Review Summary: Gore Obsessed does exactly what it says on the tin but truly butchers any progress they made with the previous few albums and feels disjointed and dull.
Death metal is a genre that is almost guaranteed to bring a lot of hate wherever it is mentioned. The mixture of disgustingly filthy riffs and surgically precise bass lines coupled with vocals that sound like Satan on a diet of razor blades and savage blast beats is pretty much a blue print for hate. One of the only bands in the genre that the majority of people who are angered by the genre have actually heard and love to name drop are Cannibal Corpse. To many people they sound like the exact blueprint for death metal with their graphically gory lyrical content and stereotypical soundscape for the genre, and even people who are well versed in the genre have a habit of honing their rage on this particular band. What these people do not realize however is that this is the band that pretty much formulated the formula for today's death metal scene.
This band was formed in 1988 at the peak of the thrash scene, when there were not a whole lot of death metal acts out there. They herald from Buffalo, New York as a thrash metal act but shifted the style of their musical output to a straightforward death metal sound after a crude demo tape they put out. Their first album still contained a huge thrash influence, and its followup Butchered At Birth could be seen as a child starting to develop hair in areas it wasn't growing before. The final two albums that featured original vocalist Chris Barnes are generally seen as the pinnacle of the band's sound, before Chris was replaced by George Fisher. On each of the three albums that followed the swap, the band developed more of a technical sound and were on a run of quality albums and seemed to be an unstoppable juggernaut in the genre. Until 2002's Gore Obsessed.
The packaging itself shows that not a whole lot has really changed in Cannibal Corpse. This is not a band that has massively matured over the years, and yet another gory image makes up the art work. The album title and tracks named Savage Butchery, Compelled To Lacerate and Drowning In Viscera would give a good indication as to the nature of this release, and looks are not deceiving here. This is an album that gushes with blood from the opening chords that kick off Savage Butchery through the entire thirty eight minute duration to the scream that precedes silence that occupies the last seconds of the album. If you were a die-hard fan of this band then this would perhaps not bother you, as the band is not really one known for their experimentation. Nowhere on their eighth studio album is there any sign of a clean passage or a break in the relentless aggression that the band kicks their listener in the teeth with. Unfortunately, the music itself is nothing more than a spit in the face and kick to the groin to the listener.
The band had steadily been making drastic changes to the technical values of their musicianship, and this is no different on Gore Obsessed. The intricacy of the riffs is amplified tenfold, with various incredibly fast chord-based riffs and other guitar lines where scores of single notes are played faster than one would consider to be humanly possible. Sadly, the band really lets their listeners down by making sure that every scrap of memorability that was to be found on their last few albums is ditched in place of a more straightforward fast-paced approach to their music. This is really nothing overly offensive and it is essentially what they did on the Butchered At Birth album, but the fact that the riffs are completely indistinguishable from one another really does get rather irritating after the first few tracks. Hatchet To The Head is a great example of the schizophrenic and yet incoherent nature of the guitar work, and this one track should really give a good indication as to the direction the band took their sound here. Of all the songs, Pit Of Zombies is only one of two songs with some truly memorable riffs, and even this track only succeeds because of the chuggy nature of the first couple of riffs to it. This is a release where both guitarist's creativity completely failed them in favor of mindless technicality and the urge to show off like an angry ADD 7 year old.
Alex Webster does exactly the same to his bass lines (amplifying the technicality in favor of memorability) as the guitarists, although not to quite as drastic an impact. His bass is incessantly thumping along in the background, occasionally diverting away from the beaten path to play something a little differently, and it just makes for another instrument to attempt to concentrate on. This is an album that is heavily disjointed, and primary song writer Alex is just another reason. The one factor of this band's sound that draws consistent sighs from both fans and newcomers alike would be the drumming from Paul Mazurkiewicz. Whilst all the other members of Cannibal Corpse have grown significantly as musicians from their humble roots on Eaten Back To Life right through their career, providing an interesting experience for fans of the band, Paul has not achieved this. His blast beats have remained exactly the same throughout ever blood-thirsty chapter in their discography, and his slower beats are always devoid of creativity. Despite this, however, he really feels completely necessary for their sound as a form of anchor that holds down a constant sound among the sea of madness the rest of their members lay down. On Gore Obsessed this is clearly his task, and he manages this very well and it is arguably the first time where he has easily matched up to the other members purely because half the time you can not tell what is going on with Alex, Pat and Jack.
Compelled To Lacerate is perhaps the strongest track here, opening with some frantic tremolo picked guitar lines and some hyper-fast notes before a brief cymbal break that leads back into the mayhem. This is a track that really shows the potential that the insanely technical sledgehammer to the face of an album that this is had in the best way possible. The drums are all over the place, Alex sounds about ready to break his fingers on the bass and the guitarists play multiple solos amid the mental riffing. This is the type of song that really separates men from boys with its relentless, precise impulse to just smash your face in with its bludgeoning riff-set and gut-wrenching vocal performance. George has always been a vocalist who will churn your stomach with his fast-paced, deep growl and lengthy high pitched screams and he really gives it all on this song. On other songs he is just as powerful but the inaccessible nature of the songs are likely to turn listeners off, but on this song he is given his chance to shine and he capitalizes on it flawlessly. Sadly, the songs that precede and follow this track are primarily dull, one-dimensional tracks with no merit to them whatsoever. Drowning In Viscera attempts to use CC's trademark pinched harmonics to a good effect and turns the bass up at one point to a near ear-splitting level, but once again it feels like a gimmick song and is pretty flat.
The lyrics here are yet another reason why Cannibal Corpse seldom show any progression nor any real reasons why anyone would want to listen to this album. On many albums they have put out, there are at least a few catchy lines that you will want to chant along to. On Gore Obsessed however this only happens on the aforementioned Compelled To Lacerate during the chorus however, and it is sad to see this band sink this low. Whilst death metal is not really what you think of when you think of the word "catchy", Cannibal Corpse have already maintained a certain level of catchiness and to see this trait butchered like a sacrificial lamb is really rather irksome. The production job here is also not the best, with some really flat drum sounds and mixing that is so retarded that at times it feels like the producer was drunk at the time of mixing. Out of nowhere on certain tracks, the bass will be turned up for some sections before being turned back down to fill the void it leaves at the back of the tracks. What was going through Neil Kernon's head when it came to producing this?
Gore Obsessed is sadly a massive step backward for Cannibal Corpse, who were making rather smart moves with their sound prior to this. The overly technical sound that they went for here sadly ensures they are reduced to being nothing more than an average band who put out an average album. Thankfully they would massive amend the mess they made of their music on here with the next album.
