DATE OF INTERVIEW:

CANNIBAL CORPSE

17th February 2009

ALEX WEBSTER

METAL DISCOVERY: You probably get asked this a lot, I guess, but the answer might change over the years, and you hinted at ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Shining’ earlier - what are your favourite top five horror films of all time?

ALEX WEBSTER: Sure, well yeah, ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Exorcist’ and it’s one or the other. Usually ‘The Shining’ actually; I just really like Stanley Kubrick’s movies in general.

(Alex Webster on the future of Cannibal Corpse)

"We’re gonna be doing tons of touring and we’re still gonna be making albums for a few years to come...we’re all feeling physically fit and fantastic right now so there’s no end in sight."

Alex onstage at Rock City, Nottingham, 17th February 2009

Photograph copyright © 2009 Mark Holmes - www.metal-discovery.com

Interview & Photography by Mark Holmes

RELATED LINKS

Official Cannibal Corpse Website:

Official Cannibal Corpse MySpace:

CANNIBAL CORPSE DISCOGRAPHY

Eaten Back to Life (1990)

Butchered at Birth (1991)

Albums & EPs

Metal Blade Records Website:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Andy Turner at Metal Blade UK for arranging the interview.

Cheers to Alex Webster for taking time out to be interviewed.

Tomb of the Mutilated (1992)

The Bleeding (1994)

Vile (1996)

Gallery of Suicide (1998)

Bloodthirst (1999)

Alex Webster MySpace:

Hammer Smashed Face (1993)

Live Cannibalism (2000)

Gore Obsessed (2002)

The Wretched Spawn (2004)

Kill (2006)

Evisceration Plague (2009)

Worm Infested (2003)

DVDs and Misc

Live Cannibalism (2000)

15 Year Killing Spree (Box Set) (2003)

Centuries of Torment: The First 20 Years (2008)

Monolith of Death Tour '96-'97 (1997)

PART 3

PART 3

MD: Did you see the re-make, the TV series?

AW: Yeah, I didn’t like it actually, the mini-series of ‘The Shining’.

MD: It was more true to the book, but…

AW: Yeah, it’s more true to the book but I might have thought it was okay if I hadn’t seen Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’. I like his ‘The Shining’ better. ‘Carrie’ is actually a really good one; another Stephen King based one…who did that, Brian De Palma?

MD: He did, yeah.

AW: I love ‘Phantasm’, that’s a great horror movie.

MD: All the movies, or the original one?

AW: The first one especially.

MD: I prefer the second one.

AW: Yeah, the second one was really good too but…

MD: I think I’ve heard they’re remaking the first one.

AW: Really? The first one is just about perfect as it is in my opinion. I love that movie. I think it’s so creative and that’s what made it really horrifying to me is that there were all these weird things going on that they were not stereotypical horror things - a guy bleeding yellow blood, and turning people into little Jawa looking things! It’s just the whole thing was so bizarre, it gave it that surreal, nightmarish kind of quality that not a lot of other films that are more literal that don’t get that. And that’s the thing with ‘The Shining’ - there’s a nightmarish quality to it too when you’re seeing these apparition kind of things and tons of blood coming down the corridor. You know, anything that captures that nightmare feeling is usually something I like. ‘Burnt Offerings’ was a great horror movie. As far as the more gorier stuff, I always like the George Romero movies - ‘Dawn of the Dead’, and ‘Day of the Dead’, and…

MD: What about ‘Diary of the Dead’?

AW: I haven’t seen that yet. I’ve seen a couple of the newer ones like the remake of ’Dawn of the Dead’ and what‘s that other one….‘Land of the Dead’ which was decent. And then I like ‘Gates of Hell’ by Lucio Fulci which I think it might be ‘City of the Living Dead’ over here but in America it’s ‘Gates of Hell’. And then ‘The Beyond’ by Lucio Fulci is good too. So I’ve listed a bit more than five, but there’s lots of good horror, you know.

MD: In the German version of Metal Hammer magazine, ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ was recently voted the greatest death metal song of all time - how do you feel about that, and would you have chosen that song as your best?

AW: It’s just a matter of personal taste. I would pick that as our most popular song and probably the most influential song that we did. It’s been covered by a lot of bands, like if you do a search for that song on You Tube you’re probably gonna find quite a few bands covering it. One time I looked through…wow, there’s a bunch of bands on here covering the song, so…it’s a catchy song; it’s a song that bands can learn and play, so it’s probably been influential in that way. Whether or not it’s our best song, that’s a matter of taste, but it’s probably our most influential and popular song. We’re proud that we won that contest but, at the same time, there’s a bunch of songs that we love that weren’t even eligible to be voted on.

MD: I think there was Arch Enemy’s ‘We Will Rise’ in the top ten…actually, I think that was in the top five, and I’d call that a melodic metal song with death metal vocals.

AW: Yeah, everyone’s gonna have a different opinion about this kind of thing so we definitely…we try and keep it in perspective. I mean we’re proud of it, and honoured, and thankful to the fans who voted for us, but it’s gonna be different for each individual. There is no best in music. The best is for each individual to decide.

MD: If people can answer what’s your favourite album of all time or whatever then they can’t really be a music fan because they should have loads!

AW: Yeah, my top five albums, if you look in all these different interviews with me, it’s liquid. You know, I’m changing constantly because at one particular time my favourite of all time might be this or that. I love a whole bunch of music, so…

MD: Are you actually still banned from playing that song in Germany and other songs from the first three albums?

AW: No, that’s all been done since 2006 or 2007, so we’re pleased about that.

MD: A slight irony it was voted the best song in a German magazine!

AW: I know! Yes, certainly the ban didn’t hurt its popularity!

MD: Exactly! Finally, do you anticipate, or at least hope, Cannibal Corpse will continue for another twenty years or do you not think to the future that far ahead?

AW: When I was nineteen I couldn’t have predicted I’d be sitting here as a thirty nine year old on our eleventh album enjoying our best week of sales, and the whole thing. You know, we just played in front of over fifteen hundred people in Manchester last night and it was an amazing show and…I couldn’t have predicted it, no way. So I think I’m gonna play it safe so that somebody doesn’t come back and interview me in twenty years and go “see, - see how wrong you were”! You know, I’m not even gonna try and predict the future but I will say this - in the immediate future we’ve got a lot going on. We’re gonna be doing tons of touring and we’re still gonna be making albums for a few years to come, no doubt. The immediate next five years or so I can predict that we will carry on, very strong, and where it goes from there it’s just so hard to say because we have guys in the band that have children and that sort of thing. We wanna make sure that whenever we’re doing this we’re doing it as well as we ever did, and if there’s a point where we feel like on stage, because of any advancing age or whatever, we’re not really able to do the kind of show we should be doing then we would consider, perhaps, calling it quits or whatever. But we’re all feeling physically fit and fantastic right now so there’s no end in sight. I’ll leave it at that!

MD: Good closing words! Thank you very much indeed for your time.

AW: Thank you very much, excellent man.