CANNIBAL CORPSE - Kill

CANNIBAL CORPSE
Kill
Metal Blade Records
4/10





For how long can a band appeal to the lowest common denominator of the metal audience before they simply stop making records and go away? Cannibal Corpse has continued to beat the same tired drum so repeatedly, the gore-wallowing band has become a veritable AC/DC of death metal. With each successive record, this band sinks further into a depressing pit of blood-splattered redundancy. On their latest mistake, Kill, Cannibal Corpse offers up a renewed round of garbling, chromatic pap calculated to appeal to all who dwell on juvenile, cliché themes like “Brain Removal Device” and actually believe that it’s brilliant.

Although Corpsegrinder has been in the band for a longer period, his guttural chops have not at all truly compared to the ghoulish, graveyard growls of former frontman Chris Barnes. During “Necrosadistic Warning”, the vocals are so purely one-dimensional and uninspired; you’d think that you were listening to a bad demo from any one of the countless inexperienced garage bands spewing out death metal in the mid-nineties. Decent production by Erik Rutan cannot even save Kill from utter mediocrity. With so many passé songwriting themes, a band with the amount of know-how that Cannibal Corpse has should be expected to at least deliver an overpowering performance. That’s not the case, with cuts like “Five Nails Through The Neck” and “Make Them Suffer” sounding as if the band is simply going through the motions.

If any death-metal album could ever be described as ham-fisted, it’s this one. Directionless, half-hearted soloing during the intro to “Purification By Fire” paves the way for further shallow gargling from Corpsegrinder, with the end result being an almost laughable “stab” at the band’s past glories. It’s hard to feel apologetic for Cannibal Corpse when reading lyrics like “Submerged In Boiling Flesh” and “Manical.” There’s only so many ways in which one can articulate a desire to rip out your entrails and feast on your bowels. Someone stop Cannibal Corpse before they Kill again.

ERIN FOX © 2006 - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED