Cannibal Corpse: Then And Now

I’ve mentioned before that I was more of a fan of the old school Cannibal Corpse with Chris Barnes. The fact is that I obviously haven’t heard enough new Cannibal Corpse with George Fisher. I’ve heard couple of songs here and there but I haven’t sat down and listened to a full album of Cannibal Corpse since the 90’s. Oh how naive I can be!

The new Cannibal Corpse Evisceration Plague may not be anything really progressing for CC, but it’s a solid death metal album. Is it better than Kill? Honestly, after giving both albums a good listen, it’s about the same. I honestly think Cannibal Corpse is one of those bands that you can’t really see progress from album to album, but you can see progress over a period of time. The biggest problem with trying to look at progress with bands that have been around a long time is that you have to take production technology into consideration. Production in the early days of veteran extreme metal bands lacked. The mixing sucked and getting everything to blend well in the genre was difficult. These days it’s much easier to record and get a good polished sound on a death metal record.

While I still dig Chris Barnes, I’m liking George Fisher a lot more because of vocal clarity. Back in the days of Barnes, you knew he was saying some gory shit, but you could rarely understand most of what he was saying on most songs. What I have also noticed is that the bass guitar on older CC albums was much more punchy and evident. The guitars sound less cloudy on the newer albums and the solos make a huge difference. In other words, old school CC sounds like old school death metal and new CC sounds like modern Death metal. While the old school is still great in it’s own right, the new brings better sound quality that I appreciate.

I started out writing this as a review of Evisceration Plague but it just started turning in to a comparison of Cannibal Corpse of old and new. So I have a great new outlook on a band that I haven’t liked in years due to my own ignorance and stubbornness. If you want my take on Cannibal Corpse’ Evisceration Plague, then I say go get it if you’re a Cannibal Corpse fan of old or new. It’s not new, ground breaking death metal but it’s definitely worth a listen and praise. Still brutal, still heavy and still good enough to keep Cannibal Corpse relevant in a time when a million other shitty death metal/core bands are trying to take over the scene and knowing nothing about it. Their feet are still planted firmly in the blood, guts and gore that they’ve been singing about for the last 21 years.

First Image: Rockabilia.com, Second image: Amazon.com.