Cannibal Corpse, on Summer Slaughter Tour, all about the horror
There are a million ways to die, and the dudes in Cannibal Corpse have spent the past 24 years coming up with some of death’s gnarliest narratives.
Mummified in barbed wire.
Drowning in viscera.
Skewered from eye to ear.
No one ever just expires peacefully in their sleep in this band’s unrelentingly grim repertoire.
“We’re basically writing short horror stories to the music,” explains drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, who talks almost as fast as he plays for the Buffalo, N.Y., death metal heavyweights.
Often, it all begins with a title.
“We put up, say, a big piece of paper or something in our practice facility and if anybody comes up with a cool idea or a word that we haven’t used in a while, we write it down,” Mazurkiewicz says. “You might be staring at it in practice and you see a phrase up on top and go, ‘Hey, what about this?’ combining it with another phrase or word on the bottom. That’s how we come up with a lot of that stuff.”
From there, it’s about developing a suitably depraved storyline.
“We’re death metal,” Mazurkiewicz says. “We don’t stray too far away from the subject matter.”
On the band’s latest disc, the technically dizzying, infectiously savage “Torture,” poor souls get “Encased in Concrete,” “Followed Home Then Killed” and “Torn Through.”
And that’s just the tip of the butcher knife.
In honor of the band’s stop in town this weekend as the headliners of the annual Summer Slaughter Tour, an all-day death metal endurance test featuring 10 acts ranging from old-school gore hounds Exhumed to progressive upstarts The Faceless, we’re counting down the top five most horrible (and inventive) ways to die in a Cannibal Corpse song.
(Disclaimer: We’re only referencing songs whose titles we can actually print in the paper).
5. Song: “Intestinal Crank”
Album: “Torture” (2012)
Premise: Experiencing a living disembowelment via a stomach stretching device.
Sample lyric: “Unremitting pain / Turn the crank again / Twisting / Coiling / Drawing out the guts / Drawing out the guts / The rack / Stretching / Snapping cartilage / Dislocate joints / Writhing / Broken / I will die in pain.”
4. Song: “Severed Head Stoning”
Album: “The Wretched Spawn” (2004)
Premise: Being pummeled to death by lopped off domes.
Sample lyric: “Badly beaten in a daze / Eyes pop out, fluids spray / Pulsing veins cause the wounds to gush / The end is near in bloody stumps / Mangled face a mass of lumps / What was a man reduced to mush.”
3. Song: “Devoured By Vermin”
Album: “Vile” (1996)
Premise: Getting eaten alive by Stuart Little’s more rabid kin.
Sample lyric: “Crawling rodents gorging on me / Repulsive starving droves / Shredding, stripping, consuming all I was / Tissue pulled from bones / Dying slowly, feeling every fang / Shock has yet to come / Scavengers tear out my eyes.”
2. Song: “Submerged in Boiling Flesh”
Album: “Kill” (2006)
Premise: Being scalded lifeless in a pool of liquefied epidermis.
Sample lyric: “Blisters are forming all over my body now / Oozing with pus as they start to explode, fervent finality / The fumes and the vapors have perforated my lungs / Writhing and twitching from maddening pin / Why must I die like this?”
1. Song: “Force Fed Broken Glass”
Album: “The Bleeding” (1994)
Premise: Suffering through a terminal, mouth-mincing meal.
Sample lyric: “Shredded muscle tissue / Wounds too deep to heal / Severed esophagus / Tongue split in half / Lungs full with blood / As vocal chords collapse.”
Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.