Cannibal Corpse – Chaos Horrific Review

[Cover art by Vince Locke, of course]

Few bands can claim to have the type of impeccable track record as that of Cannibal Corpse, who for over three decades may never have written even a single bad song, and they surely haven’t put out a full record even approaching mediocre. To achieve this consistency, somewhat ironically, the band has required a fair amount of change over the years. The band leading rhythm section of bassist Alex Webster and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz have never been afraid to force shifts, most famously by trading up from Chris Barnes to George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher on vocals, and most recently with the addition of scene legend (and frequent Corpse producer) Erik Rutan on guitar after Pat O’Brien went a little too Florida Man for their liking.

The result of the latter was 2021’s Violence Unimagined, one of Corpse’s downright heaviest records and an absolute beast as a whole. Corpse never fails, but such albums prove that when they inject some new blood and find that extra level of oomph they can still deliver some of the best death metal on the planet.

Release date: September 22, 2023. Label: Metal Blade Records.
So why start a Cannibal Corpse review with a discussion of change when Chaos Horrific features no lineup changes? Because album number two of the Webster-Mazurkiewicz-Fisher-Rutan-Rob Barrett era still sees them in a bit of a transitional mode. The extra signs of Rutan’s presence (muscle-twitch riffs and harmonized leads) and touches of oddball proginess show that the band might still be feeling out exactly what form they’ll take with a still-fresh lineup (in a not dissimilar with to how Gallery of Suicide fit into the early Corpsegrinder years). Does it also have that extra level of oomph? Well, not to the same extent as Violence Unimagined, no, but considering it in any way a disappointment would be a mistake, because it handily maintains the band’s flawless win streak.

Chaos Horrific can be direct and catchy or it can get kind of noodly and techy, often within the same tune, to which you might say, “Hello, yes, this is a Cannibal Corpse album,” and you’d be right, but that approach really seems to hit a ton of this record. The title track, for example, kicks off with what sounds like pretty straightforward death/thrash but gets tricky with the rhythms and time signature during the first verse, changes things up big time for the second verse, and then brings back the wonkines for the solo accompaniment. In short: it keeps you on your toes. Ditto a track like “Vengeful Invasion,” which starts out with riff patterns that could most conveniently be described as “Very New Jersey” (bouncy and sassy) but before long is doing a wicked fun transition from the pep to some bonkers heft and then a touch of tech spliced into the beef. Very fun, quite heavy, and kinda wonky.

As for that heft… similarly to Violence Unimagined, there’s A LOT. “Frenzied Feeding” kicks off being another of the album’s buzzier, busier passages, with Corpsegrinder often in rapidfire mode. When it gets heavy, oh lordy does it get HEAVY. The Slow Part arrives and lets Fisher really get mean as he bellows out lines like “Preparing the feast for the bloodthirsty brood!” The man’s massive voice sounds as good as ever, somehow, whether he’s in full deep growl or doing those signature screams. “Blood Blind” is another tune where a pure dedication to being as heavy as humanly possible aids the band’s legendary frontman, with the fade in approach for “Subjugate, subjugate, subjugate!” really hitting the spot over the burly guitars.

Elsewhere, Corpse combines their brutal thickness with some serious tension, the latter almost surely provided by Rutan. His harmonized leads, which sound right out of a Hate Eternal song, provide some manic melody, but several passages also use the second guitar to maintain some suspense in the background. Closer “Drain You Empty” feels particularly penned (or at least influenced) by Rutan, with the chorus riff pattern really sounding as if it was delivered by his twitchy rhythm right hand and the touches of tense mood also showing a lot of similarity to Hate Eternal. They’re all fun additions that never feel out of place, and fans of Rutan’s primary band will surely get an extra kick of hearing these sounds in the Corpse setting.

It’s kinda preposterous that Cannibal Corpse has maintained such a consistent level of quality over all this time, with Chaos Horrific being their 16th (obligatory !!!) album. Sure, some albums are better than others, and some are clearly better than this one, but their floor remains in the 99th percentile of death metal greatness. Chaos Horrific feels both deep and direct, and yet it also feels a little transitional, with Rutan’s influences seeping more into the rest of the sound and a general (albeit mild) sense of feeling it out. In a few years, when the band delivers yet another quality platter of splatter, Chaos Horrific will end up being what 15 albums were before it: yet another great entry in the peerless catalog of one of the all-time greats.

Posted by Zach Duvall

Last Rites Co-Owner; Senior Editor; Obnoxious overuser of baseball metaphors.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.