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Before
their sold-out show at the Sheffield Corporation, I had a chance to sit
down and talk with Alex Webster, bass player with death-metal legends
Cannibal Corpse. What follows is an interesting insight into
horror, censorship and still being able to keep things fresh after 20
years in the game.
MM:
So how’s the tour been going and what have you got planned for when
it’s finished?
AW: Everything’s
been going great on this tour, this is show no. 26 out of 28 and the
bulk of it was in continental Europe. Us and Dying Fetus are doing the
whole thing but the continent shows were with Evocation and Obscura and
now we’re here with Annotations (of an Autopsy) and Trigger (the
Bloodshed) for these 5 UK shows and so far it’s been great. Last night
in London was sold out which would be around 1400 people which is really
excellent, our biggest show in London as a headliner so far. We’ve had
some great shows there but they’re normally closer to 700-900 people
and we were quite satisfied with that so to have it be a bit bigger is
really nice. We’ve had a lot of great shows in Europe too, with the
biggest one there being Milan which was over 1,000 people. It’s been
really successful and we’re really happy with it as it’s a full-on
death metal tour and it’s still doing really, really well.
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MM:
How’s the response been to Evisceration Plague since it was
released?
AW:
It’s been really good. As far as sales go it’s been better
than any of the previous records, except for maybe some of the
older ones. I think The
Bleeding (1994) was the best-selling but this one could end
up going past that. It’s been doing really well as far as
critical and fan response goes, I mean there’s a mixture as
there always is of people who like it and people who don’t but
the general response has been quite positive, so we’re happy.
MM:
Are you playing many of the new songs on this tour?
AW: We’re
doing 4 songs from Evisceration
|
| Plague,
3 from Kill, a couple
from Tomb of the
Mutilated, a couple from The
Bleeding and one from every other album which adds up to a
total of 18 songs. |
MM:
Do you ever wonder that there might not be any more ways to kill people
that you haven’t already written about?
AW: Even
if that was the case, although I think it’s pretty limitless, you
could always write a song that’s a variation on that. Like make the
story itself a bit more complicated, like it might be a stabbing but
then you could write about why the guy is stabbing someone and make that
the focal point as opposed to the method of dispatching the person.
MM:
Lemmy once said that he’d never tire of playing ‘Ace of Spades’
because there’s always going to be someone in the crowd at their first
Motörhead show and he’d be pissed if he went to see Chuck Berry and
didn’t hear ‘Johnny B.Goode’. Do you have that same attitude
towards ‘Hammer Smashed Face’?
AW: Yeah,
definitely. And in fact, we were forced to not play that song and others
from our first 3 records at one show we just did in Bavaria because
they’ve re-censored us in that area of Germany so in Munich we could
but there we couldn’t and the show feels quite incomplete without it
really. We’re happy to play it and it gets such a good reaction that
even though we’ve played it a few thousand times, it’s still fun to
play because we know what’s going to happen – all hell’s going to
break loose!
MM:
What do you think of the opening two bands on this tour, making
reference to Annotations of an Autopsy and Trigger the Bloodshed?
AW: I got
to watch a little bit of Trigger... last night but I didn’t get to
watch Annotations...yet. I generally eat dinner and then sleep for about
25 minutes just to rest up before the show and sometimes that will
usually mean I end up missing one band or the other. Hopefully tonight
I’ll get more of a chance to sneak onto the side of the stage and
watch them. When I watched a little of Trigger...they sounded killer,
very fast and I thought they were pretty cool.
MM:
Well this is the second time you’ve played over here this year, how do
you find the UK as a place to come and tour? I noticed there was quite a
long gap between the last time and this year...
AW: We’ve
finally got a booking agent that’s based in England which is a first
for us and he’s interested in bringing us over more often and hitting
some places that we don’t normally go. For many years we’d just do
London, Bradford (at Rio’s) and maybe one other city and then maybe go
to Ireland for a show or two so it was pretty limited. He’s looking to
get us over more often and do more shows which is good because the
reception over here has been great and lots of people have been coming
out to see us and we’ll come over more often if people want us and it
certainly seems like they do!
MM:
What was it like supporting Children of Bodom back in February? Were the
younger crowd that Bodom bring in familiar with a lot of your material?
AW: Some
were, some weren’t and that was the whole point really – to play in
front of people who might not know who we are or who had only heard the
name and it worked out really well to play with them and get the word
out to a younger audience about what we’re about. Children of Bodom by
the way were great to tour with, they have a great crew and they’re
very cool people – gave us a sound check every night, treated us very
well. They’re a good band to open for, not every band is, but they
are.
MM:
For you personally, who were the big bands for you when you were
starting out and made you want to do this for a living?
AW: Well I
never thought I’d be able to do this for a living, that just kind of
happened. It seemed like such a far out dream, especially if you know
where I come from. I’m not from the city, I’m from the country,
outside of Buffalo. I lived in Buffalo for a couple of years when I was
going to college but before that I lived in the country – me and Jack
Owen and the drummer from our first band, Darren – and it seemed
impossible to think that we could ever do this for a living. The bands
we listened to are probably the same as all the other guys our age
listened to who are into black metal or death metal – the bands from
the beginning like Celtic Frost, Slayer, Possessed, Kreator. We listened
to a lot of Kreator, Sodom, Sacrifice, stuff that people call ‘thrash
metal’ but it’s not ‘thrash’ in the same sense as the really
precise, politically-charged stuff. It’s more like the evil kind. And
when I say Kreator, I’d say it was their first two records that
influenced us more than the other ones. The other ones are good but the
first two were more death-metal.
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The
thrash that had more evil themes and darker sounding riffing was
what we were inspired by and I’ve got to throw Dark Angel in
there too. A lot of those bands had a more death-metal type
vocal and the music was already death metal in that it was dark,
aggressive, had tremolo-picking, things like that.
To me,
quintessential thrash is more the galloping-style picking like
early Metallica, or Anthrax, Exodus, Testament, who are all
great bands but they’re not really the ones that inspired as
much as the ones I mentioned before.
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MM:
Following on from that, when you guys formed in the ‘80’s, the
heaviest music around was pretty much the ‘thrash’ bands. What
made you want to not do that and create something heavier?
AW: We
were into tape-trading, me and Jack in particular and we would write
away to people and get other things. We knew there was something heavier
out there and we certainly didn’t invent death metal. Death was
already out there and I had their Scream
Bloody Gore album and Napalm Death had already put out Scum,
which although is classed as Grindcore, it had a lot of similarities
to death metal and then we heard the Morbid Angel demo and that had a
pretty big impact on us. So even before we formed Cannibal Corpse, we
were well aware of stuff that you would call ‘death metal’ by
today’s standards and I think it’s the nature of this kind of music
to try and one-up the stuff you’re listening to and say ‘yeah this
is heavy but let’s see if we can go heavier’ which is what all bands
do, even to this day. Now you’ve got the younger bands who are trying
to go faster, heavier and more extreme be it with the lyrics or the
speed or the technicality and it’s good because it keeps things moving
along. I think if everyone were satisfied with the way things were, then
it would just be stagnant and every band would just sound like a band
from the ‘80’s and I don’t think you want that, I think you need
to keep things fresh.
MM:
You touched on this a little earlier but when you were starting out,
were you expecting the whole censorship stuff that you’ve had to deal
with?
AW: Well,
I didn’t think about the lyrics that much, to be honest. At the time,
we didn’t pay that much attention to it. I’d read the lyrics once
after Chris (Barnes, original Cannibal Corpse vocalist) wrote them and
think ‘ok, cool, that’s brutal, whatever’. He’d bring them up to
practice and after that we didn’t really understand them because they
were so guttural so it wasn’t something we focused on; we didn’t
have choruses as such where we would remember the lyrics. I don’t
really know the lyrics on the first few records, to be honest – I
never really sat down and read them that intently and if you ask the
other guys, they’d probably say the same, other than George (Fisher,
current vocalist) of course because he’s had to learn the songs. I was
always more focused on the music so when the censorship stuff started
happening I thought ‘wow, we’ve must have written something really
grotesque if it’s really bothering people’ but we certainly didn’t
foresee it and it was just something we had to deal with and we dealt
with it.
MM:
Were you particularly surprised a ban was implemented in Germany given
that Europe has historically had quite a liberal attitude towards art
and music, compared to the States, perhaps?
AW: Yeah,
it definitely is more liberal in many ways. But it only takes a few
people with an authoritarian streak to create some trouble and I think
that’s what happened with one person in particular over in Germany
with this lady who just seems bound and determined to censor bands like
us. And as far as I know, she’s from this ultra-left liberal party
like the Green Party or someone like that so it does seem a bit
contradictory that she would be so interested in censoring something. I
could be wrong about her political orientation, I’m not sure, but
it’s surprising definitely. What I’ve noticed and this is a sweeping
generalisation so take from this what you will, but it does seem like in
Germany and other European countries, they’re much more permissive
when it comes to sexual content and not so much with the violence
whereas in America it’s the other way around. You would never
see these magazines with the girls with their tits out just sitting
there in the store, you would never see that in America, it’s always
got to be covered, whereas extreme violence in media is pretty
acceptable in America. Nobody seems to care what we’re up to,
occasionally you’ll hear a politician squawk about it but they’ve
made no serious effort to implement any kind of restriction on us.
MM:
Yeah, I remember when we went to Wacken and we stayed in Hamburg, every
bar was a strip club, every shop was a sex shop and there were brothels
and it was totally acceptable...
AW: We
have a lot of strip joints in America but definitely no brothels other
than in Nevada where it’s been legalised. It’s really strange
because you can have a lot of really progressive things happening in the
States and then a lot of Conservative things at the same time, it’s a
big country with a lot of different people. I mean, you’ve got the
porn industry out in California and then just a state or two over, you
have Utah where you’re not even allowed to sell hardcore porn anywhere
in the state. They’re only a thousand miles away, but they’re worlds
apart.
MM:
It’s interesting you say a ‘thousand miles’ like it’s nothing
whereas in the UK, just going a few hundred miles to London is a really
big deal for us...
AW:
That’s one thing I’ve noticed in Europe. Like, anything that’s
within 300 miles from me, I consider driveable, if I can get there
within a few hours or within a day it’s no problem. It seems like a
reasonable thing to do but then again, we don’t tax the gas very much
over there which is why everyone drives big vehicles that burn a lot of
gas because we can afford it, whereas if our prices went up to what
yours are, we’d probably be driving a lot less or tiny cars!
MM:
Yeah, a lot of American bands say one of the nice things about touring
here is that they don’t have to just get straight on the bus and go
because the next city is maybe only an hour away or something like
that...
AW: Yeah,
that’s true and tonight, we’ll be here for a few hours. But it’s
funny, like you said, some guys think that they can’t go to a show if
it’s 3 hours drive away whereas in the States, we have some fans that
always go to certain shows. They’re from either Virginia or North
Carolina but if we’re in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Virginia or maybe even Tennessee, we’ll see them. If it’s within a 5
or 6 hour drive, they’re there and it’s no big deal for them and
they’re covering hundreds of miles to see these gigs whereas that
doesn’t really happen here where everyone is much more used to having
shows come to their city.
MM:
Going back to the ban in Germany, when the original ban was lifted, how
did it feel being able to play songs there that you’d not been able to
play before?
AW: It
felt good at the big festivals to be able to play ‘Hammer Smashed
Face’ and the other old songs, it definitely felt like a victory.
Hopefully it’s not a short-lived victory, like I said, problems have
reared their head over there again but we’ll just keep doing the best
we can and hopefully we can evade any more censorship problems, we’ll
see what happens.
MM:
On the last couple of albums, it’s been noted that the artwork has
been toned down. Was that a conscious decision or was it just something
that happened naturally?
AW: It’s
a little bit of both really. We do love the really gory-looking stuff
but at the same time, should we do it just because we’re supposed to
or should we make a cover that we actually want? My two favourite album
covers are Butchered at Birth because
it is the best of the gory ones and the Gallery
of Suicide censored cover because it’s a really dark building and
I just really like the colours on it. For us, I think it’s more
natural to have a darker, more creepier-looking cover and it certainly
does make it easier to get the album into record stores but we know our
fans want gory stuff and we like it too so we tried to find a way around
that and put gorier stuff on the interior and have the cover be a darker
and more serious thing.
Censorship
notwithstanding, we just tend to like a darker, grimmer and more
simplistic cover. It doesn’t always make for as cool a t-shirt as some
of the more lurid ones, but it’s one of those things in that, who are
we making the album cover for? Are we making it for ourselves or to meet
expectations of what we’ve done in the past? And when you’ve got 5
guys in the band, not everyone’s going to have the same opinion but
I’m pretty happy at how they’ve turned out. I’d like to have one
that’s really dark and eerie-looking and maybe disturbing somehow.
Hopefully for the next one we can gel creatively with Vince (Locke,
artwork-designer for the band) on that and get something perfect.
The last couple have been
cool but I’d really like to see something that nails it completely.
It’s tough because I have no contact with him, it’s just Paul (Marzurkiewicz,
Cannibal Corpse drummer) and we give him an idea and he comes up with
something. We like to give him a lot of creative control and people talk
to us about the album covers and I just think ‘I’m not a painter,
you know?’ We do suggest things but ultimately we like to let Vince
draw what he wants.
MM:
Yeah and when Kill came
out, I thought that because it wasn’t the usual album cover, it made
people want to delve into the record more and intrigued people...
AW: Yeah,
definitely. I personally love that cover and that was just done by Brian
Ames at Metal Blade. Me and him went back and forth talking about what
we wanted and how the band wanted it to look. We were a little more
involved with that one, obviously it’s a font with some slight
alterations to make it look more interesting, it’s got a lot of
colours that we like, a lot dark-black and dark-red and it works well
because it’s a simple word. Obviously you wouldn’t want to do the
same cover with ‘Evisceration Plague’ for example, it would look
stupid but for ‘Kill’ it worked well and I think it’s a killer
album cover. Some people didn’t like it and just wanted another cover
like Butchered at Birth or Tomb
of the Mutilated and I understand that but at the end of the day
it’s our album and we should put a cover on it that we like. I mean,
we like those old covers too but we already did those albums.
MM:
Well my final question is, as a member of Cannibal Corpse, what is your
favourite horror film of all time?
AW: ‘The
Shining’. There’s actually a version over here that’s cut a bit
and not for violence either but for time reasons but I like the full
version. And I hate the remake too. That was where Stephen King was more
involved and it was closer to the book but it really didn’t do it for
me. Stanley Kubrick is just the best, I mean, his movies have the best
atmosphere of any movies. All of his movies are favourites of mine –
‘Clockwork Orange’, ‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘The Shining’ and
‘2001’ – just for the atmosphere. ‘The Shining’ is incredibly
creepy and that’s what I like. For me, that’s what horror is.
I like the splatter
movies and I know that’s what I’m supposed to say, but if you’re
watching a splatter movie and you’re laughing, it’s not the same as
watching a truly creepy horror movie that might indeed include violence
like when Jack Nicholson puts the axe into Carruthers, it’s much more
effective than if there had been 100 such acts throughout the movie with
blood splattered everywhere. And I love ‘Hostel’. The first one I
thought was amazing, whereas the second one I thought explained too
much.
In horror I think
explaining too much is not a good thing. Part of the fear is wondering
what the enemy is about. For example in ‘The Shining’ you wonder
what the evil thing is. Is it the house? Is it possessed? I don’t
believe in the supernatural but I love supernatural movies, when
they’re presented in a realistic way. I love ‘The Exorcist’ too
because they’re both presented in a way that involves real people
leading normal lives and then something incredibly awful involving the
supernatural happens to them and that to me is frightening.
MM:
Yeah I agree and you get people who diss ‘The Exorcist’ and say
it’s tame by today’s standards and really, they’re missing the
point...
AW: Yeah,
totally. It’s like, so what? Do they need a few more gallons of pea
soup to be frightening? That’s not the point at all. If it’s more
frightening than modern horror movies then it’s still more effective.
You could have gallons and gallons of blood in a movie and it still not
be as frightening as ‘The Exorcist’ or ‘The Shining’.
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MM:
Do you sometimes use death scenes from movies for lyrical
inspiration or does it just come from the imagination?
AW:
Just the imagination really. We’ll just be thinking of
something and a lot of the time the song title just gets made up
at band practice and we’re not thinking about movies. But that
said, I’m sure we wouldn’t have these things in our
imagination if we hadn’t watched these gory movies. I don’t
think we’d just be able to conjure this shit out of thin air,
you know? It’s got to come from somewhere and it might not be
any one particular thing. It’s the same thing with music too I
think. You’ll write a riff and think it sounds good but why
does it sound good? It might Sound ever so slightly like
something that |
| you listened to many years
ago that you don’t remember or it might be a similar idea. You
can’t just make up this kind of music in a vacuum, it had to
build upon itself. You have Sabbath to Priest and Iron Maiden
and then on to Metallica, Slayer, Kreator to Morbid Angel, us
and so on. Everybody gets inspired with what came before them.
It wouldn’t have been possible to create something so gory 100
years ago for example. Even in literature, like Stephen King’s
horror is far more graphic than Edgar Allen Poe. |
MM:
Cool. Well good luck for tonight and we really appreciate you taking the
time out to do this.
AW: No
problem, man. It was great talking to you. Thanks.
Interview by: Adam G. |