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Cannibal Corpse

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Cannibal Corpse

Cannibal Corpse is an American death metal band from Buffalo, New York, formed in 1988. The band has released eleven studio albums, one boxed set, and one live album. Although Cannibal Corpse has had little radio or television exposure, a cult following began to build behind the group with albums such as 1991's Butchered at Birth and 1992's Tomb of the Mutilated. Cannibal Corpse reached over one-million in record sales worldwide in 2003,[1] including 558,929 in the United States, making them the top-selling death metal band of all time in the US, and second worldwide.[2]

The members of Cannibal Corpse were originally inspired by thrash metal bands like Slayer, Kreator, and Sodom, as well as other death metal bands like Morbid Angel and Death.[3] The band's lyrics and album art (most often done by Vincent Locke), which draw heavily on horror fiction and horror films, are highly controversial. At different times, several countries have banned Cannibal Corpse from performing within their borders, or have banned the sale and display of original Cannibal Corpse album covers.[4][5]

Biography

Cannibal Corpse was made up of members from three earlier 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, Cannibal Corpse. Within a year of that first gig, the band was signed to Metal Blade Records, apparently after the label had heard their demo that was sent in by the manager of the record store at which Chris Barnes was working,[6] and their full-length debut album, Eaten Back to Life, was released in August 1990.

The band has had many line-up changes over the years. In 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, singer Chris Barnes was dismissed and was replaced by Monstrosity singer George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher. Barnes went on to perform with the band Six Feet Under, and later Torture Killer.

In 1997, Barrett, who had originally replaced Rusay on guitar, left Cannibal Corpse to rejoin his previous bands Malevolent Creation and Solstice. After Barrett left, he was replaced by guitarist Pat O’Brien, who first appeared on Cannibal Corpse's 1998 release Gallery of Suicide. Founding member and guitarist 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 Spawn. Barrett rejoined the band in 2005 and was first featured on the album Kill, released in March 2006.

Writing for the next album began in November 2007, as presaged in an interview with bassist Alex Webster.[7] Evisceration Plague, Cannibal Corpse's eleventh studio album was released February 3, 2009,[8] to a highly positive response from fans. The band will tour in support of the album in the spring of 2009.

Cannibal Corpse has agreed to perform at the 2010 Wacken Open Air festival held in Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany. This festival includes more than 60 bands and is one of the biggest summer heavy metal tours in the world.[9]

The band recently confirmed having joined the Summer Breeze Open Air metal festival, running from August 19th-21st. The festival features over 50 bands and has brought in 40,000 attendees to Dinkelsbühl, Bavaria, Germany.[10]

Cannibal Corpse will soon kick off a tour for their 2009 album Evisceration Plague. They will be touring around the United States with artists Skeletonwitch, 1349 and Lecherous Nocturne.[11]

Controversy and publicity

Australia

For more details on this topic, see Censorship in 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.[12] At the time, the Australian Recording Industry Association and the Australian Music Retailers Association were implementing a system for identifying potentially offensive records, known as the "labelling code of practice".[13][14]

All ten of Cannibal Corpse's albums, as well as the live album Live Cannibalism, the boxed set 15 Year Killing Spree, the EP Worm Infested, and the single "Hammer Smashed Face", were re-released in Australia between 2006 and 2007, or 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.[15] Despite this, when displayed in some stores, even the "uncensored" editions are censored manually.

Germany

All Cannibal Corpse albums up to and including Tomb of the Mutilated were banned upon release from being sold or displayed in Germany 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.[16] This prohibition was not lifted until June 2006.[16] In a 2004 interview, George Fisher attempted to recall what originally provoked the ban:

A woman saw someone wearing one of our shirts, I think she is a schoolteacher, and she just caused this big stink about it. So [now] we can’t play anything from the first three records. And it really sucks because kids come up and they want us to play all the old songs — and we would — but they know the deal. We can’t play 'Born In a Casket' but can play 'Dismembered and Molested.'[5]

United States

In May 1995, then-US Senator Bob Dole accused Cannibal Corpse—along with hip hop acts like the Geto Boys and 2 Live Crew—of undermining the national character of the United States.[17] A year later, the band came under fire again, this time as part of a campaign by conservative activist William Bennett, Senator Joe Lieberman, then-Senator Sam Nunn, and National Congress of Black Women chair C. Delores Tucker to get major record labels—including Time Warner, Sony, Thorn-EMI, PolyGram and Bertelsmann—to "dump 20 recording groups...responsible for the most offensive lyrics."[18]

Cannibal Corpse also paradoxically enjoyed a brief cameo in the 1994 Jim Carrey film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, performing an abridged version of their song "Hammer Smashed Face." Carrey is apparently a death metal fan and insisted that they perform in the movie.[19]

Responses to critics

Cannibal Corpse at a concert in Innsbruck, February 9, 2009.

Cannibal Corpse prides itself on overtly violent and sexual songs and album artwork as nothing more than an extreme form of over-the-top entertainment. In the film Metal: A Headbangers Journey, George Fisher said death metal is best viewed "as art," and mentioned far more violent art can be found at the Vatican, as such depictions actually happened.[20] Some of Cannibal Corpse's most controversial song titles include "Meat Hook Sodomy," "Necropedophile," and "Fucked With A Knife."[21]

The band's members have a rather lackadaisical approach toward those who criticize their sometimes violent lyrics. George Fisher once said in an interview: "We don't sing about politics. We don't sing about religion...All our songs are short stories that, if anyone would so choose they could convert it into a horror movie. Really, that's all it is. We like gruesome, scary movies, and we want the lyrics to be like that. Yeah, it's about killing people, but it's not promoting it at all. Basically these are fictional stories, and that's it. And anyone who gets upset about it is ridiculous."[22]

In response to accusations his band's music desensitizes 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:

I think people probably aren’t that desensitized to it, you know including myself, like you know, we sing about all this stuff and you watch a movie where you know it’s not real and it’s no big deal, but if you really saw someone get their brains bashed in right in front of you, I think it would have a pretty dramatic impact on any human being you know what I mean? Or some terrible, gross act of violence or whatever done right in front of you, I mean you’d react to it, no matter how many movies you’ve watched or how much gore metal you’ve listened to or whatever, I’m sure it’s a completely different thing when it’s right in front of you. Even though we’ve got crazy entertainment now, our social realities are actually a bit more civilized than they were back then, I mean we’re not hanging people or whipping them in the street and I think that’s positive improvement for any society in my opinion.[23]

He also believes the violent lyrics can have positive values: "It’s good to have anger music as a release."[24]

George Fisher said in 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."[25]

Members

Discography

For a more comprehensive list, see Cannibal Corpse discography.

References

  1. ^ "Cannibal Corpse: 1,000,000 Records Sold". blabbermouth.net. October 14, 2003. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  2. ^ "It's Official: Cannibal Corpse are the Top-Selling death metal Band of the Soundscan Era". blabbermouth.net. November 17, 2003. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  3. ^ "Dawn with Alex Webster". The Metal Web!. 2006. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  4. ^ Briggs, Newt (July 22, 2002). "Cannibal Corpse: Twisted metal". Las Vegas Mercury. Stephens Media Group. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  5. ^ a b Falina, Melanie (February 2004). "Cannibal Corpse Just Wants to Sing About Ripping Apart Human Flesh in Peace". Chicago INNERVIEW. Innerview Media, Inc. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  6. ^ "Talk Today: Cannibal Corpse: Jack Owen". USA Today. Gannett Company. March 22, 2001. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  7. ^ "Cannibal Corpse to begin writing new album in November". blabbermouth.net. Retrieved 2007-03-08.
  8. ^ Rosenbloom, Etan (January 2009). "Cannibal Corpse: Evisceration Plague (New Album)". Prefix. Prefix Media, LLC. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  9. ^ "Wacken Open Air Tour 2010". Metal Call-Out. February 2, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
  10. ^ "Summer Breeze Festival". Metal Call-Out. February 10, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
  11. ^ "Evisceration Plague Tour". Metal Call-Out. February 15, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
  12. ^ Sinnet, Natasha (October 23, 1996). "Censorship and heavy metal". Green Left Weekly. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  13. ^ "How it works" (PDF). What music is your child listening to?. Australian Recording Industry Association. March 2003. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  14. ^ "Labelling Guidelines" (PDF). Labelling code of practice for recorded music containing potentially offensive lyrics and/or themes. Australian Music Retailers Association. March 2003. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  15. ^ "Level 3 Product: 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2007" (PDF). Labelled Titles. Australian Recording Industry Association. April 1, 2007. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  16. ^ a b Watson, Tyler. "Reviews of Cannibal Corpse's "Tomb Of The Mutilated" (1992)". tombofthemutilated.net. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
  17. ^ Weinraub, Bernard (June 1, 1995). "Films and Recordings Threaten Nation's Character, Dole Says". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2009-02-06. 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.
  18. ^ Philips, Chuck (May 31, 1996). "Rap foes put 20 artists on a hit list". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company. Retrieved 2009-02-06. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  19. ^ Violanti, Anthony (February 28, 1994). "Cannibal Corpse Shocks Its Way to the Big Time". The Buffalo News. Retrieved 2009-02-20. The group also appears in the current smash film 'Ace Ventura, Pet Detective'...Jim Carrey, the young comic who stars in the film, is a death metal fan. Although Cannibal Corpse's performance in Pet Detective is the subject of numerous YouTube videos and mentioned on many different websites, it is very difficult to find a reliable source in which the assertion that Carrey was a death metal fan does not appear as a quotation from one of the band members. The Buffalo News article referenced in here is hard to find without knowing the URL, and the complete text is behind a paywall at that. However, by manipulating search terms in Google News that bring up the article, it is possible to divulge exact quotations without paying a membership fee. Here is the Google News result used to generate the preceding quotation.
  20. ^ Metal: A Headbangers Journey (2005, Sam Dunn, director)
  21. ^ Steve Huey. "Cannibal Corpse biography". allmusic.com. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
  22. ^ Fisher, Mark (January 2004). "Interview: George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher - 2004". Mark's Record Reviews. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  23. ^ Wilschick, Aaron (February 15, 2007). "Cannibal Corpse: Interview with bassist Alex Webster". puregrainaudio.com. PureGrain Inc. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  24. ^ "Cannibal Corpse — Alex Webster And George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher". Way Too Loud!. Xtremely Media. October 23, 2007. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
  25. ^ Van Pelt, Doug (April 2004). "What Cannibal Corpse Says". HM: The Hard Music Magazine. HM Magazine.
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