Cannibal Corpse bassist and founding member Alex Webster says the band are happy to experiment with their sound – as long as it stays heavy.
Their 13th album A Skeletal Domain was released via Metal Blade in September and Webster insists they’ll keep to their death metal roots and are always striving to be the best that they can be.
He tells Ghost Cult: “We definitely want to stay a full-on death metal band. That was part of the initial objective – to be the best death metal band we could be. We don’t want to really go beyond the boundaries of death metal, but we’re looking for things that we haven’t done before.
“Around Gallery Of Suicide we avoided anything that sounded thrashy – we’ve stopped avoiding that recently. We’re a death metal band but thrash is part of our background. If it’s something that sounds really heavy, why not use it? We’re willing to try to add certain outside influences as long as they work well with our sound.”
Webster also reveals the group never want to repeat themselves and with all four bandmembers contributing to songwriting, they can avoid recycling material.
He continues: “If I write something and it reminds me too much of something from the past, I’ll make a conscious effort to change it. We have four guys in the band who contribute to the songwriting process so you end up having a lot of different ideas and good variety from song to song.”
The band parted ways acrimoniously with frontman Chris Barnes in 1995 – but the bassist says time has smoothed out the situation between them.
He adds: “I think that’s a natural thing. Everyone’s upset when it happens but time heals the whole thing. We’re in a very good place with Chris right now and I think he’s in a good place with us. Whenever I bump into him, we always have a good time and we always hang out and talk.”
Earlier this year the band were accused of blasphemy in Russia by the God’s Will movement. Their tour of the country went ahead but gigs in Ufa, Moscow and St Petersburg were cancelled at the last minute. The group apologised, saying the situation was taken out of their hands, while 18 fans were arrested in St Petersburg following protests outside the venue.
