CANNIBAL CORPSE Bassist Discusses New Album's Chart Success

Metal Discovery conducted a lengthy interview with bassist Alex Webster of Florida-based death metallers CANNIBAL CORPSE prior to the band's February 17, 2009 concert at Rock City in Nottingham, England in support of CHILDREN OF BODOM. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Discovery: How's your fan base these days; are you still able to attract a younger fan base as well as the older, established fans?

Alex Webster: Yeah, you know it's been actually quite a diverse age group coming out. I would say it's anything from as low as twelve or thirteen, which is not so common, but all the way up to guys in their forties and even beyond a little bit because we're all in that late thirties/early forties kind of range right now. You know, we've been around for twenty years so it's weird saying that but we started pretty young, but we're still at that age and there's a lot of fans that have stuck with us the whole time. We've run into quite a few fans actually on this tour that saw us on the first tour we ever did back in '91...

Metal Discovery: Wow, how old are they?

Alex Webster: Oh, they're our age. It's weird, a lot of the guys who listen to the music and stuff, for some reason they don't look like a forty-year-old; they still look young. I guess maybe the music keeps them young. But yeah, we have a pretty wide age group coming to the shows, and it's really cool to see a lot of new faces and then a lot of our old friends as well.

Metal Discovery: I read that "Evisceration Plague" entered the Billboard 200 at number 66...

Alex Webster: Yeah! [laughs]

Metal Discovery: Apart from 666, which would be quite a low number to enter the charts… if there is such a number in the charts, well, not in the top 200! And that's your highest chart entry to date?

Alex Webster: Yeah, by far, actually. We had entered, I believe, 151 back in 1996 for the "Vile" album which was our fifth album, and then for "Kill" we entered at 170, I think, and that was pretty good, but 66 is a real step up for us. It's pretty crazy for a band to be having it's biggest moment when they've been around for over twenty years and on their eleventh album. It's something we're really excited about and it's killer. We've had a very slow and steady kind of career where it's been on a slight incline the whole time I guess, and this is a little bit of an upwards swing. We're not used to this, actually, but it's really exciting.

Metal Discovery: Did you look at who you went in above of that week and thought, hey, we've beaten so and so?!

Alex Webster: A little bit. Yeah, it's kind of fun because I think we were ahead of FALL OUT BOY or somebody like that.

Metal Discovery: Which is fantastic!

Alex Webster: You take it with a grain of salt, though, because we're probably not gonna be on that chart next week, you know what I mean?! It'll go to 66 because all of our fans bought it the first week and then it will drop off, where all those other popular bands, they're on there for eight weeks, ten weeks, twenty weeks. So you have to put it in perspective. It's a significant accomplishment for a death metal band. A band that's still one hundred percent death metal to get so high on the charts is a big accomplishment but, relatively speaking, even the biggest death metal band like us is still underground compared to these bands that are on there for weeks and weeks and weeks selling, you know, 9,000, 10,000 records a week steadily for several months. We sold 9,600 in the first week — that's our biggest first week ever in the United States, but I'm sure it's not gonna stay consistent. Although if I'm wrong, I'll be very happy about it! [laughs]

Metal Discovery: Were you surprised it went in so high considering illegal downloads are becoming more widespread?

Alex Webster: Well, you know, we had a lot going for during the "Kill" tour cycle. We made our first really good video in a long time that actually got some airplay on American MTV, and that helps. We also did a big tour over there called Sounds of the Underground, where we were touring with…it's a variety kind of tour, sort of like what we're doing here but on a much bigger scale, like a summer festival tour where about half of the shows were outdoors and the other half were in really big venues. And a lot of the…not just death metal fans, but like just mainstream metal fans learned about our band on that tour and it really gave us a little bit of a boost, I think. So we had a few things going for us, and not to mention also enlisting a good management company — Channel Zero is our management as of about half way through last year — so we've had a few things going for us this time around. Everything's been just kind of building so it all came together to help us beat that slump that the CD sales business has been having. You know, record companies have definitely been taking a beating the past few years because CD sales have been on a steady decline just from illegal downloading, and for us to do significantly better than the last record is…it means something's going on, indeed.

Red the entire interview at Metal Discovery.