*** Review of Vile by Cannibal Corpse – This Is the Stuff Horror Comic Books Are Made Of

The paradox of Cannibal Corpse is that they are supposedly to be taken seriously without taking them seriously.  The best track on the album is Devoured by Vermin, which kind of makes me want to laugh, I have to admit.  Track 2 is not that great.  There is nothing that really stands out about it as far as everything else Cannibal Corpse had done up to this point.  It does have a pretty cool breakdown, but it’s one that I can go for years on end without missing.  The major change of this album with respect to the sound of Cannibal Corpse is that Vile is the first album Cannibal Corpse put out with George “Corpse Grinder” Fisher.  In my opinion, the change of vocalists doesn’t add anything or subtract anything from the band, but rather adds more of the same old same old death metal.  There once was a time when I used to go crazy for the new Cannibal Corpse album, when it came out, but those days ended when I got tired of listening to a band that was seemingly going nowhere with their sound.  I will go this far; most people probably could not distinguish one Cannibal Corpse song from another, and it probably takes a trained ear to be able to do so.  There once was a time when Vile was my favorite Cannibal Corpse album, but as they began to annoy me more and more with their songs.  I think I fell out of love with this album when I realized track 4 seems to describe a man shaving his beard in the most extreme terminology.  I have to wonder if this song was inspired by shaving one’s beard of which the point of extremity that they take this to seems borderline absurd, especially since I don’t recall anyone in the band having a beard when I saw them live in Brooklyn, NYC, when I was at college.  The show was fun though and it did have a good mosh pit, which was a total blast to be dancing in.  How does one take so seriously a song about shaving a beard if the band themselves doesn’t seem to care whether or not they care if they have beards?  What is the point?  Is the point to be silly?  I wouldn’t even credit this album with as being one of the heavier albums I own.  If heavy means writing lyrics of gore, stepping on a distortion pedal, and playing really heavy, then Vile definitely fills the bill.

As for the difference between Cannibal Corpse and Monstrosity, which was George “Corpse Grinder” Fisher’s first band that I know of.  I really can’t tell the difference between the two, such that I have to wonder why he left Monstrosity, except so that he could be in one of the most popular death metal bands, as opposed to being more underground.

The reason this album gets 3 stars and not less is that there is most definitely some skill to playing this style of music.  So, 3 stars for skill only, but when it comes to diversity, even from album to album, they don’t deserve a lot of credit.  Few people could listen to the same style sound over and over with no variation of the guitar tone of the distortion pedal and make an entire career out of the same sound.

As a teenager and in my early 20s, Cannibal Corpse seemed awesome.  And, if I draw any criticism for this album, I can pretty much guess that their ID says that they are 21 years old or under.  There may be a few Peter Pan’s out there that might criticize me for saying that to me, in that listening to Cannibal Corpse is somewhat like Peter Pan, but that Never Never Land has gone horribly wrong, and is instead a place where young adults get to enjoy their nightmares until they grow up.

As far as being criticized for the doing the same thing over and over, someone who believes in that should fess up that it is possible to take and part of any Cannibal Corpse song on any of their albums and insert it into a different song, and that is exactly what I mean when I criticize Cannibal Corpse for lack of diversity.  For example, any guitar riff that they write could go virtually anywhere in any of their songs, and on any of their albums.  This begs the question:  Why did they bother to give their songs and albums different titles?  However, despite the conundrum of this rhetorical question, I can definitely say that I found these songs easily more recognizable than the songs on their breakthrough album, Tomb of the Mutilated.  I can still remember listening to Tomb of the Mutilated in high school on the school bus with my cd walkman, after when the Tomb of the Mutilated actually made it on the Billboard charts after scoring a scene in a popular comedy movie.  I saw the movie before I got the album that is, which is exceptionally rare, as usually the pattern is that I like a band as one of but a few fans, and then the band breaks through into popularity such as in the case of Rage Against the Machine.