CANNIBAL CORPSE's PAUL MAZURKIEWICZ: 'We're Constantly Trying To Better Ourselves'

Anthony Toto of Pop-Break.com recently conducted an interview with drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz of Florida death metallers CANNIBAL CORPSE. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Pop-Break.com: The countdown for [the new CANNIBAL CORPSE album] "A Skeletal Domain" is drawing near. Talk about CANNIBAL CORPSE's creative ambition in 2014 and what keeps the excitement alive to keep recording LPs?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: I mean, it's our love of music, really. Here we are exactly, our thirteen album is about come out in September and it's called "A Skeletal Domain". We've been around for 25 years now so I think it's our love for playing CANNIBAL CORPSE style of death metal. It's as simple as that. We obviously experienced some success, which is great, of course. We're able to tour across the world and make a living off the band, so I think that definitely gives you inspiration as well. Like I said earlier, it's our love for the music; otherwise we wouldn't be doing this.

Pop-Break.com: What were you looking to accomplish musically on "A Skeletal Domain"? How does it balance with your older material or more recent records?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: I like to say it's the next chapter in the story of CANNIBAL CORPSE. You're allotted a timeframe to create some music and there are deadlines so you have to get things done in a certain manner. We like to do the best we can at any given point. Whether we're refining our sound or working on our instruments, we're constantly trying to better ourselves. So, really, those are our goals and aspirations these days. It's not to get complacent or go through the motions, which we never did. For some reason, during the last ten years, the music has come together pretty well and our best records have arguably been happening now as opposed to earlier in our career. We're very fortunate and lucky. Let's say you talk to talk to 20 different fans and ask them about their favorite CANNIBAL CORPSE record; each one might give you different answer, which is good. It shows that we're not resting on one album like some other bands might do, so we try to better ourselves as a band constantly.

Pop-Break.com: Sometimes fans tend to exaggerate their concerns, like those who were distraught about your choice to collaborate with [producer] Mark [Lewis on the new album]. For a band like CANNIBAL CORPSE, how do you satisfy your own creative expectations without hearing the chatter from your fanbase?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: As long as we're writing songs as CANNIBAL CORPSE, that's all that matters. People will always talk and be like, "Oh my gosh, Mark Lewis? I hope they don't wind up sounding like a nu-metal band or turn metalcore." Just because he worked with some of those bands doesn't mean we're going to all of a sudden become one of those bands. We're CANNIBAL CORPSE and we're going to write our music. Mark captured what we were doing and he did it well. All that nonsense is ridiculous. When it comes down it, wait 'till you hear the music because than you're going to say, "Oh, it sounds great." These are CANNIBAL songs and there's no way that you're going to hear this record and think this sounds like anything else besides us. As long as we do our thing, we'll be all right in the end and everything will be at peace. [laughs]

Read the entire interview at Pop-Break.com.