Music

Cannibal Corpse On AUX TV's HARD

by Theo Kapodistrias

Death metal pioneers Cannibal Corpse recently stopped in Toronto to play a show at the Sound Academy and to promote their new record Evisceration Plague. Cannibal Corpse’s bassist Alex Webster was kind enough to let AUX into their tour bus and to take the time to chat to us about the band’s new record, their history of confrontations with the censorship groups and people’s perceptions of the band.

Alex Webster started off by talking about what the band was trying to accomplish with their 11^th studio album. “With this album there was nothing really that different about it as far as the goal,” said Webster. “We’ve always wanted to make the best death metal records we could and to try and make each new record to be the heaviest one if possible.”

Due to the band’s popularity, Cannibal Corpse has been in constant strife with censors in regards to their violent content—a fight that has not diminished throughout the band’s 20 plus year long career.  “Something I can say for sure is that the censorship has done nothing but give us publicity. There have been a few cases where it has kept us from playing a couple of cities in Germany and we’ve had to censor our set list and take out some songs that were found to be unacceptable.”

Alex continued about their persistent problems with Germany’s censorship board. “Germany is where we normally have the problems, but we do incredibly well in Germany, so it hasn’t had the effect that the censors probably desired which would be to hamper the band’s career and hopefully make us give up. It has had the opposite effect. It made us want to fight harder to do what we do and I think it also attracted attention to the band.”

Though the band still quarrels with morality groups to this day, Webster is optimistic that a shift in the cultural climate will allow Cannibal Corpse the freedom to create art without harassment. “You’re going to start to have politicians who are guys that grew up listening to Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden, so they’re not going to be quite as fazed by extremities in music the way guys who grew up with Perry Como would be fazed by it.”

Webster finished by talking about the shift in people’s perception of band’s violent lyrics and imagery. “I think people now get it more—they’re like ‘there’s a band…and they’re making horror in the same way a movie maker makes horror’. It is not something where we’re espousing the kind of behavior that happens in the songs. I think that has become more clear as the years have gone by and people have seen interviews with us where we say that we’re totally not into violence at all as far as it actually happening, but in a fantastic horror setting it is interesting.”

You can catch a full video interview with Alex Webster of Cannibal Corpse on AUX, tonight at 10:00 pm followed by the HARD video flow at 10:30.