CANNIBAL CORPSE

ALEX WEBSTER

Since their 1990 debut album ‘Eaten Back To Life’, Cannibal Corpse haVE been at the forefront of the Death Metal scene as true innovators, who have become the best selling Death Metal band of the Billboard Soundscan Era in the process. Now in 2021, their brutal legacy continues to grow with the release of their fifteenth studio album VIOLENCE UNIMAGINED.

MetalTalk spoke to Alex Webster, cofounding member, songwriter and bassist for the legendary band about the making of the album.

MetalTalk: I am curious if you have a general process that you follow when writing songs with each album, or is it different depending on the situation?

Alex Webster: You know, lately it has been kind of the same the past two or three albums, where I get an idea “ok, I am going to write four songs for this album”, and each of these have to be different.

How can I make them different from one another? So I’ll start out by picking a tempo, usually just to kind of break the ice with the writing. Maybe 200 BPM or something, and then pick a scale I might want to start with the riff, and then pick a rhythmic idea.

Maybe the song will be in 5/4 instead of 4/4, something like that and just kind of dig into that way. So if that all works out, I’ll have a song written in a few weeks or whatever, and when it’s time for the next one, I’ll be sure to not use the same tempo, rhythm or scale, with the goal being to make sure that my songs that I contribute to the album are quite different from each other.

I feel like that is a key thing in making a great album, is having each song be pretty different.

Obviously, the lyrics and imagery are a big part of Death Metal in general and you are a big horror movie fan.

Were there any specific movies or anything that inspired the lyrics that you wrote?

Or is it just at this point, you have this well of movie knowledge and inspiration from other sources, that you are just sort of “well that sounds cool”?

Yeah, it is more that actually. A lot of times I will start writing something, come up with an idea and about halfway through I will sort of remember, “oh this is kind of like this movie”.

Like for example, Surround, Kill, Devour. I started writing that, and actually part of the inspiration for that was a pretty well publicized news story from last year. Some wolves actually surrounded an elk and ate it up at a national park.

Just the idea that teamwork, the song is not about wolves [laughs], it is about human cannibals. But just the idea of that very primitive but effective teamwork that wolves and other animals utilize. That was the inspiration for that song.

So there was that little element, “ok, this is going to be about some postapocalyptic cannibals hunting people”.

And it occurred to me while I was writing that this is kind of like The Road too. Inspiration is not always as direct as would be assumed, I guess. I don’t remember ever sitting down and being like “I’m going to write a song about this movie.” It has never been like that for me. There is, you know,

‘influence soup’ in my head like every other artist and musician has, I guess, various different things from, sometimes, some fairly unlikely places add up to the direction you end up taking in a song.

And to tie in with the imagery, of course, are the album covers which are always very visually striking, memorable and sometimes controversial.

Vince Locke, the artist, has done the album cover for each one. I am curious to find out where the concept of Violence Unimagined came from.

Does the band play any role in the concept of the album cover or is it just sort of like “here is the title, what have you got?”

It is usually “here is the title, what have you got!” That is how it has been most of the time.

There have been a couple times where we went to Vince and we actually had a little bit of a concept or a rough idea and told him to try and come up with something coming from that direction, you know, the direction we gave him. But we found the best way is to just let him loose and do his own thing, because he is a very creative person.

He gets gore and he gets what our band is about. You know, cannot overstate how important Vince has been for the visual presentation of Cannibal Corpse. I mean, he is our artist. He really has defined how our band is presented visually. Like the albums, the merchandise and all things like that. It has just been perfect. It has been a perfect combination.

Now obviously with COVID-19 it changes plans when the album comes out. Normally I am sure you would launch the tour and that is not a possibility, at least immediately following the release of the album.

Has there been any talks in the band about any other ideas, in terms of maybe a one-off performance, or a live stream, or any other kind of virtual fan events?

We will see, maybe a livestream later this year. Me being over here on the other side of the country of course, creates a situation that we have to consider, safety wise with travel and everything.

But I would think by the fall, it would be good to go for a livestream at the very least.

And hopefully, things start to get a little bit closer to normal by that time. We would like to be able to tour by 2022, but a livestream is something that we are looking into.

It is not our first choice, you know, we really just want to get back in the clubs and start playing. That is what we want to do, as do literally tens of thousands of other bands.

It will come back. It is just a matter of time. We just have to wait and do it in the safest, most responsible way possible.

So probably no live shows this year, other than maybe a livestream later in the year and then hopefully in 2022 things can start going again. We will see.

• BRANDON METALLICAST