On 16th September, the official biography of Cannibal Corpse is being unleashed onto the unsuspecting public. Written by Joel McIver (author of Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica) the book is filled with essential history and loads of archive photos of the biggest death metal band on the planet. And we've got a sneak peek for you...
On April 12, 1994, The Bleeding was released, followed up by more dates in America with Samael and Grave and a European run with Desultory and Samael once again.
Paul We were in Enschede, a little town in Holland, in 1994, on tour with a couple of bands. We’re sharing a bus: there’s three bands and crew on this vehicle, parked outside the club. It’s midnight and everyone’s gone home, and I see a little food stand open just down the road. Me and Barnes bought some food and took it to the bus to eat. Suddenly he goes, “Dude, there’s fighting out there!” and we ran outside.
Alex Some drunks—not guys who had been at the show, just locals—were having words with our tour manager Doug Goodman for some reason, and then our soundman ran up and put one of them in a full nelson, because they were starting to get physical with Doug. It quickly devolved into a brawl and we paired off. I was fighting with some guy who was bigger and older than me. I wasn’t much of a fighter back then, but I had spirit, so we were rolling around fighting pretty hard, and so was our soundman Paul Babikian. Our merch guy and Barnes came out and helped, and it got broken up. We had 22 people on this bus, so we had them outnumbered pretty quick.
Paul There was a lot of yelling in Dutch and German going on. Suddenly everybody started flying at each other, and this huge melee started. I was just watching in disbelief when I looked to my left, and there was this dude lunging at me, going “Aaaaagh!” He hit me in my side, and I was like “Holy shit, that hurt!” and I looked down and I was bleeding out of my side. At first I thought I just got kicked, but then I thought “If I was kicked, I wouldn’t have a fucking puncture wound. I’ve been stabbed.” So this fight’s going on, but I don’t remember exactly what happened because I staggered off towards the club. I do remember that Andy, our shirts guy, really beat the shit out of somebody.
Alex It’s hard to remember, because I was dealing with my own situation, but Andy really took care of business. He was pretty tough: a regular-sized guy, but he knew what to do out there. He put his fingers in the eyes of the guy who was wrestling with me, and I think he kicked some other dudes with the cowboy boots he was wearing. Later on he told me, “I saw that fingers-in-the-eyes thing on TV. It really works!”
Paul So at this point I’ve got a wound and I’m bleeding. I’m going into shock, because it hurts, and I don’t know if I’m going to collapse in the next 10 seconds because I’ve got something stuck in me. After a couple of minutes I realized I wasn’t going to die, so some girl walked me into the club and they called an ambulance. I went to the hospital and they checked me out: it turned out the guy was holding some keys in his knuckles when he punched me, which made a hole. They said it was superficial and that I didn’t need a stitch, so they just disinfected it and put a butterfly dressing on it. It hurt like fuck though, because it wasn’t just a hole: an actual chunk of flesh had been torn out. My bunk was really hard to climb into as well, and I was in utter pain when I tried to get into it.
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