Who on this wretched, godforsaken earth could have imagined a way for Cannibal Corpse to age gracefully? Probably not the label head at Metal Blade, who admits to signing the Buffalo death metal band in 1989 mostly because they had a song on their demo called “A Skull Full of Maggots.” And likely not Jim Carrey, who asked them to appear in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective after spotting their gruesome album cover in a shop and becoming fascinated. And definitely not the conservative pundits who, as they ascended to cult stardom in the 1990s, positioned their shocking song titles alongside hip-hop as everything wrong with pop culture.
Even within Cannibal Corpse, things were touch and go for a while. Less than 10 years into their existence, they parted ways with vocalist and lyricist Chris Barnes, whose horror-film obsession helped define their sound and image. In his absence, founding members Alex Webster and Paul Mazurkiewicz were adamant about evolving: They replaced Barnes with George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher—to this day, their headbanging frontman and lovable avatar—and worked toward a less immediately provocative and slightly more subtle approach. Or as Webster pinpoints it in Joel McIver’s biography Bible of Butchery, “Maybe the difference between a hatchet to the genitals and a hatchet to the head.”
Of course, this guidance-counselor-worthy wisdom would be useless if Cannibal Corpse didn’t have the music to back it up. And with guitarist and producer Erik Rutan, they have recorded some of their strongest material in the 21st century, settling into a position as death metal’s best-selling band and its most resilient. In this sense, Rutan has been their Rick Rubin, a seasoned outsider helping a legacy act evolve by distilling their work to its raw essence. Even the titles of these later albums, after landmarks like Tombs of the Mutilated and Butchered at Birth, sound like takeaways from a meditative group exercise: Kill. Torture. Inhale; exhale.
Maybe this is why the introduction of Rutan as a band member feels so seamless. Their 15th album, Violence Unimagined, is their first since he replaced longtime guitarist Pat O’Brien after a 2017 arrest. (Breaking and entering; firearms and human skulls—it’s a long, strange story.) Where O’Brien could be counted on to provide the most diabolical and intricate moments on previous Cannibal Corpse albums, Rutan takes a more streamlined approach. His first songwriting contributions to the band are chugging, heavy, and maybe even ...timely? One is called “Condemnation Contagion” and it seems to be about living through a global pandemic when you already have germaphobic tendencies. Open up the pit and scream along: “Mandatory quarantine ENFORCED.”
Minus a few stray lines, the thematic concerns of Violence Unimagined are something you will only glean from the lyric sheet, which, even for the most devoted fans, has never exactly been required reading. Imposing and inimitable, Corpsegrinder has one of death metal’s most singular voices, clustering syllables into a retching iambic pentameter that leaves you absorbing maybe every other line. Take the highlight “Murderous Rampage,” where the title keys you into the fact that he’s singing from the perspective of a vengeful serial killer. And yet, the few phrases you can make out—“foul odors,” “brutal ways to DIE,” “no FUCKING reason”—mostly just communicate a state of mind: Pure rage, total chaos. He could just as easily be venting about an especially miserable day at the office.
So while Violence Unimagined ranks as a top tier late-era Cannibal Corpse record, its triumphs are somewhat understated. It features plenty of impressive turns from drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz and some particularly inspired songs from guitarist Rob Barrett (“Murderous Rampage,” “Inhumane Harvest”). It is also at least their third studio album that feels like a conscious restart, which is impressive but also makes it harder to stand out in their catalog. At this point, they have become like the death metal Rolling Stones: iconic, verging on cartoonish, but always reliable. While some of their ’90s peers have crafted more memorable returns (Carcass’ Surgical Steel) and more artful ones (Gorguts’ Colored Sands), no death metal band maintains such a pure, vibrant energy, resulting in music that plays like an ecstatic tribute to their own unlikely endurance.
Buy: Rough Trade
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