Twenty years is a long time for any band to be making music, but even more so for a Death Metal band. Many bands have tried to duplicate them but have failed miserably. They're incapable of being cloned, and amen to that. CANNIBAL CORPSE have put out 110% into every single year they've been in existence, so it comes as no surprise that they would decide to put out a career-spanning DVD chronicling the year's they've spent in this robust Death Metal institution, and as bassist Alex Webster explains to METALEATER, no stone is left unturned.

Let's talk about your new live DVD, "Centuries Of Torment". It has a lot of content for a DVD.

"Yeah, I mean the DVD - at least down in America - is $25, so that's a little more than the average DVD, but it's also a three-DVD set, and the whole thing totals out to be 7 hours and 20 minutes. So if you really like CANNIBAL CORPSE, it's a lot of good material. You know, it's something for people who like our band and wanna check out a whole bunch of stuff having to do with us, 'cause as much as there's a lot of live stuff on there, the real focus of the DVD is the behind-the-scenes type footage and the history of the band, which is really extensive and beyond anything we've done before. It's very detailed. The history of the band is something like three hours, but I can say that I don't think it's boring and nobody that I've talked to thinks it's boring, even though it is pretty long. I mean, you might wanna watch half of it one night and half of it next - like kinda do the (Chris) Barnes half first and the (George) Fisher half second, 'cause three hours... that's like Lord Of The Rings or something. That's quite a commitment. But it's all interesting I think. I guess after 20 years there should be something interesting to talk about (laughs), you know. We were able to fill a good three hours and keep it interesting. I should definitely take this time to credit Denise Korycki, the film maker who made this DVD. I mean she really did all the work on this. She did all the editing and she's the one who went all over the place getting these great interviews with everybody. So she's the one who deserves all the credit for making it what it is."

Did you guys hand-pick the material yourselves or did you work with Metal blade on that, or something different?

"It was us working with Denise, really. We gave her as much material as we could find as far as live material goes, and what she wanted to do is have... each little live clip could represent one time in the band's history, and we put a lot more material from the recent years on there 'cause as much as it's a history DVD - and it's also about our band and our current band - we wanted to, at least in the live footage, we wanted to focus on a bit more... in the history part there's a great deal of focus put on the early years of the band because you know, that stuff is so far in the past that it's a story that a lot of people who listen to us nowadays might not be aware of, or maybe even our older fans might not have been fully aware of exactly how everything came together. So we wanted to make sure that that was paid really close attention to in the history area. The live footage was a lot more geared towards showing the modern version of CANNIBAL CORPSE. But we did make sure to have... I think every lineup of the band is represented in the live footage, from the original lineup up to today's lineup. A lot of that was a collaboration between us and Denise. Metal Blade, man they've ben so good throughout our whole career about leaving us alone and letting us just do what we want to (laughs). They're a good label like that - like they trust their artists and the people that they're working with to make the right decisions. They didn't really have much to do with it in that way, and they seem to be very happy with the result, so everything turned out good."

I think the fact that you guys are down to earth has something to do with your good working relationship with Metal Blade.

"I'd like to this so, I mean, we try and be professional and be cool with everybody we work with and we try and be as nice as we can to everybody - our fans - everybody in life. There does not need to be some kind of rule where if you're playing evil-sounding, dark, aggressive music that you have to be that kind of a person too. You can keep those two things very separate. Like you can be a nice, easy to work with, friendly person and still make music that will peel pain (laughs). That's what we try and do."

So basically, after this DVD is out, are you guys going to be focusing totally on the new album?

"Yeah. You know, we've been focused on the album all along. The DVD - we really - and I'm going to keep saying it over and over again - this is Denise's DVD in many ways, as much as it's ours. She's the one who made it. For us, we've been working on the album all along and then she would come down and do interviews with us, do interviews with some other people that are involved with the band... that sort of thing... and she went out on tour with us. She was doing all the work on the DVD while we were just going about our business. Of course, we'd take maybe one day off to drive around and show her the sights, like 'here's where we used to crack this', that sort of thing... 'here's the first club we ever played'. We flew up to Buffalo (New York) and did that, and of course we had to pay attention to the editing of the DVD. Once she was finally done with the editing, we looked at the final copy and went back to her with one or two small things to change, but she was working on it all along. We've been working on the album all throughout that time that she was busy up in New York editing and putting this whole story together - the whole history and everything. So she's done great and took care of all that for us, really. We're not video editors, so she did all the work, and we've been thinking about our album pretty much during this entire process and we eventually got eight songs done and we're ready to start a ninth for the new record. It's coming along."

What kind of information can you give me about the new album that you'd like to reveal at this point?

"We can't really reveal too much other than that we're always trying to out-do the stuff we've done before and make our best album. I think any band that's not trying to do that is I don't know... I don't know what they're thinking. It's a simple answer to give, but we're going to try and make it the best one. I think every band should do that though, so it's nothing that makes us unique to be striving for that. But yeah, we're working hard on it and we've been trying to make it the best one and also have the songs be different than other songs we've done. It's a challenge because you want to stay within the boundaries that you set for yourself as a band. We're a gore/Death Metal band and we wanna stay within those boundaries, but we wanna see how many interesting and different-sounding songs we can make within those boundaries. So that's what we're trying to do this time is figure out new ways to get across the same idea we've always had, which is the gore/death approach."

I assume it's definitely in CANNIBAL CORPSE vein then?

"Yeah, totally. It's gonna sound like a CANNIBAL CORPSE record but hopefully a CANNIBAL CORPSE record full of brand new songs that are not repetitive. We just don't want to sound like we're copying ourselves, but the style is still CANNIBAL CORPSE style. But hopefully it's not so familiar that you feel like you're listening to an album that you already bought from us (laughs). We want to make sure that all the songs have their own character and that the album itself has a character that sets it apart from the previous records. But it's still gonna be a full-on gore/death... you know, as extreme as we can make it."

How many tracks do you hope to have on the album?

"You know, we'll probably have... we've got eight now but I've actually got two complete songs at home just sitting around waiting for us. I end up writing more material, especially this year... I've just been writing and writing and having a great time doing it. I've got almost more material than we need because Rob (Barrett - guitar) gonna do another song, Pat (O-Brien - guitar) is doing another song, Paul (Mazurkiewicz - drums) is doing another song. So we'll probably have like 13 or maybe even 14 songs to choose from, but then we'll widdle it down to being like the best 40 minutes of music, give or take a few minutes, and have that be the album and anything that's left over we'll save as bonus tracks for future EPs and that sort of thing."

You mentioned the repeating bit. Are there any albums in your back catalogue that you can think of where you feel you may have repeated yourselves?

"Um... you know the first four (albums) were all pretty different from each other, and then 'Vile' was certainly different from 'The Bleeding', so not there. 'Gallery Of Suicide' neither. But I think if two of them kinda sound like they go together, it might be 'Gore Obsessed' and 'The Wretched Spawn', and maybe even 'Bloodthirst' a little. The three records that we did at Sonic Ranch Studios in Texas, those three records have maybe a similar writing style throughout, and they also have a very similar production style. Those are ones where we certainly did not try to repeat ourselves, but there might have been some stuff where you could take one song from one album and put it on the other and it would be hard to tell. It's because there was a lot of similarity between the production quality on those records and the songwriting style. I'd say that 'Kill' - between the production being different and the songwriting style being a little different too - is definitely different from those three records, and the other ones too. So I feel like we're definitely back on track as far as making each album have its own character. If we were ever off track then I think we're back on it because 'Kill' was quite a bit different from the records that came before it. It's still Death Metal but I think it was different."

Do you think Death Metal is continuing to rise in terms of diversity and just recognition within the Metal community?

"I think so, yeah. These are pretty good times for all different kinds of Metal right now, and Death Metal is certainly enjoying a little upswing and popularity these days and I think it's due to a good climate for Metal bands in general in the world, but also you got a lot of talent in the Death Metal scene. There are a lot of talented bands that have come out over the past 5-10 years that are starting to really bring things up. A lot of people when they talk about Death Metal, I think especially older people - guys who were around in the '80s and early '90s, they're gonna dwell on those bands that came out at that time. You know, you could argue that some of the best Death Metal bands are coming out recently, like AEON from Sweden and NECROPHAGIST from Germany. These bands have been around for a few years but they're not from the '80s or whatever. They're definitely from a second of even third wave, and they're great! I think as long as there continues to be new and high quality music coming out from those kind of bands, some of these younger bands that have tons of talent - DECAPITATED is another one that comes to mind... there are a bunch... SEVERED SAVIOUR... tons of band that are really good, have lots of talent and they're bringing it to another level as far as talent goes, and perhaps songwriting too. Like if you listen to AEON, they have a lot of really catchy songs on their record, NECROPHAGIST have a lot of very memorable, excellent songs, great production quality. It's something where you just can't deny that the quality of songwriting and musicianship is there. I think in the early days of Death Metal, a lot of people in the regular Metal scene and the music scene in general didn't know what to think about Death Metal and other forms of real extreme Metal, black Metal etc., they just though it was noise. But now, there's just no denying these players are great. You can't go see some of those bands and just... you can say that you don't like the music, but you just can't deny that modern Death Metal - when it's done right - is really excellent music. It can't be denied anymore I think."

Absolutely, I completely agree with you. Another good band is of course HATE ETERNAL. You participated in the recording of their last album and you guys have a really close relationship with Erik Rutan. He produced your last album. Do you guys have plans to work with him again?

"Yes. That is the plan. I actually was just talking to him yesterday. We've had the plan for pretty much since 'Kill' was done. We figured we'd just do the next one with him. The plan is to start recording in the beginning of September, so we've got to finish up the writing over the next two months, get everything ready and then we're gonna go in (the studio) in September and get it rolling. It's gonna be the same team really - the five of us and Erik Rutan at the helm at Mana Studios in St. Petersburg, FL. We'll probably be working on it throughout September and October and we hope to release the album in February or March. That's subject to change, of course, 'cause you never know what will happen as far as release dates go, but I would imagine it will be out in February or March. We're gonna book two months but hopefully that will be more than enough time. We're trying to do enough preparation here at our practice room. We're doing a lot more extensive pre-production to try and work through any difficult parts before we get in there. A lot of times what happens is we get in the studio and we find out that not everybody in the band is playing a particular part correctly, so somebody's got to re-learn something. Little things like that can happen and we're trying to smooth all that over now by recording everything. This year we invested buying an inexpensive set of mics, so we have our drum kit all mic-ed up and were actually making decent multi-track recordings with our own equipment that we have, just like low-budget studio set up, and we record and we can isolate problems before we get into the studio. The studio is expensive. If we can fix our mistakes here in our practice room before we get in the studio, that's a lot better than spending a couple hours while the clock is ticking and every minute that goes by is another dollar going towards the budget. We'd rather fix those problems here so we can concentrate on creating the music when we're getting good performances down and everything when we get into the studio."

It sounds like you guys are pretty organized. Obviously that's a lot more efficient.

"Yes. I'm about getting things efficient. For 'Kill' and for this album we're gonna have all of the songs written in sheet music as well. I have a good program and I know how to read sheet music so I'll have the guys play me the parts that they write and I'll put it in. That way we can check and everybody knows what everyone else is supposed to be playing. All the songs I write, I write them... while I've got my bass in my hand, I've got the computer in front of me so I'll play a riff and then type it in. We could put out a book about music. I'm kinda hoping that we find a publisher because we've got complete scores for the past... you know it'll be all of 'Kill' and all of this new record - whatever we wind up calling it - we'll have complete scores for them. But that sort of thing really helps 'cause you can isolate everything and a lot of times on the old records there were little things where you learn it and then three months later you're recording it and you might not have learned it exactly the right way. This time we're trying to take as many of those human errors and get rid of them before we even get in there, just by being organized. It's working well. I'm not the world's most organized person, so like if you see the room where I practice in at home, no matter how often I clean it, somehow it always ends up being cluttered with sheet music and magazines and crap like that, and there's a spaghetti of cables and everything all over the floor. That's just my nature to be a little bit disorganized. So keeping things organized like this is a conscious effort on my part (laughs). It's not something that comes naturally, but I think all of us have been a little more organized with how we do things the past couple of years and it has helped... it's made us more efficient. We spend more time on things that are important than dicking around trying to fix errors that we overlook because we weren't thorough enough when we were learning the material and the writing in the first place."

What initially attracted you to Metal in the first place. Let's start with Metal and then go into Death Metal.

"Well, Metal... I just liked how it sounded. I'd hear people playing hard rock and that sort of thing, 'cause when I was really little I listened to my Dad's Elvis and Chuck Berry records and that kind of stuff (laughs), 'cause you know I didn't really have any money and that's what was around the house. He had a bunch of 45s from when he was a teenager in the '50s, so I'd be listening to that kind of stuff... all those '50s rock songs. Then by the time I was 10 or 11, I'd start hearing like Metal coming out of the windows of the big kids' cars, and when they'd drive by I'd be like 'Man, what is that?' I remember a friend maybe when I was 12 or something, it was like 'Dude man, come over to my house, man. Check it out.' Or it was like a mutual friend - this other friend and I knew some kid who had all these albums. He had like MOTLEY CRUE albums, and ACCEPT and IRON MAIDEN - everything Metal, this kid had it. And we went over to his house and I was like 'Holy shit! This is great!' That was one of the main things where I really started getting into it because here's this guy who already had like 30 albums or something of all these different bands that were around in the early '80s, and some of my favourites wound up being some of the stuff I heard that day. Actually I think he played me ACCEPT that day and ACCEPT is still one of my all-time favourite bands. I just love the sound. As soon as I heard it I was like 'Man, this is awesome!' It's something about the upbeat, the heaviness of it, and I guess heaviness is not a good adjective to use if you're trying to describe why you like Heavy Metal because that's like 'Yeah, why do you like art?' 'Because it's artistic, you know.' 'Why do you like Heavy Metal?' (laughs) 'Because it's heavy.' 'Well what makes it heavy?' Well I guess it's like the driving rhythms and the guitar riffing and the way the singing was. Just it was like a more aggressive version of rock and for me anything I heard that was more aggressive than something that came before it I always liked a little bit more. I always say it's kinda like the staircase of Metal. It kinda went up like that. Like I liked all the IRON MAIDEN, ACCEPT, MOTLEY CRUE... that kind of stuff. Then in either 1984 or 1985 I heard METALLICA and CELTIC FROST I heard that year too. So I was into that stuff - the early Thrash and the early Death/Black kinda stuff. The beginnings of Death Metal and the early thrash stuff I loved as soon as I heard it because it was even heavier than the standard Heavy Metal. You know, anytime I heard something heavier it didn't make me stop liking the other stuff, but I would always latch on to something like that. I remember hearing SODOM's 'Obsessed By Cruelty' album in 1986 and you know SODOM is called a thrash band these days but when I heard it, to me... back then they didn't really have the same kinds of labels that they have nowadays. To me that was like Death; I was like 'This is Death Metal!' or black Metal or whatever. It was just like wow. That album was just evil-sounding. Whatever it was, whatever you want to call it, it was evil-sounding Metal, and I really love that dark, aggressive sound. It was like a combination of dark sounds, like a creepiness, a Horror kind of sound mixed in with really aggressive speed. There was something about that that really caught my ear. Jack (Owen - ex-guitarist) and I had our own band BEYOND DEATH, and that band was like a mixture of KREATOR mixed with... Jack and I liked the stuff like KREATOR, SODOM and DEATH. The other half of the band, Darren and Frank, they liked those bands too, but they were more into D.R.I., DAYGLO ABORTIONS, CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER and those kinds of bands - stuff that was a little more Hardcore-oriented Metal. I always wanted to do something where they had those dark sounds, the dark notes. I like the darker-sounding thrash like SLAYER and DARK ANGEL. Jack liked that kind of stuff too - first SEPULTURA album 'Morbid Visions'. For Death Metal - I know I've gone on and on a little bit about this - but to summarize I think what attracted me to it that it was aggressive AND dark, where maybe thrash Metal is more just aggressive rather than being dark-sounding. There was something really dark and foreboding about the riffing style of Death Metal that made it even that much more interesting to me than any of the other types of Metal I'd heard before. I just really like stuff that sounds dark, and when you combine that with the super fast aggression of thrash, that to me kind of is the roots of Death Metal - thrash that started to sound evil. So that's what I like, and the bands that influences CANNIBAL in the beginning are definitely thrash bands that were leaning towards that dark Death Metal sound, like KREATOR, SLAYER, DARK ANGEL. Some of that stuff you could even call Death Metal like KREATOR. 'Pleasure To Kill', you could almost call that a Death Metal album, you know. That's kinda what we thought it was when it first came out way back then, but yeah nowadays people call it thrash. But whatever it is, it's evil-sounding shit (laughs). To me it's evil and heavy as fuck and we loved it, so that was what we wanted to do with CANNIBAL, was make evil, heavy-sounding stuff."

Well you've definitely achieved that. The first major Heavy Metal album I ever listened to was JUDAS PRIEST "Screaming For Vengeance", and I'll never forget that. That was like 1982. I was 10 years old.

"Oh yeah, that's legendary."

And ACCEPT's "Balls To The Wall".

"Yeah. ACCEPT are so fucken awesome. I'll tell ya if ACCEPT got together again and came over and did a tour they'd probably be pleasantly surprised with how many old schoolers came out to see them, 'cause there are a lot of old school people that would love to see an ACCEPT reunion and there are definitely a lot of younger kids that are learning about the older bands. That's what's been very interesting for me to see, you know being a guy who is 38 and who was around when all this stuff was around. It's interesting to see when you see a kid who is like 16 getting into bands that were around before he was born. It's like 'Cool man.' It's cool that some kids are willing to look back at the past in addition to checking out the modern music that's coming out. It's nice to know that those old bands are not being forgotten."

Well, it's all part of the history of Metal. I mean without those bands none of the bands today would be around, not even CANNIBAL.

"Totally, totally! For sure. Think of it this way... all of the musical equipment that we have like drum kits, amplifiers, electric guitars... you could have in theory made something that sounds like modern brutal Death Metal using the musical equipment that was available in the late '60s, but it just wouldn't have been possible because everybody builds off of what came before them. I call it the staircase of Metal - there's got to be a better term for it, but it really is. It keeps going up and up, starting with BLACK SABBATH and then going onwards. Everybody kind of built off of that, you know, and you can see that it gradually mutates. I love watching and seeing how things change. The new things of Metal I love to see too. I'll always love listening to those old bands, but I'll always want to see what's coming next. It will always continue to build. But yeah, there was no way that somebody was going to make a band that sounded like CANNIBAL CORPSE in 1965, even though the gear was available. You had Les Paul guitars back then and Fender precision basses. It could have been done, but who would have thought of it. It needed to start somewhere. It started with Rock and Blues and then SABBATH made it evil and darker-sounding and it went from there. That's Metal. I think Metal... most people would say BLACK SABBATH is the beginning of Metal. That's an example too of a younger person checking out something, 'cause I can't remember what year that album came out in, but I certainly wasn't listening to it when it first came out (laughs). I didn't hear BLACK SABBATH's first album until I was probably about 10 years old. My big brother had some Metal albums too, but he had more of like the Classic Rock stuff like URIAH HEEP and those kinds of bands. But he did have the first BLACK SABBATH album. I remember thinking that album cover was really creepy and scary - very interesting. But anyway."

I definitely think that BLACK SABBATH started it, but I think that IRON MAIDEN and JUDAS PRIEST really created the core sound of Metal and then it just mutated from there. ACCEPT's "London Leatherboys" is about JUDAS PRIEST. ACCEPT drew their influences from JUDAS PRIEST...

"You can definitely hear that. Yeah, I could tell that ACCEPT probably listened to JUDAS PRIEST. That's a reasonable guess for sure. But yeah, I think it all built. It's just gradually built one after the other. You hear your favourite bands and you make your own band and then you try and do your own thing, but you're gonna be inspired by the bands you listened to. I think even when bands completely try and copy another band, they usually don't do it right and then end up making their own thing accidentally. I know that's kinda what happened to us, 'cause when we started we were listening to MORBID ANGEL, DEATH, AUTOPSY, KREATOR, SODOM, SLAYER. All those bands were some of CANNIBAL's favourite bands. SADUS - around the time we were writing 'Eaten Back To Life'. For sure we had to be imitating some of that stuff, you know, but I don't think we sound like any of those bands I mentioned, really. Not very close anyway. We came up with our own thing but it was more accidental than anything. We weren't trying to make our own style, that's just what happened." [FIN]