Metal Blade (2006)

review by Sully Payton

Some bands go through their careers feeling like they have to push the envelope with every new record and find some way to progress their sounds further. Then, there are bands like CANNIBAL CORPSE that figure that changing their sound might impede their ability to sing about blood, oozing innards, impalement and dismemberment. Let's face it, none of those topics sound nearly as frightening coming from a prog band.

George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher and his band of merry men have unleashed a brutal new CD upon the death metal world with the short, sweet and to the point title Kill (Metal Blade). This time around, they welcome back former guitarist Rob Barrett, who apparently tired of the 9 to 5 working world and pined for the death metal life again. His addition creates an immense guitar sound on this record. The band also decided to let death metal legend Erik Rutan produce the record. This was clearly a wise choice as this is one of the biggest sounding records the Corpse has ever made. Drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz never sounded so clear as he does here with Rutan's knob-twiddling.

The bloodbath starts immediately with "The Time To Kill Is Now" ("There will be no mercy for these filthy sons of whores/The innards of my enemies impaled upon my sword") and keeps on rolling into tracks like "Five Nails Through The Neck" ("Perforate the abdomen/Punctured organs start to fail/Mounting pain revives the man") and "Brain Removal Device" ("Heads affixed to a machine/Peel the skin from random skulls exposing bone/Cracked open with vice like force"). Looking for some groove with your death metal? "Murder Worship", "Death Walking Terror" and "Purification by Fire" give you brilliant time changes and moments where you can actually bob your head with an evil grin.

CANNIBAL CORPSE have given us crushing death metal for 18 years. Kill continues to prove that they are probably going to give us their brand of death metal for 18 more.