Cannibal Corpse has been releasing banger after banger since 1988, and is continuing to do so thirty-five years later. The newest album “Chaos Horrific” dropped Sep. 22, and has the closest sound to some of the original albums since they replaced their main singer in 1995.
I lost hope for Cannibal Corpse for a bit after former guitarist Pat O’Brien was incarcerated back in 2018. Their 2021 album “Violence Unimagined” just didn’t land the same way as their earlier music. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said that they needed to drop the ball and retire given how off they sounded.
However, all of that doubt has been almost immediately dismissed with “Chaos Horrific”, Cannibal Corpse is back and they are ready to rock the metal scene once again. The main singer, George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher is bringing back the classic 80s metal sound with a fry-scream to the goods in the majority of songs incorporated in this album.
My main issue with “Violence Unimagined ” and a bit of their 2017 album “Red Before Black” was that the drums were overwhelming and the vocals were not prominent enough. However, they have fixed those problems ten times over and created a perfect balance in the new album. It feels like their production as a whole has improved immensely, which makes for an improved listening experience on all points.
The other new feature that absolutely sold me on the album was just how heavy the bass is. In their past albums they’ve had killer bass lines but nothing that you could really feel in your core. But in this new album I could practically feel the bass reverberating in my soul. When I played it in my car, I might have guessed that it shook every car within a two mile radius.
The real M.V.P of this album is Paul Mazurkiewicz Jr., the drummer and longest-standing member of the band. He was the definition of metal throughout the entire album. Specifically in the song “Overlord of Violence”, he has a long cadence with bassist Alex Webster that is so well-finessed it brought me to tears.
The entire album is so well put together that I fully believe it will restore Cannibal Corpse to their rightful place as a pillar of the heavy metal scene.
