Diamonds & Rust: Cannibal Corpse Celebrates 20 Years Of Finding Out The Time To Kill Is NOW

[Cover art by Vince Locke – Duh]

KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!

My apologies if that triggered your PTSD for that time you started your day with a cup of coffee and a pressing of the play button on Kill, only to realize you forgot to turn down the stereo last night and you filled your best work slacks with colon brisket.

*Knock, knock* Hi, do you have a moment to discuss our lord and savior Cannibal Corpse and their magnum opus Kill on this, the day of its 20th birthday? I implore you to say yes, as I can be a bit maniacal when it comes to sharing the word of murder worship and I wouldn’t want to make you suffer through the infinite misery you’d experience when I use my brain removal device. What’s that? You don’t appreciate having necrosadistic warnings levied at you and you’ll show me the discipline of revenge by putting five nails through my neck if I don’t stop yapping about the importance of being purified by fire? That’s quite rude. I hope you spend eternity in an afterlife submerged in boiling flesh! (I will not apologize for how incredibly stupid this intro has been).

 Kill is the tenth studio album by this Tampa-by-way-of-Buffalo quintet and marks a pivotal halfway point in Cannibal Corpse’s career, having formed 18 years prior to its release and still being active now 20 years after with another six albums under their belt. In this humble gorehound’s opinion, every record in the band’s storied career deserves many words of praise, but Kill truly is a special one that stands on its own while marking a key shift into a new era that has been sustained ever since. Part of its value is that it both renewed fandoms in long-time metalheads and acted as a potent first act for youngins first hearing about them as they joined some unexpected tours. With that in mind, let’s take this trip down a blood-soaked memory lane from two perspectives: 1) Why this album manages to stand out even to those well-versed in all things death metal (a broader perspective) and 2) Why this album was so effective at sucking the uninitiated down into the sewer of the brutal (a more personal perspective).

The Grizzled, Greybeard’s Cannibal Corpse

By 2006, longtime fans knew exactly what Cannibal Corpse was and essentially would forever be. Sure, they could argue about Barnes vs Corpsegrinder or whatever nonsense, but by this point, the boys had firmly planted their flag with what they intended to do with death metal’s most beloved dad. I labelled Kill as the band’s magnum opus just a few sentences ago, which I stand by in terms of their career, but a mere two years prior, them Corpse fellers had released my personal favorite in The Wretched Spawn. I have no doubt that many shared that opinion at the time. So, after 16 years of releases, what could they possibly do to keep the most hardened of sickos satisfied?

Well, the cover for album 10 probably wasn’t doing it. The simplicity of all-caps KILL in black and red was certainly divisive. Vincent Locke’s art was so thoroughly intertwined with the foulness of the band’s words, albums and merch that to cut back to naught but a word seemed (to some) to be nothing short of an insult. Hell, look at the insanity that immediately preceded it:

We got zombie docs, Alien-style body expulsions, a possibly miscarried fish monster sliding out the cooch, and even booby bits. Now, you give us…reading? Get the fuck out of here!

But, it was actually perfect. The cover acted as a statement of, well, rebirth. Modern Cannibal Corpse had established their style, but with Erik Rutan at the helm of the boards, they had finally established their sound. Even with the sonic consistency he would achieve across the next two decades, Kill is on a different level of aural assault. The guitars are absolutely filthy, the bass is like a razor-lined elastic tentacle writhing between the notes, and the drums are thunderous to a point of being terrifying. Seriously, those kick drums deserve to have a tornado siren accompanying them at all times. The cover art was a statement of renewed intent: this album was written, perfomed and produced with nothing in mind but to all-caps KILL your ears. It fucking delivers.

 

Hit play on that. “I’vE LisTeNed to It a HunDreD TiMeS!” Hit play, you sentient carbuncle! I don’t care how recently you’ve listened, “The Time To Kill Is Now” is unreal in its intensity. From note one, it’s maxing out the decibels. The horrific scream, the seesawing riff, and that whirling dervish they’re claiming is a lead, all explode your body in a grand total of 40 seconds. By the time “the time to kill is motherfucking now!” rings out, even those who have been hanging since Eaten Back To Life were thinking “ok, boys, let’s save something for the rest of the album.” Except, Cannibal Corpse didn’t need to hold back because the rest of the album is just as relentlessly vicious.

“Make Them Suffer” has the disgusting riff that rolls into a gnarly groove, and anytime you read the word suffer after, I know you hear Corpsegrinder’s voice belting out that line. “Murder Worship” lets Alex Webster’s bass flit in and out like the fattest, tankiest bee on earth stinging you from what few gaps of sound you thought you could find. “Necrosadistic Warning” is like an auditory boxing match full of start-stop feints and hits. The guitars on “Purification By Fire” are played as if they were actually on fire or at least like flames should be shooting out of the instruments from the stage when performed live. You like it when a song has violent swagger? May I pour you a glass of “Death Walking Terror?”

 

Kill also marked the return of Rob Barrett to replace Jack Owen. At a time when Pat O’Brien and Webster seemed to often be trying to out-technical each other, Barrett swooped in and reminded people that giving a riff room to breathe can be potent. He only has one songwriting credit and two solos on the album, but “Barbaric Bludgeonings” is exactly the right bit of more straightforward at that point in the album with a chorus that gives Corpsegrinder the room for a powerful vocal hook to really make the listener want more from Barrett. That said, O’Brien plays his solos on this album like he has been huffing shredded, meth-infused science textbooks for 30 years. What in the blue fuck is that man doing to his instrument (complimentary)?

Then there are the fun little wink-wink, nod-nod moments. Did you notice that “Five Nails Through The Neck” is the fifth track? How about that “Submerged In Boiling Flesh” repeatedly leans into the line “to struggle is useless” before ceding to the instrumental “Infinite Misery” that sounds like an auditory slow walk out of a concert where people have tried to hang for an hour and simply can’t any longer.

I wasn’t a long-time fan when Kill came out, but I can’t understand anyone who had been around for years thinking this was anything but a level up. I’m sure our own Seth Buttnam is reading this and thinking they peaked with a demo, but his alien brain will be studied for centuries to come.

Kill is what Cannibal Corpse was always supposed to be and the definition of what they should always be remembered as.

Baby’s First Death Metal

Now that I’ve had all this time to project onto a different generation, what was it like as a dumbass 17-year-old listening to Cannibal Corpse for the first time in 2006?

Well, back then, there were these wild things called touring summer festivals. By that time, there were, in fact, several of them. I think Ozzy Osbourne even had one. It was called Mayhem Fest or something stupid like that. Not sure why they wouldn’t capitalize on his name brand, but I’m not a genius like Sharon Osbourne. Cannibal Corpse was down to join these silly old things with all sorts of bands that shouldn’t be allowed to share a porta-potty with them, let alone a stage. In 2006, that meant they were on Sounds Of The Underground. For a spritely chap like myself, whose primary resources for finding new things were scanning CDs for 30-second samples at places like FYE or hoping whatever bullshit I downloaded on LimeWire was accurate without being full of viruses, a tour lineup was vital. At that point, I’d say I was in the tween years of my metal life. I thought I knew more than I did, but I was still regularly seeking my core group and hanging out in a lot of places to try and discover exactly where my ears were most comfortable.

The lineup that year was:

• As I Lay Dying (headliners – yeesh)
• In Flames
• Trivium
• Gwar
• Converge
• Cannibal Corpse
• The Black Dahlia Murder
• Terror
• The Chariot
• Behemoth
• Horse The Band
• Evergreen Terrace
• Through The Eyes Of The Dead

At this time, a band on a festival meant I was going to find a way to listen to something by them in preparation. For Cannibal Corpse, that meant seeing Kill on sale at a Best Buy (remember the olden days when they sold CDs?) and picking up a copy.

The starting KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!! of this review was mostly met with a “JESUS CHRIST!”

In honesty, it was overwhelming and I fell into the trap of “it’s pretty cool, but it also all sounds a little bit the same.” Oh, you sweet summer child.

Then, seeing them live happened. Gwar was on right before them and I jumped in to get fluid-soaked as one does. What made it all the better for this boiling-hot day in a black-top parking lot was that it started to rain right as Cannibal Corpse took the stage. For their entire performance, all the dried dyed water from Gwar started seeping back out of bodies to make it look like the entire crowd was covered in pouring blood. Corpsegrinder called people pussies for hiding under awnings and dedicated “Fucked With A Knife” to the ladies in the crowd. My blue-mohawk-having, scrawny ass was flabbergasted. I had no choice but to go back home and start spinning Kill over and over again. I sought out whatever CDs of theirs I could get my hands on.

I share this not because I want Last Rites to be my personal diary, but because I would wager significant money that I am one of many who had this same experience. Kill hit at a pivotal moment during a pivotal era where a lot of metal simply could not even sniff the heaviness that this album delivered, and those that could, weren’t anywhere sniffing the popularity to get them on a massive summer festival. Kill was a flashpoint that sent me down the sewer and look where I am now – rolling around in pigshit with you filthy lot; I couldn’t be happier.

So, cheers to what has become one of my all-time favorite bands and three cheers to the album that put an extra boot to my butt toward the truly vile!

[Pretty sure I bought all of these within two years of that first show and I haven’t slowed down since. Clockwise from top-left: The Discipline Of Revenge, Death Walking Terror, SotU tour shirt, The Time To Kill Is Now]