CANNIBAL CORPSE Drummer Defends Band's Violent Lyrical Imagery

Paul Mazurkiewicz has defended CANNIBAL CORPSE's infamously violent lyrics and artwork, saying that people who take exception to the band's brutal and bestial imagery are overreacting.

The Florida-based death metal outfit has long been criticized for its graphic lyrical topics, with some detractors claiming the group's albums desensitize people to violence.

During a recent appearance on "The Metal Podcast", the drummer, who has co-written CANNIBAL CORPSE's lyrics since original singer Chris Barnes's departure from the group, was asked how he would feel if a female attending one of the band's concerts walked away being offended by CANNIBAL CORPSE's songs that deal with sexual aggression against women.

"For us, we just do our thing, I guess," he said (hear audio below). "We don't even really think about any of these issues or the mentality of that. I don't know. We just write our songs. Some have a little bit more brutality, I guess, towards women. It doesn't seem to be a lot more in the newer albums than the older stuff. But I don't know… I think girls know what they're getting into, if they're going [to a death metal concert]. If you're a female into death metal, you know the mentality of the music and what it's about and all that. So I would think most girls that are going to see death metal are into it and not just gonna go to do something and then go and be offended because whatever something about women is going on here. I think it seems like a lot of it's just an overreaction and blown out of proportion, maybe, a litte bit. I just wanna play death metal."

Mazurkiewicz did acknowledge that his lyrical style has evolved away from the blunt shock/splatter approach that he took in the band's earlier years. "A little bit," he said. "I mean, there's gonna be different mentalities. But then again, I still look at it as, 'Hey, we're CANNIBAL CORPSE,' and I look at, when I'm writing lyrics… I don't think of these things daily; it's not who I am as a person, so I know I'm delving into another world myself, of course, having to write these lyrics, because they're just not me. They come out of me and I'm happy for the stories that I create and all that, but, like I said, they're not me, because I'm not just sitting around, 'Well, this is what I do and think about every day.' I mean, I don't.

"I may write a song [now] that [I would say], 'Maybe I wouldn't have written this fifteen years ago; it's a little tame,' or what have you, or whatever," he continued. "But then, in particular, I wrote a song on the new album [the forthcoming 'Red Before Black'] called 'Remaimed', and it's pretty brutal. When you read the lyrics to that, you're gonna go, 'Oh, well, maybe it doesn't matter he's got a family and children. He's writing some pretty brutal stuff here.'"

Paul added: "You're always morphing and mentally, you're gonna change a little bit in those ways. And definitely, I've changed since having a child and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, we just do what we do, and I just wanna write a good story when it comes down to it. And some songs maybe call for being a little more blunt than others. But, yeah, it's a little bit of a different mentality, I guess, but overall, of course, it's always gonna be horror-themed, always gonna be gore, always gonna be brutal in some way."

"Red Before Black" will be released on November 3. The follow-up to 2014's "A Skeletal Domain" was recorded at Mana Recording Studios in Saint Petersburg, Florida with producer/engineer Erik Rutan (SOILENT GREEN, BELPHEGOR, HATE ETERNAL),who previously worked with CANNIBAL CORPSE on 2006's "Kill", 2009's "Evisceration Plague" and 2012's "Torture".