sudden becoming death metal masters out of the blue. I mean, I don’t know what it’s about. It’s more breathing techniques or something.
WTL: What she does it work with professionals on their voice. She also said that the people that’s she’s worked with in unsigned bands haven’t gone anywhere.
George: Like singing though? Because there are no notes in this.
WTL: She did say that the screaming style has no pitch. I think there’s some things that you do that real singers need to do that people really forget, because I’ve heard real singers who can stay on key, but they can’t stay on time or pronounce their words, and that’s not worth much.
George: Timings a big deal. When someone’s out of time, anybody that hears it is going to know. It just sounds like mush. I’ve seen bands where I know when somebody is off. More so with the vocals and the drums, I can tell that as well because I’ve followed drums my whole life. For timing, it can be hard when you’re banging your head the whole time. We do have a lot of stuff that’s in 4/4, but it’s not simple. You’ve got to pay attention to what you’re doing. I’m still banging my head, but I’m counting the whole time, and then you’ve got people diving around you, and all this stuff going on around you the whole time. It is a challenge. I’m not saying it’s the hardest thing in the world to do, I just get annoyed when it’s made out to be easy, or at least what I’ve heard from people about this DVD.
WTL: I’ve seen a little bit of it, and I hope the interpretation that she’s giving off isn’t that it’s just easy.
George: I have to get it, because it’s important for me to talk about it. Maybe she’s the coolest person in the world, and she’s trying to do something that no one else has really tackled. Anyone can have an instructional tape teaching people how to sing using notes and whatnot. It’s just not like this. There are no teachers for this. I could never teach anybody how to do this. I just do it! All the stuff I learned, I learned from Chuck Schuldiner, from all the low screams to the high screams. Rob Urbinati from Sacrifice, I have to mention him too, a really influential band from Canada. They’re awesome, and those two guys I always used to try and emulate, and I used to play a board like it was a guitar! All the guys I learned to sing from always played instruments. Glenn Bention, Tom Araya, Schmier from Destruction, Mille [from Kreator], all of them played instruments. That’s why some guys cup the mic, and I never did that, because I never got that concept of covering the mike.
WTL: Some people consider cupping the mike cheating.
George: It’s been like that for me for a long time. I’ve never done it, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on when they’re doing it, if it helps to elevate your voice level. It does alter your voice. It distorts it a little bit I think. For years I never did it, and I was like “Whatever, fucking mike cuppers…” If you listen to Ross from Immolation, when he’s playing, you listen to Will from Mortician when he’s playing, they’re as deep as anybody out there, and as awesome as anybody out there. I know right now it seems like I’m making fun of anyone who ever cupped the mike, and I don’t know. I know people that do it, and I’m not trying to say that’s it’s junk totally, but I would tell anyone if there was any real advice, that would definitely be it. To me, it’s more legitimate when your singing. There’s no board of effects, there’s nothing going on at the sound board, it’s just you and the microphone, that’s what people should hear. Obviously it’s not you normally. If you listen to Ross he talks normal, when I talk it sounds like I chew glass. (Laughs)
WTL: That’s your normal voice though!
George: Yeah! Well, there’s been a little cough going around, so I’ve had a bit of that, so it’s probably a little more strained sounding than normal, but pretty much I sound like shit normally. If I’m in perfect health, and I’m home, and say we’re videotaping something with the girls, and I listen back, I’m like “Whoa! I sound like that?” I’m surprised the girls don’t run away from me! It’s terrible to me. People think when they do interviews with me over the phone that I’m sick, but I’m in perfect health. “Did you just wake up?” “No!” “Are you sick” “No!”
WTL: Is there a band that you’d like to tour with that’s feasible, but not obvious?
Alex: That’s hard to tell… Something obvious would be Slayer, and we’ve said Slayer lots of times before because we’d love to tour with Slayer. I always thought it would be cool if we toured with The Exploited. That “Beat The Bastards” album was really metal sounding, but they were still punk. That would be a good mix.
WTL: Wow, that’s pretty far off! I was expecting a band metal related, but they’re just a little related. That’s pretty cool.
Alex: You’d be surprised actually if you heard the recent albums from The Exploited. Anything recent for those guys is anything in the past ten or twelve years. Back in 1996, that “Beat The Bastards” album had a lot of metal sounding riffs, a cool mix of extreme music.
George: I want to say the Misfits, but we already toured with them! (Laughs) That ones always a possibility because I always kept in touch with Jerry.
WTL: Is there anyone you don’t know personally? I always think it’s cool for people to expand their minds, because someone could be reading this interview who likes another band that you mentioned, and due to that, they’ll give Cannibal Corpse a try.
George: There’s plenty of bands. We would tour with anybody. I know that Jonathan Davis from Korn wears our shirts a lot, and he’s come to a bunch of shows, and we’ve met him and hung out with him. Obviously that would be incredibly huge if that ever happened, to tour with them, and I think we’re pretty far away from them musically. They’re pretty heavy sounding, but otherwise, they’re out there… I don’t know.
WTL: It’s interesting that you mentioned that, because they did this one show with Kult Of Azazel in New Zealand.
George: Our old drum tech is their drummer. “The Hammer”!
Alex: Kult Of Azazel in New Zealand? But there’s Dawn Of Azazel in New Zealand…
George: I was going to say! What the heck are they doing out there? (Laughs)
WTL: Sorry about that! The names are so close!
George: We know Kult Of Azazels drummer very well. But yeah, I’m not saying in any way that would ever happen, but I think we’d be open to that. Really, we’d tour with anybody, but the obvious one would be Slayer for us. That would be the “dream tour” if you will.
WTL: I’m thinking that’s getting a lot closer to being a possibility, because they had a show where Cephalic Carnage opened up for them.
George: That’s cool. I think a tour with us and Slayer would be very beneficial to both of us. And it would be awesome just to watch Slayer every night. That’s the obvious one, and I think just about any band would tell you that. Who would you like to tour with? I think just about any band would say Slayer. It’s fucking Slayer man!
WTL: You from Buffalo, but living in Florida now. Is there a little piece of Alex still left in Buffalo?
Alex: Sure. Buffalo is always where we’re going to be from. Nothing’s going to change that, it’s where we came from. We go back and visit from time to time. We’ve got some time off, since Cleveland is on Sunday, then we have Monday off, then Rochester, so that’s perfect to stop at Buffalo. Tampa is an awesome place to be, but to me, it’s always felt like an extended vacation. Then again, I don’t have any plans to return to Buffalo to live, I wouldn’t want to. We’ve made a lot of good friends there. The food there is the best in the world. Cannibal Corpse is a Buffalo death metal band.
WTL: Actually, the band, you and Paul are, what about the other guys?
Alex: Rob’s from buffalo too.
George: I’m Baltimore, Maryland.
Alex: Pats from Cincinnati.
George: He’s from Kentucky! He’ll tall you Cincinnati, but he’s from Kentucky!
Alex: Well, it’s just right over the border.
George: Maryland isn’t a big state, and I’m kind of happy enough from being there, instead of a big state like California or something. No offense to anybody from California! It’s kind of cool to be from the charm city. [editor’s note: It was difficult to hear, so I could be mistaken about what I was guessing was the nickname of a certain city] It’s a small city, cool place. It’s been kind of rough lately.
WTL: Do you still do small shows?
George: We’ve done smaller shows where the crowds right in front of you, and that’s always cool. They’re usually the ones that are always hot as fuck! You’re gasping for air, but their fun. We play bigger shows where the crowds far away from the barriers and whatnot, and they’re just not as personal. We’ve done a lot of shows where we didn’t think it was going to happen because the club was so small. I think it was Flagstaff, where there was no stage. I was almost holding kids back by myself! But in the end, they’re probably some of the best shows we do, just because the interaction is right there. It’s much more brutal. It’s what the underground’s all about! For sure! It’s good to play big halls and stuff to feed your ego, but small venues, with like 400 kids who are right there. We still play them.
WTL: Do you try and throw those in when planning tours?
George: We don’t really pick out a place because it’s small, it just happens to b what’s booked. We will always try our damndest to do a show, to finish a show, or get the show going no matter what the conditions are, like if a P.A.s dead. If there’s any way at all to do it, we will do it. We’ve played in some places where it was cramped, and we just made it work, we just up there and fucking do it. I can’t remember cancelling many shows because things weren’t up to standards, if you will. We’ve made those shows happen, and we’re proud of that. I’ve missed a show once because I had a viral infection. People have missed shows for various reasons, it’s not like that’s even been a lot, but we still play. If I had a broken arm, I’d still try and find a way to play. I can still sing! If my arms broken, I can still put it in a cast and headbang! The show in Flagstaff [Arizona] though, we were sitting outside wondering if the show was going to happen, then the fans showed up outside shouting “Cannibal” so loud we could hear it in the bus. It reminds us hy we’re doing a show. That’s the reason why, and we did it. It was crazy! There was a lot of crazy stuff going on, people almost smashing into us because there’s no stage whatsoever, just on the fucking floor, which sucks for some other people that couldn’t see the show, but we did it, and it was great! It’s one of the shows you remember. Usually those are the ones that always stand out the most, the crazy 200, 300 person places. That venue looked like a room with a bar next to it! Like a jam space really, is what the place was. The kids tried to be as respectful as they could with a pit going on, and for the most part people did a good job of staying out of the way so we could play, still slamming and headbanging. It was great!
The Official Cannibal Corpse Website
Cannibal Corpse at MySpace
Cannibal Corpse at Metal Blade
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