(Metal Blade)
Release date: 1990

Review: Debut full lenght debut release by the famous floridian death metal band Cannibal Corpse, this album is simply a metal classic. Fast, brutal, with lyrics inspired by the goriest horror movies around; songs about cannibal surgeons, zombies, flesh craving slayers... A brutal, heavy and straightforward type of death metal, but quite well composed songs... merciless thrashing guitars, blasting beats, and raw, growling barks for vocals... Quite a few cult favorite death metal hymns such as "Edible autopsy", "Put them to death", "The undead will feast" or "A skull full of maggots"... but that's enough... You probably all already know this one...

Tracks: 1)Shredded humans 2)Edible autopsy 3)Put them to death 4)Mangled 5)Scattered remains, splattered brains 6)Born in a casket 7)Rotting head 8)The undead will feast 9)Bloody chunks 10)A skull full of maggots 11)Buried in the backyard

(Metal Blade)
Release date: 1991

Review: This second Cannibal Corpse album is a change, it really gets lower, musically and lyrically. Songs are more severe, lugubrious and grinding. Lyrics aren't so amusing anymore (in comparison to the rather light-hearted zombie-type gory fun of "Eaten back to life"), these are definitely more sexually oriented, dealing with rape, necrophilia, castration, cannibalism and violence on new born children... Something profoundly disturbing and shocking, with more cruel details and realistic torture depictions... Chris Barnes' vocals are even rawer, deeper and lower than in the past, guitar riffs are heavier... This album is cold, terrifying; and in the lump, a lot more brutal than before. Sometimes it even gets a little indisgest and too heavy... and even pretty tough to listen to... Produced by Scott Burns, with a perfectly brutal sound. Cannibal Corpse is the stereotype of death metal, this album represents the genre perfectly.

Tracks: 1)Meathook sodomy 2)Gutted 3)Living dissection 4)Under the rotted flesh 5)Covered with sores 6)Vomit the soul 7)Butchered at birth 8)Rancid amputation 9)Innards decay

(Metal Blade)
Release date: 1992

Review: "Tomb of the mutilated" is in my opinion Cannibal Corpse's best work... This is punishing brutal death metal at its most effective best, interpreted with a unique style and true virtuosity in excessiveness. The heavy and deep sound production is quite exceptional, and the band's ability to combine genuinely fast cadences, constant ryhtmic changes, catchy coherent guitar riffs and flowing, eerie bass lines is incredible too. Everything's played with faultless musicianship and always keeping an incisive, violent edge. The whole album is relentless, with ever rolling, bouncing drums and unstoppable thrashing guitars... the few moments of slowness are often only churning preludes to outstanding explosions of blasting sickness. Death metal at its finest really. Lyrics are some of the single most deranged and effective ever writen by Chris Barnes, coupling sickening gore and filthy pornography... the insane cover art by Vincent Locke is just cult (a mangled zombie going down on a mutilated female corpse... all inspired by the "Addicted to Vaginal Skin" lyrics). "Hammer Smashed Face" is perhaps the best Cannibal Corpse song ever... I'm also very fond of "I Cum Blood", "Addicted to Vaginal Skin"... so many death metal classics on display here...

Tracks: 1)Hammer Smashed Face 2)I Cum Blood 3)Addicted to Vaginal Skin 4)Split Wide Open 5)Necropedophile 6)The Cryptic Stench 7)Entrails Ripped from a Virgin Cunt 8)Postmortal Ejaculation 9)Beyond the Cemetery

(Metal Blade)
Release date: 1993

Review: This is kind of short compilation/Ep with one track from each of the 3 first albums. The really interesting thing here is the appearance of two cover versions of songs from classic bands, Black Sabbath & Possessed... played in C.C. own raw death metal style! With Chris Barnes at its best; deep brutal vocals from beyond the grave; and the habitual skilful musical brutality you can expect from the band...

Tracks: 1)Hammer smashed face 2)Zero the Hero (Black Sabbath) 3)The Exorcist (Possessed) 4)Meathook Sodomy 5)Shredded Humans

(Metal Blade)
Release date: 1994

Review: "The Bleeding" is kind of a new departure for the band, it's pretty less intense than the 3 first Cannibal Corpse albums; it's also the very last album vocalist Chris Barnes would appear in... Most of the songs are relatively mid-paced, more based on thrashing parts than speed, vocals are quite clearer, less deep than before, guitars are very technical and melodic. The whole thing is still quite well composed and there are still quite a bunch of excellent, fast, catchy and crushing tracks such as "Fucked with a knife", "Pulverized" and "She was asking for it"... The lyrics are not as bloody and sick as they used to be, they're more about criminal psychology & serial killing, they're still very much sex and murder oriented of course, but overall they seem a lot simpler than before... The cover art is not as explicit either, although it still looks solid to me... This is a clearly more accessible, toned down album then, songs are perhaps catchier and the sound production is alot more appealing than in the past, but unfortunately, many parts of this album also emanate serious boredom...

Tracks: 1)Staring through the eyes of the dead 2)Fucked with a knife 3)Stripped, raped, and strangled 4)Pulverized 5)Return to the flesh 6)The pick-axe murders 7)She was asking for it 8)The bleeding 9)Force fed broken glass 10)An experiment in homicide

(Metal Blade)
Release date: 1994

Review: I remember actually feeling pretty excited by this one at the time of release, unfortunately I was hugely disappointed. The new singer, George Fisher, ex-vocalist of Monstrosity is hardly trying to imitate Chris Barnes, he kept his own style, which is guttural (definitely not as deep as Barnes' though) but also partly high-pitched and shrieking... his vocals is slightly bugging me for this reason, it's weird because I really loved his work on Monstrosity. Maybe it's the combination of his vocals and the "new" Cannibal Corpse music style, which is too cold and technical, more in the lines of Malevolent Creation (which I've never been a huge fan of) than the original Cannibal Corpse. Most of the music is very reminiscent of the style they started with "The Bleeding", it's very fast, technical and melodic, but simply not heavy enough... The chunky, lumpy riffs plus the deep and heavy sound is what I loved from the early Cannibal Corpse, but it's all gone now. Songwriting is very solid anyway, but it feels like they lost their cool sound... "Vile" is closer to new fashion black metal sound with its clear, melodic, treble heavy guitars, than to good old grinding, primal death metal from their "Tomb of the mutilated" era. I listened to this album quite a few times, and I'm always let down by it, it just doesn't have any grip on me... This is good, clean brutal death metal, but they lost their edge in my opinion...

Tracks: 1)Devoured by vermin 2)Mummified in barbed wire 3)Perverse suffering 4)Disfigured 5)Bloodlands 6)Puncture wound massacre 7)Relentless beating 8)Absolute hatred 9)Eaten from inside 10)Orgasm through torture 11)Monolith