Cannibal Corpse is an American
death metal band formed in
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
in 1988, now based out of
Tampa, Florida
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough C ...
. The band has released fifteen studio albums, two box sets, four video albums, and two live albums. The band has had little radio or television exposure throughout its existence, although a
cult following began to build with the releases of their early albums, including ''
Butchered at Birth'' (1991) and ''
Tomb of the Mutilated'' (1992). As of 2015, they achieved worldwide sales of two million units for combined sales of all their albums.
In April 2021, Cannibal Corpse received their best 'first week' sales of all-time and first Top 10 on the ''Billboard'' Top Album Sales Chart as ''
Violence Unimagined'' entered at No. 6 with 14,000 copies sold.
Bassist
Alex Webster
Alex Webster (born 1969) is an American bass player who is best known as a member of the death metal band Cannibal Corpse. He is one of two remaining members of the original lineup of the band, along with drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. He is also ...
came up with the name Cannibal Corpse. They have had several lineup changes since their inception, with Webster and drummer
Paul Mazurkiewicz
Paul Mazurkiewicz ( ; born September 8, 1968) is an American drummer best known as a member for death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Mazurkiewicz was originally the drummer for the band, Tirant Sin, alongside two other future Cannibal Corpse member ...
as the only constant members. The members of Cannibal Corpse were originally inspired by
thrash metal bands like
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band. The band was formed in 1981 in Los Angeles by vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, and has been based in San Francisco for most of its career. The band's fast tempos, instrume ...
,
Slayer
Slayer was an American thrash metal band from Huntington Park, California. The band was formed in 1981 by guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, drummer Dave Lombardo and bassist/vocalist Tom Araya. Slayer's fast and aggressive musical style ...
,
Dark Angel,
S.O.D.,
Sadus,
Sodom
Sodom may refer to:
Places Historic
* Sodom and Gomorrah, cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis
United States
* Sodom, Kentucky, a ghost town
* Sodom, New York, a hamlet
* Sodom, Ohio, an unincorporated community
* Sodom, West Virginia, an ...
,
Kreator,
D.R.I. and
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly ex ...
, and death metal bands such as
Possessed,
Autopsy,
Morbid Angel and
Death
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
.
The band's album art (most often by
Vincent Locke
Vincent Locke () is an American comic book artist known for his work on ''Deadworld'' and ''A History of Violence'' and for his ultraviolent album covers for death metal band Cannibal Corpse.
Biography
Locke began work in 1986 illustrating ''Dea ...
) and lyrics, drawing heavily on
horror fiction
Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. ...
and
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
s, are highly controversial. At different times, several countries, such as Germany and Russia, have banned Cannibal Corpse from performing within their borders, or have banned the sale and display of original Cannibal Corpse album covers.
History
Members from earlier Buffalo-area death metal bands Beyond Death (Alex Webster, Jack Owen), Tirant Sin (Paul Mazurkiewicz, Chris Barnes, Bob Rusay), and Leviathan (Barnes) established the band in December 1988. The band played its first show at Buffalo's River Rock Cafe in March 1989, shortly after recording a
five-song self-titled demo tape. Within a year of the first gig, the band was signed to
Metal Blade Records, apparently after the label had heard the demo tape that the manager of the record store at which Barnes was working sent in. Their full-length death metal debut album, ''
Eaten Back to Life'', was released in August 1990. Inspired by and seeking the new commercial and recording opportunities of the emerging
Florida death metal scene, the band relocated to Tampa.
The band has had several lineup changes. In February 1993, founding member and guitarist Bob Rusay was dismissed from the group (after which he became a golf instructor) and was ultimately replaced by
Malevolent Creation guitarist
Rob Barrett. In 1995, during recording sessions for a new album, singer
Chris Barnes was dismissed because of personal differences with the rest of the band and was replaced by
Monstrosity singer
George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher. Barnes went on to perform with the band
Six Feet Under and, later,
Torture Killer.
left, Performance in in 2007">Washington D.C. in 2007
In February 1997, Barrett, who had replaced Rusay on guitar, left Cannibal Corpse to re-join his previous bands Malevolent Creation and
Solstice. Pat O'Brien, who first appeared on Cannibal Corpse's 1998 release ''
Gallery of Suicide'', replaced Barrett. Founding member and guitarist
Jack Owen
Jack Owen (born December 6, 1967) is an American guitarist and a member of the death metal band Six Feet Under. He was one of the founding members of Cannibal Corpse. He stayed with the band from their formation in 1988 until 2004 when he left ...
left Cannibal Corpse in 2004 to spend more time on his second band,
Adrift
Adrift may refer to:
Media
* Adrift (band), a Tampa, Florida-based American heavy rock band
* ''Adrift'' (video game), a first-person adventure video game
* "Adrift", a song by God Is an Astronaut from the album '' Ghost Tapes #10''
Film
* ''A ...
. He joined
Deicide in late 2004.
Jeremy Turner of
Origin
Origin(s) or The Origin may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Comics and manga
* ''Origin'' (comics), a Wolverine comic book mini-series published by Marvel Comics in 2002
* ''The Origin'' (Buffy comic), a 1999 ''Buffy the Vampire Sl ...
briefly replaced him as guitarist on 2004's Tour of ''
The Wretched Spawn''. Barrett re-joined the band for a concert at the Northwest Deathfest in Washington in 2005.
Writing for the follow-up to ''
Kill'' (2006) began in November 2007, as indicated in an interview with bassist
Alex Webster
Alex Webster (born 1969) is an American bass player who is best known as a member of the death metal band Cannibal Corpse. He is one of two remaining members of the original lineup of the band, along with drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. He is also ...
. ''
Evisceration Plague'', Cannibal Corpse's eleventh studio album was released February 3, 2009,
to a highly positive response from fans. They also released a live DVD in 2011 entitled ''Global Evisceration''. Cannibal Corpse released its twelfth studio album, ''
Torture'', in March 2012. Two early bands of the members reunited for one respective benefit concert each for Tony Lorenzo of the group Sons Of Azrael in January 2012.
In February 2014, Cannibal Corpse announced that they had begun recording their thirteenth album, ''
A Skeletal Domain'', which was released on September 16. "Sadistic Embodiment" was released as a single in July. All the song titles of the forthcoming album were announced on the same day. The same month, Metal Blade announced the publication of the band's authorized biography ''Bible Of Butchery'', written by the British author
Joel McIver.
In an August 2016 interview, drummer
Paul Mazurkiewicz
Paul Mazurkiewicz ( ; born September 8, 1968) is an American drummer best known as a member for death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Mazurkiewicz was originally the drummer for the band, Tirant Sin, alongside two other future Cannibal Corpse member ...
stated that Cannibal Corpse would likely begin recording a new album in 2017. In September 2017, the band announced their fourteenth studio album ''
Red Before Black'', which was released on November 3.
On December 10, 2018, guitarist Pat O'Brien was arrested for assault and battery; his bail was set at $50,000. On the eve of the news of his arrest, Cannibal Corpse was announced as one of the supporting acts for
Slayer
Slayer was an American thrash metal band from Huntington Park, California. The band was formed in 1981 by guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, drummer Dave Lombardo and bassist/vocalist Tom Araya. Slayer's fast and aggressive musical style ...
's
final North American tour, which would take place in the spring of 2019 and also be supported by
Lamb of God
Lamb of God ( el, Ἀμνὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, Amnòs toû Theoû; la, Agnus Dei, ) is a title for Jesus that appears in the Gospel of John. It appears at John 1:29, where John the Baptist sees Jesus and exclaims, "Behold the Lamb of God wh ...
and
Amon Amarth. On January 18, 2019, Cannibal Corpse announced that
Hate Eternal frontman and former
Morbid Angel guitarist
Erik Rutan would fill-in for O'Brien on their future tours.
Cannibal Corpse entered the studio in June 2020 to begin recording their fifteenth studio album. On February 1, 2021, the band announced that the album, ''
Violence Unimagined'', would be released on April 16. They released a music video for the song "Inhumane Harvest" from the album in February. The video takes its cues from horror movies like ''
Saw''. The band also announced that live guitarist
Erik Rutan has officially joined the band full-time, in spite of that it is currently uncertain as to whether or not guitarist O'Brien will return to the group following his 2018 legal troubles.
Controversy and publicity
United States
In May 1995, then-
US Senator Bob Dole accused Cannibal Corpse—along with
hip hop acts including the
Geto Boys
Geto Boys (originally spelled Ghetto Boys) was an American hip-hop group originally formed in Houston, Texas. The Geto Boys enjoyed success in the 1990s with the group's classic lineup consisting of Bushwick Bill, Scarface and Willie D, earning ...
and
2 Live Crew—of undermining the national character of the United States.
[ Although the article seems to imply that Cannibal Corpse is a "rap group" rather than a metal band, it is one of the few reliable sources on the Internet for Dole's exact words.] A year later, the band came under fire again, this time as part of a campaign by
William Bennett, Senator
Joe Lieberman, then-Senator
Sam Nunn, and
National Congress of Black Women chair
C. Delores Tucker
Cynthia Delores Tucker (née Nottage; October 4, 1927 – October 12, 2005) was an American politician and civil rights activist. She had a long history of involvement in the American Civil Rights Movement. From the 1990s onward, she engaged in a ...
to get major record labels—including
Time Warner,
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
,
Thorn-EMI,
PolyGram
PolyGram N.V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a ...
and
Bertelsmann—to "dump 20 recording groups
..responsible for the most offensive lyrics".
Cannibal Corpse also had a
cameo appearance in the 1994
Jim Carrey
James Eugene Carrey (; born January 17, 1962) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian and artist. Known for his energetic slapstick performances, Carrey first gained recognition in 1990, after landing a role in the American sketch comedy te ...
film ''
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'', performing an abridged version of their song "
Hammer Smashed Face".
Australia
As of October 23, 1996, the sale of any Cannibal Corpse audio recording then available was banned in
Australia and all copies of such had been removed from music shops.
At the time, the
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) is a trade association representing the Australian recording industry which was established in the 1970s by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replac ...
and the Australian Music Retailers Association were implementing a system for identifying potentially offensive records, known as the "labelling code of practice".
All ten of Cannibal Corpse's albums, the live album ''
Live Cannibalism'', the boxed set ''
15 Year Killing Spree
''15 Year Killing Spree'' is a box set by American death metal band Cannibal Corpse. The cover art contains demons and skeletons placed in windows in a castle surrounded by a moat of blood. Observant Cannibal Corpse fans will notice that the cov ...
'', the EP ''
Worm Infested'', and the single "
Hammer Smashed Face" were re-released in Australia between 2006 and 2007, finally classified by ARIA and allowed for sale in Australia. However, they are all "restricted" and only sold to those over 18 years of age. Some are sold in "censored" and "uncensored" editions, which denotes the change of cover art.
Despite this, when displayed in some stores, even the "uncensored" editions are censored manually.
After discussion of banning them from touring, Australian comedy act
The Chaser did a
lounge music
Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The rang ...
version of their song "
Rancid Amputation" on their show ''
The Chaser's War on Everything
''The Chaser's War on Everything'' is an Australian television satirical comedy series broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television station ABC1. It has won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Television Comedy S ...
'', claiming that the music, and not the lyrics, was the problem, by performing a lounge music version.
Germany
All Cannibal Corpse albums up to and including ''
Tomb of the Mutilated'' were banned upon release from being sold or displayed in
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
due to their graphic cover art and disturbing lyrics; the band was also forbidden to play any songs from those albums while touring in Germany.
This prohibition was not lifted until June 2006.
[ In a 2004 interview, George Fisher attempted to recall what originally provoked the ban:
]
Russia
Six of the eight planned shows from the band's 2014 Russian tour were canceled after protests from local Orthodox activists. A month before the tour, religious activist Dimitry Tsorionov said Cannibal Corpse's music was punishable under Russian law because it "incites religious division." He commented unfavorably on the lyrics, saying they promoted "death, violence, as well as various kinds of sexual perversion." The gig in Nizhny Novgorod was stopped halfway through the set, after police conducted a search for drugs at the venue. The concert in Saint Petersburg was canceled at the last minute because of unspecified "technical reasons", OMON arrived shortly after and arrested eighteen concertgoers. Cannibal Corpse members stated that Russian authorities threatened to detain them if the band performed because they did not have the correct work visas.
Responses to critics
Cannibal Corpse's lyrics and album/T-shirt artwork frequently feature transgressive and macabre imagery, including depictions of extreme violence and gore; the band has always defended this as artistic expression that is clearly fictional. In an interview for the documentary '' Metal: A Headbanger's Journey'', George Fisher said that death metal is best understood "as art", and claims that far more violent art can be found at the Vatican, pointing out that such depictions are arguably more transgressive because they actually happened. Some examples of Cannibal Corpse's controversial song titles include "I Cum Blood", "Meat Hook Sodomy", "Entrails Ripped from a Virgin's Cunt", "Necropedophile", "Stripped, Raped, and Strangled", "Addicted to Vaginal Skin", "Stabbed in the Throat", "Dismembered and Molested" and "Fucked with a Knife".
On the same topic, George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher once said in an interview:
In response to accusations that his band's lyrics desensitize people to violence, Alex Webster argued death metal fans enjoy the music only because they know the violence depicted in its lyrics is not real:
He also believes the violent lyrics can have positive value: "It's good to have anger music as a release." George Fisher explained the content of their songs: "There's nothing ever serious. We're not thinking of anybody in particular that we're trying to kill, or harm or anything."
Band members
Current members
* Alex Webster
Alex Webster (born 1969) is an American bass player who is best known as a member of the death metal band Cannibal Corpse. He is one of two remaining members of the original lineup of the band, along with drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. He is also ...
– bass (1988–present)
* Paul Mazurkiewicz
Paul Mazurkiewicz ( ; born September 8, 1968) is an American drummer best known as a member for death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Mazurkiewicz was originally the drummer for the band, Tirant Sin, alongside two other future Cannibal Corpse member ...
– drums (1988–present)
* Rob Barrett – lead guitar (1993–1997), rhythm guitar (2005–present)
* George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher – vocals (1995–present)
* Erik Rutan – lead guitar (2021–present)
Former members
* Jack Owen
Jack Owen (born December 6, 1967) is an American guitarist and a member of the death metal band Six Feet Under. He was one of the founding members of Cannibal Corpse. He stayed with the band from their formation in 1988 until 2004 when he left ...
– rhythm guitar (1988–2004)
* Chris Barnes – vocals (1988–1995)
* Bob Rusay – lead guitar (1988–1993)
* Pat O'Brien – lead guitar (1997–2021)
Touring musicians
* Jeremy Turner – rhythm guitar (2004–2005)
* Erik Rutan – lead guitar (2019–2021)
File:Cannibal Corpse Rockharz 2018 10.jpg, Alex Webster
File:Cannibal Corpse Rockharz 2018 03.jpg, Paul Mazurkiewicz
File:Cannibal Corpse Rockharz 2018 13.jpg, George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher
File:Cannibal Corpse Rockharz 2018 11.jpg, Pat O'Brien
File:Cannibal Corpse Rockharz 2018 04.jpg, Rob Barrett
Timeline
Recording timeline
Discography
;Studio albums
*'' Eaten Back to Life'' (1990)
*'' Butchered at Birth'' (1991)
*'' Tomb of the Mutilated'' (1992)
*'' The Bleeding'' (1994)
*'' Vile'' (1996)
*'' Gallery of Suicide'' (1998)
*''Bloodthirst
Homicidal ideation is a common medical term for thoughts about homicide. There is a range of homicidal thoughts which spans from vague ideas of revenge to detailed and fully formulated plans without the act itself. Most people who have homicidal ...
'' (1999)
*'' Gore Obsessed'' (2002)
*'' The Wretched Spawn'' (2004)
*'' Kill'' (2006)
*'' Evisceration Plague'' (2009)
*'' Torture'' (2012)
*'' A Skeletal Domain'' (2014)
*'' Red Before Black'' (2017)
*'' Violence Unimagined'' (2021)
See also
* Cannabis Corpse
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cannibal Corpse
1988 establishments in New York (state)
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Death metal musical groups from New York (state)
Metal Blade Records artists
Musical groups established in 1988
Musical groups from Buffalo, New York
Musical groups from Tampa, Florida
Musical quintets
Obscenity controversies in music