This interview was conducted in September 2012.
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The mental effort to envision a death metal world without Cannibal Corpse would invariably leave exploded cortical entrails that would be found miles away – in fact, the mere act itself makes perfect fodder for one of their ‘intentionally frightening’ songs. Pounding stages just shy of a quarter of a century, Cannibal Corpse has almost become a synecdoche for American and indeed global death metal. In this interview, founding bassist Alex Webster reveals the quintessence of brutal death metal.
Hi, Alex. Where are you at the moment?
I’m home in Tampa, FL right now.
Your top 5 records or ‘desert island discs’ Restless and Wild by Accept, Morbid Angel’s Alters of Madness, Master of Puppets, Powerslave, Reign in Blood; all metal, but diverse choices as well. How do those discs shape your playing and songwriting?
Probably in ways in which I couldn’t explain. It’s just, that kind of stuff, if you look at most of those records that I listed was the stuff I was listening to in the 80s when I was just becoming a musician. I think I started playing bass around 1984 and right around that time I was listening to Accept and Iron Maiden and Metallica and Slayer and all those things I listed.
Morbid Angel was probably the newest release on the list, from 1989 I think. So all those discs were from the 80s and they all had a very big impact on me as a musician. Both as a songwriter and a bass player…and some places in particular, Steve Harris from Iron Maiden is someone whom I look up to a lot, Peter from Accept as well is really another influence. I like David Vincent’s bass playing a lot too…the bass solo in Suffocation was one of my favourites. It’s a big influence on my writing and me as a musician. I couldn’t explain exactly how, but I’m sure it works its way in there. Those metal records are my idea of what good metal records should be, songwriting and musicianship wise.
Your idea of 'what good metal should be', can you explain that?
Well, we've never been very good at imitating the bands we like. Like on Eaten Back to Life, I remember certain sections of that, or riffs or whatever we might have been thinking about one particular band when we were writing one of the riffs...maybe not one of the riffs but we would think 'let's make a part like something Dark Angel would do or what Slayer would do' or whatever. We never tried imitating bands and it winds up being your own style. As far as imitating or emulating, we're not that good at it. The overall attitude and commitment to excellence that the bands I mentioned have, that's what inspires us.
Slayer and Iron Maiden in particular. For standard heavy metal Iron Maiden are extremely consistent in the way they present themselves as a band. Their logo has stayed the same, they've had similar album covers, they have very consistent music - I definitely like some of their albums a lot more than others - but they're all heavy metal albums. The same with Slayer; all their albums are thrash metal, except maybe Diabolus in Musica was a little 'whatever' but most of their records are very consistent too. Again, they have that consistency in image. Those are two bands we've looked up to a lot: me personally for sure. The other guys have admired the consistency those other bands have shown too. I think that's a big part of heavy metal; being dependable and consistent.
When bands stray too far outside their niche and there's a backlash, do you think consistency is the key?
I think it's a very big part of it. Unless you're an experimental metal band by nature people don't really want that experimentation by nature, I don't think. They want us to try and out do what they've done - I don't think people want us to stand still and put out the same album again and again but I think what they want is something stylistically consistent and hopefully even a little better than the last album. When bands go too far away from their style it's generally not well received in the metal community; it might be well received insofar it's part of that genre. In metal, consistency is a big part of our genre and sticking to your original plans as a band. When bands don't do that it's not always well received.
Your father once had old 50s records which inspired you to pick up the guitar and eventually the bass. Being in a musical family, do you think your becoming a musician was almost an inevitability?
I think it helped. My father was in a bagpipe band, having a little bit of Scottish heritage on his side of the family. He was really interested in that kind of music, so he got involved with one of those bands when I was very young...I was about three when he began playing the pipes. He picked it up fairly quickly and the band would play songs that weren't overly difficult. Just standard parade songs and they would go do parades and that. So when I grew up, all summer long, the family would be going to all these various small cities around the west of New York area and my father's band would be performing at these various different carnivals. You know, festivals and other things they would be having and my father's band would play there. So I grew up around that kind of music.
My mother had taught herself to play piano by ear, so I do think music is something in our 'genes,' for sure...a proclivity for music on both sides of the family. Both of my brothers played in the brass band in school, they were actually trumpet players. They didn't follow up a music career; I'm the only one who did. But music was in our whole family.
You've said that Cannibal Corpse is like the Evil Dead of death metal – would it be fair to suggest you’re winking at the audience while scaring the shit out of them?
Well, it depends. We've really tried hard to make our songs serious horror songs. But the ones that have the more extreme gore in them, those lyrics kind of make the audience realise there's a bit of black humour to it, much in the way the Evil Dead or the Evil Dead II did. Those movies were meant to be frightening, for sure. But it takes some of the scare out of it because they were so over the top. None of the songs are written to be intentionally humourous or anything like that, but I think when you're describing somebody that bloody considering the context; it's in a band. It's in a band and you're enjoying the music and you're reading the lyrics that's describing something completely atrocious, you know, people aren't going to take it particularly seriously.
When it's something a little darker...it's strange, but if you edge a little off the gore and the song becomes more frightening. I think you can find that in horror movies too. I would say Cannibal Corpse has a little bit of Evil Dead to it, but we have more serious kind of horror songs too. Not that any of them were intentionally not serious. But I think when you edge the gore back a little bit and leave something to the listener's imagination you can wind up with something a bit more frightening. That's the same way with horror movies, I think. The movies that I found to be the most frightening weren't particularly graphic, as far as violence goes. The Exorcist, The Shining. They're two of my favourite horror movies but they weren't particularly violent. Burnt Offerings, The Sentinel. There's a number of dark, frightening movies that I really like and they aren't that gory at all. We have songs that are Evil Dead-like but we have songs that are more like The Shining.
Bands like Lazarus A.D. and Evile are leading an American-style thrash metal revival - do you think we'll see an American death metal revival in the same vein?
I think the difference between the thrash metal genre and the death metal genre is that death metal has been ongoing whereas with thrash metal you have this big drop off where it was really big and a lot of the bands started doing different things and broke up and what not where as death metal has been ongoing. There's no need for a 'revival' because it hasn't gone away.
I can show you very distinct examples of it being around for a long time. Like, in 1983 you have Possessed come out. A couple of years later you have Death release Scream Bloody Gore a couple years later, Morbid Angel release Altars of Madness and then us, then after that you have Hypocrisy, a couple years after that you have Nile putting out an album, shortly after that Krisiun put out an album, Angelcorpse put out a record and you have Eon come on the scene and bands like that, so there's been bands throughout. Deeds of Flesh came out in the mid-90s. It's not so strictly defined by one small period of time, it's been an ongoing thing with a steady scene and we can attest to that with the tours that we've done. We've been doing really brutal death metal tours right along for over twenty years now. If there was a revival it would be kind of redundant because it's not something that needs to be revived! [laughs]
It's different to thrash because you can kind of pinpoint the mid-80s as the heyday of thrash and a lot of that stuff was a really far out style for a long time and the bands coming back are doing a great job of playing that kind of music. But there's like this big gap where for twenty years there wasn't a whole lot going on in thrash metal, it's not like what was happening in death metal.
The band was featured recently on [cable news network] MSNBC as “the” death metal band and you appeared in the documentary film Metal: A Headbangers’ Journey which was well received. Do you think Cannibal Corpse are death metal’s unofficial ambassadors to the world?
[taken aback] Oh boy, that’s a pretty big responsibility! I think I might be one of the guys that do some decent interviews and the other guys in the band that represents our genre well. But there are plenty of other guys out there that do a great job in representing our genre. We being the most well-known band at the moment we probably get a lot of these interviews before some of the other bands do. It kind of compounds itself I guess. You become the biggest band over a period of time and you get these opportunities to get this sort of press to make you even bigger. I think we’re good representatives but there’s plenty of other good ones too. David Vincent always does good interviews; Steve from Deicide, the guys from Immolation. There are a lot of articulate musicians in this scene that give great interviews. I think we might be above them but we’re certainly not the only ones.
How has your personality changed over the last almost 25 years and how does that come out in your music?
I’m sure it’s a gradual thing like anything else. The difference between a 42-year old guy and a 22-year old one is pretty easy to see, really. You mellow out a little bit. We are open to having a heavier, slower kind of song but when we’re writing we really do try to capture that same aggression that we had at the very beginning. You just have to reach into that part of your mind - it’s still there. It might not be the driving part of you as much as it once was. I mean back then you’re just aggressive. All the time. If I heard one slow song from any of my favourite bands, I was disappointed. ‘Oh, I hate that song, I only like the fast stuff.’ I guess we’ve become, in time, as you mature you open up to having songs at different tempos and things like that.
Overall, it’s going back to that consistency thing, we’ve managed to keep things very consistent and we really do try to harness that original feeling in the songs. If you listen to Demented Aggression or Rabid or Scalding Hail, a lot of the really fast ones we’ve done over the past few years could easily have been songs on our first or second albums. Of course, we’re going to change as people over time. But we’re not going to let it affect our music.
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