cannibal corpse

Biography

Cannibal Corpse formed from the ashes of three Buffalo-area death metal bands, Beyond Death (Webster, Owen), Leviathan (Barnes), and Tirant Sin (Barnes, Rusay, Mazurkiewicz). The band played their first show at Buffalo's River Rock Cafe in April 1989, shortly after recording a five-song demo tape. Within a year of that first gig, the band were signed to Metal Blade Records and their full-length, debut album, Eaten Back To Life, was released in August 1990.

Cannibal Corpse's music is known for its ferocious tempo and death grunt singing style. The band's lyrics and the imagery on their album covers are explicitly sexual and violent. Their albums were censored and banned in several countries, including Germany, where they were not allowed to play any song from one of their first three albums in concert, not allowed to play at all in the state of Bavaria, not allowed to display the original cover images (drawn by Vincent Locke), or print the lyrics in the CD booklets, etc. Like other death metal groups who have songs about rape, murder and necrophilia, Cannibal Corpse's lyrical content is often far from subtle.

Much like directors who helm campy zombie horror films, Cannibal Corpse prides itself on its graphic imagery as nothing more than an extreme form of over-the-top entertainment. As vocalist George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher comments in the music documentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey: "It's art, just look at it as art. Yeah, it's disgusting, ... but go to the Vatican and look at some of the art there. That's real, that's representing something that's real, that could happen. This [artwork], you know, that's never going to happen ... monsters aren't going to rip out of people's bodies anytime soon".

Fisher also stated his frustration in an interview regarding the censorship of live performances of certain songs, saying "We can play "Dismembered and Molested" in Germany but we cannot play "Born in a Casket". Which one sounds worse?" Song titles include "Entrails Ripped From a Virgin's Cunt", "Fucked with a Knife", "Meat Hook Sodomy", and "Necropedophile". In May 1995, then-Senator Bob Dole mentioned the band by name and accused them of violating "human decency". Cannibal Corpse also enjoyed a brief cameo in the 1994 Jim Carrey film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, performing their song "Hammer Smashed Face." (Carrey actually insisted that the band perform in the movie because they were his favorite band.)^[1]

In 1995, Chris Barnes departed from the band for musical differences (he is now the vocalist of Six Feet Under and Torture Killer) and was replaced with Monstrosity's vocalist George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, who is known for his record-long screams in songs such as "Devoured by Vermin" and "They Deserve to Die." Jack Owen left Cannibal Corpse in 2004 to spend more time on his second band, Adrift. He joined Deicide in late 2005. Jeremy Turner of Origin briefly replaced him as second guitarist on 2004's "Tour Of The Wretched". Recently Rob Barrett, a former member of Cannibal Corpse who appeared on the band's albums Vile and The Bleeding rejoined the band to play festivals in the Northwest United States and Europe. Rob officially left Malevolent Creation and joined Cannibal Corpse. Their latest album, Kill, was released March 21, 2006 on Metal Blade Records.

Discography

Studio releases

Live and other releases

Music videos

External links

• Official Site
• Record Label
• Worldwide Cannibal Corpse Fan Club

References

Footnotes