CANNIBAL CORPSE: 'We Listen To SLAYER So Much That The Influence Is Probably Very Pervasive'

Tom Murphy of Westword recently conducted an interview with bassist Alex Webster of Florida death metallers CANNIBAL CORPSE. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Westword: Did your latest album get banned in Germany or anywhere else right away and do you know why Germany and Australia lifted their respective bans on your previous albums?

Alex Webster: As far as I know, things are okay in Australia these days. Even though we're in the band and you'd think we'd keep up with that sort of thing, we don't really keep up with any of it, unless it affects us directly while we're on tour. With Germany, we do have problems with some of our older releases, but with "Evisceration Plague", nothing so far. But in certain parts of Germany, Bavaria in particular, the local government will insist that we don't play certain songs. But most of Germany is alright. I guess with any law you can interpret it in a number of ways. Some of the areas of Germany will interpret the music censorship laws they have a little more strictly than others. In general it's been okay, though, and we've been able to play whatever we want. The last time we played Munich, we had to cut a number of songs from the set, but a couple of years before, no problem. It comes and goes. It seems a little capricious to me but I suppose they have their reasons.

Westword: The picture in the middle of the lyric booklet is incredibly evocative. When did you first start working with Vince Locke, what drew you to his work and do you ever give him any direction on the artwork?

Alex Webster: We first got interested in Vince Locke because of this comic book Deathworld that he did in the late '80s and early '90s. It was a zombies taking over the world type of thing. Our original singer, Chris Barnes, contacted Vince and he was involved with our very first album. He's done artwork either for the interior or the cover for every album we've done since then. Vince is great. The kind of art he does is right up our alley, so it's really a no brainer to use him. He's perfect. We don't have to coach him that much. He kind of knows what we want. We'll generally give him song titles and let him go for it from there, when we ask him for a piece of art. We maybe give him the lyrics as well and say, "Hey, do your thing." We don't give him that much direction.

Westword: Paul Mazurkiewicz said that he had all but reinvented his playing style for your latest album. Was that shift a result of a change in songwriting and what effect did that have on the rhythmic dynamic of the band?

Alex Webster: I think the big change for Paul was playing along to a click track and practicing with a metronome for the entire seven or eight month period leading up to the recording of the album. I think it made a difference. I did work out a lot of the drum parts in my songs for him. The drum parts for Rob [Barrett] and [Pat O'Brien's] songs, they worked out a little more the old fashioned way. I just programmed a bunch of drums, and Paul played very similar parts to what I programmed. That stuff I just programmed to play at home or whatever. I certainly give Paul free rein to play what he wants. Though, generally, what he played was really close, but he added his own little stuff here and there. I think the writing style is similar. This album still sounds like a CANNIBAL CORPSE album but probably it's a little tighter. When you're constantly practicing to a click track in your headphones in the background, you start to internalize that click. So what I've noticed now is that when we play live, those songs we practiced that way all sound extremely tight. And his meter is really good on those in particular. That's how I've been practicing at home for years. Just put on a metronome and practice with that to help develop my timing. So when you take the metronome away you still have better timing. I think it's a useful tool for any musician.

Westword: Why was SLAYER such a big influence on you and your band? I listened to "Evisceration Plague" closely last night and "Skewered From Ear to Eye" is really reminiscent of "Angel of Death".

Alex Webster: Oh really? I never thought of it like that, but honestly we listen to SLAYER so much that the influence is probably very pervasive. It's nothing intentional, but if there are some parts in that song that reminded you of SLAYER, it's probably something that happened accidentally. "Reign in Blood" is one of the greatest albums ever. I love "Hell Awaits", too, so that kind of stuff, I just listened to it so much at a very important time in my life as a musician when I was first starting out. That stuff got embedded in my brain, I guess. The other thrash bands were good, but they didn't have that dark sound that SLAYER had. I think that the dark sound that SLAYER had is why they're such an influence on the death metal scene. Because that, to me, is one of the big things, far beyond the vocal stuff, that makes death metal different from regular thrash is the effort to make it sound dark. And SLAYER had that. So many SLAYER songs could be death metal songs if Tom had a different vocal style. I know they had a big impact on us, and I know we're not the only death metal band they impacted.

Read the entire interview from Westword.

Austria's Stormbringer.at webzine conducted an interview with Alex Webster at this year's Way Of Darkness festival, which was held October 2-3, 2009 in Lichtenfels, Germany. Watch the chat below.