A Devil’s Dozen – Cannibal Corpse

Simply put, Cannibal Corpse is one of the greatest death metal bands ever. Period. End of story. They may not be on your personal Mount Rushmore of the best, but discussing the genre’s history and not bringing up the Tampa-by-way-of-Buffalo quintet would be asinine. With their 1990 debut Eaten Back To Life, they had clearly been drunk-binging Scream Bloody Gore for three years and realized there was no need for metal to be anything more. They hunkered down and, despite a significant amount of band turnover outside of founding members Alex Webster (bass) and Paul Mazurkiewicz (drums), Cannibal Corpse has perfected and re-perfected the art of being the Jason Voorhees-indebted version of AC/DC. Eaten Back To Life is certainly quite different from Chaos Horrific, but ultimately, the blueprint was set and the focus has been on developing interesting ways to murder the listener with all the same tools over and over again. The level of technicality has escalated over the years, but Cannibal Corpse knows what they’re about and adheres to the keep-it-simple-stupid mentality when it comes to pursuing new ideas.

Turnover is more often than not an Achilles’ heel for bands that leads to a downfall or at least inconsistent quality across a discography. Somehow, these gore fiends have managed to take every exit and turn it into an upgrade across 16 albums. After three releases of some of the most depraved tunes available at the time, guitarist Bob Rusay leaves? No problem, Rob Barrett can come in to help them craft one of their most approachable and commercially successful albums in The Bleeding that yielded live staples still played at every show today. Rob’s not feeling it after two albums? Take a break, my friend, we’ll just bring in Pat O’Brien to significantly push the band’s technical chops. Guitarist Jack Owen is burned out and decides to light a fresh fire under Deicide’s flame-licked butt with The Stench Of Redemption, enjoy yourself; we’ll bring Barrett back because he’s smart enough to know when he’s made a mistake and is ready to create some of the best hooks the band has ever written while igniting their strongest run of albums to date. O’Brien experiences a mental crisis? That’s unfortunate, but luckily, our go-to producer and long-time pal Erik Rutan has worked with roughly half of the entirety of death metal while playing with Morbid Angel, Ripping Corpse, and Hate Eternal. I guess he might be alright as a full-time member.

The most obvious change, of course, happened when Cannibal Corpse parted ways with original vocalist Chris Barnes in 1995. Barnes had been one of the originators of the super-guttural vocals that would become standard for the genre, had penned what remain some of the gnarliest lyrics in the game and had established himself as the face of the band. To replace someone of that caliber is no small feat. Rather than find the next best grunter, however, the mad lads poached George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher from Monstrosity in what would be their strongest move. Fisher’s speed, clarity, and more varied approach to vocals opened the door for the band to create more complicated songs and riffs while ratcheting up the intensity tenfold. It also doesn’t hurt that Corpsegrinder helps them beat the real-world murderer allegations by being the most likable dad in death metal whose obsession with claw machines is nothing but charming.

Barnes deserves a lot of credit for creating the horror vignette path the band would stick to even today, but by turning over lyrics to the wider band, they’ve wisely moved away from his sometimes dubiously misogynistic approach. That has also created a much greater variety of topics and allowed the band to lean into the absurd, such as using the heads of dead victims to clobber the next one to death (“Severed Head Stoning”) or even endeavor to let men get their comeuppance on occasion with tracks like “Blunt Force Castration.” Sure, a song’s victim will still be female from time to time, but more often than not, those being killed in bizarre and absurd ways are genderless, or a song simply focuses on some sort of evil entity. More tracks about burying people wrapped in someone else’s flesh (“Cerements Of The Flayed”), the general decomposition process (“Dormant Bodies Bursting”), or having back problems (“The Spinesplitter”), please!

The other vital rarity that has helped Cannibal Corpse stand out among their peers is the striking visuals they’ve gotten from artist Vincent Locke. These two have the perfect symbiotic relationship not unlike that once shared by Derek Riggs and Iron Maiden. There’s no chance Cannibal Corpse reaches the heights they have without covers like the ones from the first three records, grabbing the attention of nervous teenage metalheads in the record bin and convincing them to make a buy without having heard a note. Similarly, I can’t imagine Locke has even close to the recognition or career he’s had without getting the steady work of album covers every few years and an endless slew of t-shirt designs for all the years in between. A skeleton ripping its own guts out, a weird fish monster bursting out of a pregnant lady, zombie doctors surrounded by dangling babies and so much more epitomize death metal as a visual art form.

Ultimately, the 13 songs chosen below are going to fall short for you. It’s not because the ones selected aren’t deserving of their spot, but simply because reducing a discography that boasts nearly 200 original songs to 13 is a silly endeavor. With that many songs, every fan will have different favorites and even getting our small team aligned was no easy task. With 16 albums under their belt, we can’t even give each one its proper due. So, dear reader, we hope you enjoy what you read and that this may inspire you to binge one of the best discographies in death metal just so you can tell us how wrong we are. Hit play, get hammered and try not to smash your face! [SPENCER HOTZ]

THE TIME TO KILL IS NOW

[Kill, 2006]

KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!

Two minutes and three seconds. That’s all it takes for Cannibal Corpse to make an absolutely perfect mission statement on Kill. It’s possibly the most devastating and relentless song on a particularly devastating and relentless album, even by the very devastating and relentless standards of this band. Everything about this song wants to see you dead and flattened. The riffs are either buzzing technicality or brutal heft. The solo is a blur of maniacal shred. The tempo and drive are determined.

But this is Corpsegrinder’s show.

TIME TO GEORGE IS NOW
TIME TO GEORGE IS NOW

His rapid fire, unyielding delivery is the stuff of which legends are made, even for a dude that was already several albums into a very Death Metal Hall of Fame career. This is the type of shit that young headbangers absolutely dare their friends to try and laugh hysterically when they fumble over lyrics just three lines in. It’s as if the technical wizards playing instruments in Cannibal Corpse are working to keep up with their vocalist, as opposed to the other way around, and it’s all within the album’s very brief opener. The forty minutes and five seconds that follow this lightspeed bulldozer of a song all destroy, but their lethality is inexorably shaped by the bludgeoning the listener receives at the hands of this, one of the most perfect openers in death metal history.

THETIMETOKILLISMOTHERFUCKINGNOW

You are dead. Enjoy Kill, you pile of hammered viscera. [ZACH DUVALL]

DECENCY DEFIED

[The Wretched Spawn, 2004]

Sure, it’s all “Decency Defied” until someone wants to write about “Stripped, Raped and Strangled,” but here we are. Still, the former highlights latter-era Cannibal’s ability to whip the hooks deep into the flesh and let them fester. It’s got to be one of the most infectious songs in death metal: It just does everything right to make it stick in the skull.

It’s so fucking stupid anyone with half a brain left after getting sideswiped in the noggin by a snowplow could pick up on its cues, but that’s exactly why its brilliant. It’s still got the Cannibal chops of the latter era in the chunks of meat that slap across the face, but Corpsegrinder’s vocal delivery makes it work on an almost primal and instinctual level. I can still remember the first time I heard the song, and felt like I knew the (surprisingly decipherable) words as I was hearing them. Its pulverizing mid-pace almost betrays its intensity, and, even lyrical content aside, it’s still one hell of a brutal tune for how catchy it is.

The little breaks and chops and shifts that betray latter Cannibal’s desire for technical proclivities stand little chance in the way of getting “Decency Defied” getting stuck in your head for a week. It works because they aren’t dumbing themselves down. It sounds like they’re still writing material that is fun and challenging for them to play together as a group–fact is, they’re dumbing you down. [RYAN TYSINGER]

DEVOURED BY VERMIN

[Vile, 1996]

Did you think we weren’t going to include the song that acted as Corpsegrinder’s introduction to the Corpse faithful? Fans knew Barnes was out but had received no information or sample of what the new guy sounded like. It seemed like a safe bet they would try to get someone who would match Barnes, but boy howdy, did this song immediately dispel that notion.

Four quick, solitary hits of the drum and an unholy, piercing scream kicks in unlike anything Barnes could ever be even remotely capable of. It’s also not the only one, as he unleashes a pained shriek later on before a hideous couple of leads. Every element of the song sounds like they put something from Butchered At Birth on fast-forward. They had moved on from the radio-format structures and approachability of The Bleeding and made everything more ravenous. You still couldn’t understand most of what was being said, but that wasn’t because it was unintelligible Cookie Monsterisms; it was flying at your brain too fast to process.

That speed was also already hinting at the increase in technicality the band would be leaning into now that Corpsegrinder had unlocked a new gear. Granted, the slowed break about halfway through the song is so much more brutal because of how unhinged everything else was before it. They simply could not have chosen a better song to announce the new era of Cannibal Corpse in 1996. [SPENCER HOTZ]

SCOURGE OF IRON

[Torture, 2012]

Back in the day, I used to watch this VH1 show simply deemed Classic Albums. One episode I remember vividly centered on Metallica’s self-titled, affectionately known as The Black Album. One interviewee described “Sad but True” as music for “pulling out your teeth.” The anecdote was used to recall a moment when they were prepared to undergo a dental procedure, and just as the anesthesiologist placed the IV into their arm, they heard the main riff from the song ringing in the background. Of course, this is a loving nod to the iconic brooding tune—often regarded as the first ‘Tallica song tuned a whole step down.

If “Sad but True” is music for extracting teeth, Cannibal Corpse’s “Scourge of Iron” is music for amputating limbs. From the moment that tremolo riff kicks in over Paul’s rolling work behind the kit to launch the near-five-minutes of absolute mid-paced death metal greatness, it was evident the song was made for the stage—both anthemic and true to what makes them the most iconic death metal band of all time. Cannibal Corpse has always had this phenomenal ability to intertwine heaviness and catchiness. Here, the riffs are grooving, George’s vocals are devastating and simply sound like a battle cry on a march into the depths of hell.

In terms of their best songs in the post-Barnes era, “Scourge of Iron” is at least sitting in the top five, and I wouldn’t blame you if you put it at No. 1. Depending on the day, I might even throw it atop their discography. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

PULVERIZED

[The Bleeding, 1994]

My introduction to Cannibal Corpse was not a particularly auspicious one. I remember reading a review of Butchered or maybe Tomb – can’t recall which one now, and it doesn’t really matter – but the review savaged it pretty seriously, something to the effect of “this is stupid music for kids in trailer parks who think Faces Of Death is cool” or whatever. That wasn’t me, so I didn’t bother to spend my allowance on whichever Cannibal Corpse cassettes I ran across. (The fact that, in the mall record stores of the South, all I ever saw were the censored covers didn’t help sell me anything, either.)

And then I actually heard some Cannibal Corpse, and I was intrigued. All that to say: The Bleeding was the first new Cannibal Corpse album after I decided that maybe they weren’t so stupid, after all, and to some extent, where my Cannibal Corpse journey begins, as I moved forward with them and backward to the ones I’d ignored. As an entry point, The Bleeding was actually a pretty good place to avoid the stupid tag applied by that forgotten reviewer before – by then, they’d sharpened themselves into a much tighter machine than earlier; they were still well past the line of good taste (and there are some songs on this record that are lyrically… problematic, it’s true), but they sanded down some of the rougher edges musically, made a more accessible record (although that’s a relative term, remember), and Chris Barnes turned in both his best and final vocal performance before being ousted in favor of Corpsegrinder.

Of all The Bleeding’s ten tracks, “Pulverized” is my favorite, its title an accurate descriptor of the results of its impact. Webster and Owen handed in some blistering tremolo riffs and that churning chorus section – Webster’s bass is particularly punchy, almost bouncy at times, while Mazurkiewicz hammers along beneath. When the song downshifts halfway through into that skittering, pinch-harmonic-tipped midsection, it’s only the briefest of respites before it all kicks back in, just a breath before the final hammer swings down. Three minutes and thirty seconds of classic death metal that will leave you exactly as it says it will. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

INHUMANE HARVEST

[Violence Unimagined, 2021]

Hello, boys and girls. Do you like them heavy? I mean really goddamn hefty hefty hefty? The Corpse is here to oblige. The Rob Barrett-penned “Inhumane Harvest,” off of 2021’s Violence Unimagined, is a blunt force assault that starts out heavier than an anvil aimed at Daffy Duck’s noggin and just keeps getting thicker. Sure, that buzzsaw opening hints at Corpse’s more technical side, but before long a serious chonker of a riff pattern backs up the verse…

…Then the verse just keeps getting heavier, chunkier, and blunter in its impact as Corpsegrinder spews lyrics about harvesting every last body part before the victim is even killed (“EVERYTHING MUST GO!”). The chorus isn’t about to get beat either, with a descending arpeggiated riff pattern supporting seriously thick George growls. It’s pretty easy to only talk about how ungodly heavy this song is, but in truth it’s a showcase for the whole band, not the least of which Paul Mazurkiewicz’s double-kick-heavy drumming and how he really amplifies just how heavy this song is.

Okay, let’s just stick with the heft, which only increases with the bridge (oh lord he coming). Slower, heavier, meaner, more demented, weightier than a Jovian moon, and perfect for a pair of wild solos from Barrett and Erik Rutan. Listen, enjoy, be flattened. [ZACH DUVALL]

AS DEEP AS THE KNIFE WILL GO

[Torture, 2012]

If you know this song, there’s a good chance you read that title and immediately heard the descending chug that happens after the second time Corpsegrinder belts it out during the chorus. Before we get there, though, the song immediately batters you with an absolutely thunderous opening. That little bit of open space with the high-hat tapping in the verses that act as a preamble to the chorus is a chef’s kiss decision. A bridge with some repeated squiggly notes, more rhythmic assaults accompanied by shrieks of “BLEED IT DRY, BLEED IT DRY,” followed by a nifty little lead, and you have yourself a gold medal winner on your hands. Doesn’t hurt that this masterpiece also happens to close out the greatest three-song run in Cannibal Corpse’s career.

I don’t need a knife in the gut to experience a life-changing transfer of power because that’s what I feel every time this song comes on! [SPENCER HOTZ]

PIT OF ZOMBIES

[Gore Obsessed, 2002]

The year is 2002. Cannibal Corpse had finally won me over with Bloodthirst and for the first time I’m anxiously awaiting the release of Gore Obsessed. The band did not disappoint, delivering not just a worthy follow up, but an album that would emphatically establish the new regime and wipe the last remaining drops of Chris Barnes’s name from the lips of even the most stubborn fans. Press around the album played up an ungodly 14-second Corpsegrinder scream on “Mutation of the Cadaver,” and the legions new and old quickly swarmed around “Hatchet to the Head” as a brutallic battle cry, but it was “Pit of Zombies” that would soon worm itself deepest into our brains and their setlists.

Man, zombies used to be cool. Macabre staples of the horror and death metal genres. Few bands were better suited to tackle the bloody zombie apocalypse like Cannibal Corpse. Pummeling riffs and pounding rhythm put you right there next to our poor victim, while Corpsegrinder narrates their immediate – and your pending – fate:

They claw at my face
and rip off my scalp
Exposing my skull
Arteries severed
Gushing blood showers them
Drives them mad
Raging mob
A hideous feast

One can almost… DAMNIT STOP HEADBANGING AND GROWLING ALONG TO YOUR DEMISE, YOU FOOL! Just like a Hollywood horror film…no survival instincts. You’d probably hide behind that curtain of chainsaws, too. But…I digress.

Chris would have found some way to turn this into a schlockfest more befitting the modern day zombie culture of bar crawls and cutesy puzzle games that makes Zombie Nightmare look like Night of the Living Dead. This era of the band took an almost disturbing turn towards realistic, visceral imagery. It was no longer about how much blood they could spill – it was about how red (and black, maybe even green) they could make it. [DAVE PIRTLE]

THE WRETCHED SPAWN

[The Wretched Spawn, 2004]

Title tracks, amirite? Some bands put ‘em right at the top of the album. Other times, maybe drop it midway for a recalibration. Possibly you close things out with a final curtain-call elbow to the giblets. Point is, when I see a title track I’m seeing a band tell me to pay some goddamned attention.

Hi, hello, do you like Cannibal Corpse? If you do not, you have found yourself in a very strange place today. Regardless of your deep personal failings, you have likely noticed that “The Wretched Spawn,” from 2004’s The Wretched Spawn, is a title track. It literally tracks the title! As a band with many title tracks, Cannibal Corpse has given itself some fierce competition, but for my viscera-sodden money, this one is the best. (It’s a lucky technicality that “The Time to Kill is Now” doesn’t quite count, because, y’know…)

“The Wretched Spawn” does one of those fantastically gooey things that Corpse does so well, which is to ease off the gas after a spastic set of short tunes and dig into a greasy nastiness that goes so lowdown it’s like a subwoofer on the Titanic. The song’s main riff/motif is a dirge-paced doomer that feels like a ball-swinging groove until you get knocked repeatedly off-kilter by its woozy punctuation. It’s a bit like a verrrrrry specific kind of mullet: Nile-business in the front, Pantera-party in the back. Halfway through it takes off into a two-step sprint but even that is just a brief feint, a quick flurry of blows before we get back to the grinding churn. Oh, and does Alex Webster’s bass run the board like liquid mercury down a sewer grate? Oh, and are there notable vocal crescendos? Oh, and is there a Jack Owen solo so squiggly it sounds like it’s being played by a fork jammed into an electrical outlet?

“IT / WAS / MADE / TO / KIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.” (That’s Cannibal Corpse for, “yes please and thank you.”) [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

UNLEASHING THE BLOODTHIRSTY

[Bloodthirst, 1999]

What is it with Cannibal Corpse and placing absolute bangers at track No. 3? “Scourge of Iron,” “Sentenced to Burn,” “Pit of Zombies”—they’re all batting third. Anyways, “Unleashing the Bloodthirsty” is also track No. 3, on the classic Bloodthirst. Much like “Scourge of Iron,” there’s a pummeling nature to “Unleashing the Bloodthirsty.” For its majority, it sits at a more mid tempo but is still pulverizing. Regarding George’s vocal delivery, it’s some of my favorite work from him behind the mic, featuring some of his most iconic moments.

BlOOOOOOOD
THEYYYYYYYY LIVEEEEEEEEE, THEY THIRSTTTTTTTT
BlOOOOOOOD

Of course, how could you not love those intertwined quick, grooving breakdowns before jumping back into absolute chaos? I’ve always thought those pinch harmonics were the sonic equivalent of a panic attack, too. Beautiful stuff from these fine gentlemen. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

FROM SKIN TO LIQUID

[Gallery of Suicide, 1998]

Who did it better? Was it Barnes’ rabid animalistic style or Corpsegrinder’s massive esophagus? Who cares when you have an instrumental this good?! Perhaps a bit odd to be an all-time favorite from a band like Cannibal Corpse, but good lord this tune gets me every time. The centerpiece of the band’s most sinister album, it plays out like reaching the top of the highest tower in the fortress of depravity featured on the censored version of the album cover. The drums plod away, like taking a dreaded, heavy step up the spiraled staircases. The guitars twist ever-so-slowly like thumb screws on every finger, the pinch harmonics screaming out like tortured wails as the breaking point of pain is achieved. The warbles of the whammy bar cut unevenly, like a serrated knife slowly tearing the flesh until a full blood eagle is achieved and a monument to horrific pain remains where the human form once stood. Webster’s bass creeps along, like a fresh nightmare lurking in the shadows ready to inflict new and unprecedented terrors.

As good as the bells and whistles are, the real organs exposed in the song are revealed in its pacing–its so. fucking. heavy. It’s like a twisted take on “Black Sabbath” in that it wouldn’t be nearly as terrifying if there was less room to breathe. Plenty of bands try to induce nightmares by being fast and claustrophobic, but Cannibal drive the nail home the olde way–letting the fear build and the anticipation of terror get the blood racing and ripe to be splattered. They don’t have any others quite like it, and understandably so. They executed it flawlessly the first time.

[RYAN TYSINGER]

A SKULL FULL OF MAGGOTS

[Eaten Back to Life, 1990]

Even though it’s not all that indicative of the true Cannibal sound, especially now three-and-a-half decades removed, there are more days than not when I’d hold up Eaten Back To Life as my favorite Cannibal Corpse album. Straddling that line between ferocious thrash and the then-new madness of death metal, Eaten Back is a snapshot of a young band finding their feet, and as such, looking back on it now compared to would come after, it’s possessed with a certain rawness and inchoate aggression that would be sharpened, expanded on, and intensified as the band changed. But there’s something in that rawness, a spirit or a spark, some youthful exuberance at pushing the boundaries of both heaviness and good taste, and it bridges that gap between what had been, what was, and what would come.

And now here’s the part where our intrepid hero tries to say something truly profound about a song titled “A Skull Full Of Maggots”… and you know what? Profundity can pound sand, at least for now. “A Skull Full Of Maggots” is awesome, not because of what it might mean or what it might say, but because of what it is and what it does say. In that order, those are this: It’s a kick-ass example of the earliest days of death, when thrash metal was ratcheted up past its breaking point and into the next level, and also it says ‘maggots,’ and it says it, like, a lot. We’re not just talking a few maggots. We’re talking a massive amount of maggots, a whole lotta maggots. A whole skull full of them, in fact, and it’s almost scientific fact that your skull might be full of maggots if you don’t like this. And it’s equally likely that your skull will be, after hearing it for the first time, once that razor-wire descending riff kicks in, and the careening-right-upon-the-edge-of-chaos punch of Paul Mazurkiewicz’s drums hammers that smashing lack of profundity right through your face. Don’t waste time thinking about it – just get with the maggots, maggots. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

HAMMER SMASHED FACE

[Tomb of the Mutilated, 1992]

Before the die-hards obliterate this installment of the Devil’s Dozen for throwing this song on the list, let me say: “Hammer Smashed Face” isn’t the toast of Cannibal Corpse’s catalogue—we get it! But to leave it completely off would be malpractice, and let me tell you, we’re keen on putting our metal doctorates to good use for the foreseeable future here at the Last Rites headquarters.

Without “Hammer Smashed Face,” would death metal be where it is today? I don’t know—I’m not big into what ifs. But I do know that crossing over into the mainstream didn’t hurt. I mean, the song made its way into Hollywood by way of 1994’s Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. EVER HEARD OF IT?! Hell, audiences were even forced to watch it performed in all its glory thanks to the blockbuster film. And rumor has it, Jim Carrey is/was a big fan.

While it may be death metal’s “Enter Sandman,” that intro riff and Alex’s bassline are enough to keep me coming back. At this point, you’ve heard it, and if not, what are you doing here? Nonetheless, “Hammer Smashed Face” has reached legendary status. What more is there to say? [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]