CANNIBAL CORPSE Bassist Talks About SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND Tour

Josh Thorne of the FourteenG e-zine recently conducted an interview with CANNIBAL CORPSE bassist Alex Webster. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

FourteenG: How did you guys end up on the bill for [Sounds of The Underground] this year? After last year's lineup of mostly metalcore bands, it was actually refreshing to see that you guys and BEHEMOTH were going to be on this tour.

Alex: "Well, you know, they approached us in January but we'd been talking about it before then. Once they accepted us, we just asked them who else was going to be on the tour. The reason for that is because we didn't want our fans to have to come out to a show just to see us and not enjoy the rest of the bands on the bill. But like you said, once we heard BEHEMOTH, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER and some of those other bands were going to be on it, it was an easy decision to make. I mean, there's a lot of variety on this tour so it's going to be very cool in that sense because as much as I love full-on death metal tours, it'll be nice to get out there and try something different."

FourteenG: What kind of setlist have you got planned for the shows?

Alex: "Well, we're only going to be able to play 30-35 minutes so we're going to play as much as we can and do it in a way where we won't have to take breaks between songs. On our regular shows, we'll do a song then take a small break and drink some water because the headbanging can really take a lot out of you after a while. On a summer tour, it's going to be even worse because we'll be playing in the sun and we're gonna be sweating all over the place. But we're going to make sure that if we get 30 minutes, we're going to play for 30 minutes and not 25 minutes and 5 minutes of us drinking water. We're used to playing 75 minutes with breaks, but this is going to be continuous."

FourteenG: How did you go about choosing Erik Rutan for the production duties [on the new album, "Kill"]?

Alex: "Well, there's a few different reasons and all of them are good reasons. He's a good friend of ours and a great death metal guitarist. He's really become an incredible producer over the years and does a lot of great work, which is definitely the main reason we chose him. Besides, his studio is located in St. Petersburg where he lives, and that's pretty close to where we live as well. So, it was nice to be able to record the album here at a really good studio at home instead of having to travel all the way to Texas too. We're really pleased with the results, to say the least. It's been a long time since people have talked about how our record sounds as far as the production goes and everyone really loves it. So yes, we're very happy with the work Erik did."

FourteenG: Oh, I agree totally. It's very raw and as you stated earlier, quite primitive, but it's also very clean. That seems to be the sound that really suits you guys the best.

Alex: "Yeah, I think he hit the nail on the head for how we should sound. I mean, we've worked with some different producers and they all did great work, but Erik got the raw vibe we were looking for, probably even more so than Neil Kernon. I mean, he's done some bands that are really clean and pristine like NEVERMORE and QUEENSRŸCHE and though he gave us the clean production, maybe it shouldn't have been that way. But the production we got from Erik was very tight and clean, but it still has that raw feeling behind it. I'll tell you, I'm really impressed with the drum sound on this record. They don't have that modern clicky sound. They've got that old-school SLAYER feeling behind them, and you can tell that the drums are real. I mean, nowadays, most of the kick drums are sampled. I don't like that. I don't want to hear drums that sound like a Korg Drum Module, I want to hear drums that sound like a drummer."

Read the entire interview at www.fourteeng.net.