Interview with the publisher and editor of LotFP now online!

[Jim LotFP]

http://www.lotfp.com/content.php?interviewid=58

If this interview passes without comment or discussion from you people, I'm going to be pissed.

 

[Farseer of the Benighted Land]

Wow ... that was a lot to read!

It was an excellent interview. I would like to know more about the mysterious comments about Maiden that you alluded to when you 'didn't know enough' about them.

 

[Jim LotFP]

It was an excellent interview. I would like to know more about the mysterious comments about Maiden that you alluded to when you 'didn't know enough' about them.

eh, the Iron Maiden thing comes more from hearing HammerFall or The Chemical Wedding before ever hearing a full Maiden album, but the bad part about it was when I got Powerslave, I reviewed it, and being unimpressed because it wasn't so instantaneously awesome as to make my speakers come alive and blow me, or something like that. Just absolute silliness and the perfect example of how not to listen to music or write about it.

 

[Farseer of the Benighted Land]

Well, at least you have learned the error of your ways!!

 

[Dan Berger]

If this interview passes without comment or discussion from you people, I'm going to be pissed.

I usually don't have any comments because you're usually so adamant in your positions that discussion seems kinda pointless. I don't tend to like to argue for the sake of argument (which is why I read and participate in so few forums), but I do like reading your opinions, even if I disagree with some of them.

For example, I don't agree with you that the label system is inherently evil because I believe different people have different talents and those abilities can be used in symbiosis. I agree with you to an extent that the system is awful, but I don't think a band needs to do everything all the time, at least not if their goal is to create commercial art (if you can accept that term and not view it as an oxymoron). That said, I do think it's great that you're exposing the seedy side of the business that many people are unaware of.

The other thing is, I don't spend anywhere near the amount of time that you do thinking about this kinda stuff - which is why I enjoy LotFP, as it's an open window to views that I like thinking about on occasion (even if I don't agree with all of them). I usually don't want to invest the time to state an opposing viewpoint, because I don't see it doing much good for anyone - and I'm not much of a back-slapper regarding topics we agree on (and people only read forums to see the bitch fights anyway).

I really like that you're out there screaming that the emperor has no clothes, I'm just not inclined to join the fray because I am a lazy dumbass.

 

[Jim LotFP]

I usually don't have any comments because you're usually so adamant

Sometimes this is simply because nobody challenges my comments.

For example, I don't agree with you that the label system is inherently evil because I believe different people have different talents and those abilities can be used in symbiosis.

This causes a disconnect in my brain because you're right. It isn't inherently evil, people who can help bands in different areas should only be a good thing, right? Sometimes I feel like Joshua at the end of War Games, working out all the ways that a label system could function without the business elements overshadowing the musical. I come to the same conclusion:

It's a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

I just wonder how many bands would disappear and how many classics would never have been recorded if this little pyramid scheme of an industry didn't have this "fame" and "money" to chase at the end. (those phrases in quotes because it's not like even the commercial top-end bands in metal are making "don't have to work another day in my life if we quit the band right now" money... or are they?) We'd be out a lot of good albums, yeah, but I have a feeling that heavy metal as a whole, most of the "canon" albums intact, would still be with us.

 

[DBB]

I’m going to comment on statements made by both of you without making clear differentiations between who said what, but it should be easy to figure out or maybe not.

I was also quite unprepared for the task as those few hundred albums were mainly composed of albums released in the five or so years before beginning the project…..The lack of historical perspective leaks through every review in that issue, making it thoroughly unusable for any purpose other than "look how far he's come."

I think that is really one of the things that make your body of work stand out as well as edifying and enlightening. The raw honesty of it all being laid out there on the line and allowing people to trace the evolution of someone into metal as their tastes, orientations, and ideas shift and mutate is really something special and unique.

Although I had only read a few of the larger issues from the late ‘90s before really digging into most of the LotFP cannon, anyone who reads from the beginning to the current point really gets a view of metal that is all too often hidden from view in order to appear an expert of all metal and maintain credibility.

I can also say that the historical value of your journey being chronicled in print would provide much grist for the mill of posterity. It simply offers a window into attitudes, values and ideas that have been swept under the rug by a lot of people who act as if they knew everything about metal when they dropped out of the womb.

As for slagging off Powerslave in an offhanded fashion, I don’t think that is an unpardonable sin. I enjoy the album, of course, but Number of the Beast was the peak and there are people out there who regard anything Maiden which features Bruce Bruce as markedly inferior to what came before.

But let's say Cannibal Corpse was totally anti-women, and it was offensive in a very real way, and not just on the basis of shock imagery.

I’m wary of typing this out because it makes me appear censorious and opens a whole can of worms. There are women connected with the band as wives, sisters and daughters, so they are not anti-women--but the lyrics, imagery and ideas of the band exhibit a clear and strong pattern of misogyny. The term is an ugly one and conjures up PC ideas (which in turn conjures up a prudish stigma), but the claim that CC lyrics evince hostility towards faceless women with no identity who are carved up like cattle would be another way of putting it. “Stripped Raped and Strangled” is what pushes it over the edge from where I’m standing and it is beyond the pale. I’m sure this about some serial killer and establishes the distance that the cartoon gore of other songs do to some and the band would make the argument too--but there is no element of fantasy or play here, it is brutal voyeuristic realism.

A comparison to the different methods of exposition, explanation and emotional viewpoint of AC/DC’s “Night Prowler” (Is this the first song ever written by a serial killer?) is particularly revealing, I think, but I’m not inclined to go into a lot of detail about it. I just wanted to state my opinion.

Hopefully there are kids out there with overprotective parents hiding the fact that they are listening to things like Cannibal Corpse.

The issue of Terrorizer containing the interview is a box buried under some others, but at least one member of the band does not allow their kids to see or hear anything related to CC.

I often wonder if there will ever come a time when fans of metal might reach out to "normal" people in some way to help them understand...besides flipping them off.

Obviously, there are people I count as close friends who I have nothing but respect for who listen to what I would consider crap music, but they also respect and understand that metal is something that is not a joke or something juvenile. I don’t need to reach out to them metal and there is really no need to do so.

As for people who I do not have a close relationship with…

I get a lot of people who see me wearing a metal shirt when I’m out and about and think that I am into A) ‘80s “hair metal” B) Korn, Madvayne, Lamb of God or whatever is the popular “metal” band of the moment C) Some damn idiot who doesn’t know that Saint Vitus is considered doom metal asking me if I’m into Mogwai, since they are kind of like doom metal.

At times like these, I feel like reaching out and shaking some sense into people. I don’t think that people who don’t have a good working knowledge of metal can be reached a lot of times, but I do my best to remain calm and inform people of the error of their ways in a polite fashion.

speaking a different language to them

That is the succinct way of putting it. People have so many erroneous ideas of what constitutes metal (beyond the axes that everyone knows that I have to grind). It is just something outside the “normal” boundaries of everyday mainstream society due the values and norms of metal--and I don’t think I’d have it any other way.

No. I don't want LotFP to be a "social" nexus at all.

Too late for that, brother.

I have some more, but I think that is enough typing for now. I’m going to go have a beer and listen to Splatterthrash.

 

[horggard]

It's so weird--but welcome--to see people responding to some of my questions as well as Jim's responses! And I'm glad to see that others feel similarly as I do regarding LotFP being a sort of thinking metalhead's hang-out.

To Jim: It's interesting you state that few people disagree with you, though--I'm assuming you're referring to the forum, since the format of LotFP (hardcopy) doesn't really allow for such communication.

I know that this forum is the LotFP companion, which does allow for immediate communication, but it would be cool to have it in print somehow too, like a special edition LotFP that had an op/ed section or something like it.

Garth

 

[Jim LotFP]

There are women connected with the band as wives, sisters and daughters, so they are not anti-women--but the lyrics, imagery and ideas of the band exhibit a clear and strong pattern of misogyny.

OK, let's see.

Butchered At Birth
Shredded Humans: Full family slaughter
Edible Autopsy: Sexless necrocannibalism
Put Them To Death: Random killing
Mangled: Complete and total bullshit but sexless
Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains: More bullshit, but sexless
Born In A Casket: Sex with a dead woman but I can't agree that any sort of mysogynistic sentiment is to be found here, the point is the zombie baby I think. Dave, I hate you so much for making me go through all this shit to prove you wrong.
Rotting Head: More sexless blah blah fucking blah
The Undead Will Feast: No women here.
Bloody Chunks: Fucking hell these people are retarded. No women here.
A Skull Full Of Maggots: No women here.
Buried In The Backyard: No women here.

Album 1: Eleven songs, only one that could even possibly, if one was stretching, be anti-woman.

Butchered At Birth
Meat Hook Sodomy: IhateDaveIhateDaveIhateDaveIhateDave. No women here.
Gutted: Anti-child, yeah, but no women here.
Living Dissection: No women here.
Under The Rotted Flesh: Aha! A possibility for debate! Necrophilia... anti-woman? Anti-corpse? But OK, a woman is all put upon at the end of this one.
Covered With Sores: OK, maybe this one.
Vomit The Soul: No women here.
Butchered At Birth: OK, let's assume this one.
Rancid Amputation: No women.
Innards Decay: No women here.

Album 2: Nine songs, perhaps three count for your view if we agree that the point in all of those three is specifically to take out morbid fantasies on women, and if that is still significant in light of what happens to non-gendered victims in other songs.

All-time classic album cover, though.

Tomb of the Mutilated
Hamer Smashed Face: No women in this smash-hit song. (teehee)
I Cum Blood: Hmm, can't argue here as it's all KILL WOMEN KILL WOMEN. "The greatest thrill of my life/To slit my own cock with a knife" Lovely.
Addicted To Vaginal Skin: Voodoo spells possess an innocent man to begin "clit carving." mmhmm. I guess this has to count.
Split Wide Open: Woman specifically as perpetrator and not as victim.
Necropedophile: Holy fucking hell I forgot just how vile this is. Haven't people been arrested for child porn in this country for writing fiction tamer than this? Seriously. The victim is decidedly female, so I guess this has to count. *shiver* I ruined my wife's coffee by reading these lyrics to her as she drank. hahahaha!
The Cryptic Stench: The line "Impregnation of the virgin/I drink the blood of the unborn" is in here but I can't count this as mysogynist unless the very mention of the popular vampire myth is as well. Not counting it.
Entrails Ripped From A Virgin's Cunt: I don't think I have to even read these lyrics to put this in the "yuppers" column.
Post Mortal Ejaculation: First half is about autoeroticasphyxia, the second half is about being a horny zombie raping women.
Beyond The Cemetary: The victim is the POV-dude's daughter. Niiiicccee.

Album 3: Nine songs, six of them victimize women. You'd have a point if we limited discussion to this album.

Too bad this album cover (another all-time classic) wasn't used for Eaten Back to Life as it fits that album title much better.

The Bleeding
Staring Through The Eyes Of The Dead: No women and the most tame song they'd done up to this point. Leadoff track, they did a video for it. haha. Sellouts!
Fucked With A Knife: OK.
Stripped, Raped, And Strangled: hehe, OK.
Pulverised: No womanly mentions.
Return To Flesh: No women mentions (hmm, one lyric site shows nothing here, and another has some blah blah boring stuff...)
The Pick-axe Murders: No women mentioned.
She Was Asking For It: I see where the reputation comes from.
The Bleeding: No women.
Force Fed Broken Glass: No mention of women anywhere, although it could be inferred from the line "Oral sex, with broken glass," but I'm not counting this one.
An Experiment In Homicide: No mention of women.

Album 4: Eleven songs, and I'd count three as specifically portraying woman as victim.

So the Chris Barnes era... Forty songs, and only 13 I would count as showing women as victims. Now, maybe just one might be enough to trigger that "bad, bad, bad" reflex, but in light of all the other sick shit going on in these lyrics, I stand behind what I said in the interview.

What a dumb bunch of shit this all is though.

Vile

Eleven songs, NONE with woman as victim. One specific woman-on-man song but if I remember correctly they were intentionally keeping away from the woman-as-victim theme for this album.

“Stripped Raped and Strangled” is what pushes it over the edge from where I’m standing and it is beyond the pale. I’m sure this about some serial killer and establishes the distance that the cartoon gore of other songs do to some and the band would make the argument too--but there is no element of fantasy or play here, it is brutal voyeuristic realism.

Actually, that's the aspect of this song is what makes it stand out from the rest on their first bunch of albums. It doesn't seem like a bunch of bullshit. The fact that it also sounds like a song and not a ten car pileup helps. I've suggested this song to Ben and PJ for Twilight Odyssey to cover. I think there's plenty of room for melodic vocals here.

The issue of Terrorizer containing the interview is a box buried under some others, but at least one member of the band does not allow their kids to see or hear anything related to CC.

I can't really form an opinion on this without knowing how old the children in question are. Then again, my mother showed me Andy Warhol's Frankenstein before I hit puberty (not that I understood what the fuck was going on), so maybe I have a skewed perspective.

 

[horggard]

On the whole quantitative analysis of exactly how many songs contain violence toward women, should number be the deciding factor of the issue? Wouldn't it be degree of extremity/severity and/or the simple fact that they continually return to the same theme of women-oriented violence (at least intheir earlier albums)?

Garth

 

[Jim LotFP]

On the whole quantitative analysis of exactly how many songs contain violence toward women, should number be the deciding factor of the issue? Wouldn't it be degree of extremity/severity and/or the simple fact that they continually return to the same theme of women-oriented violence (at least intheir earlier albums)?

I'd say the degree of extremety was pretty constant over the first three albums in every song. Of course adding the sexual aspect to the splatter could be said to increase the intensity all by itself, but I really don't agree when it's all as silly as this.

As for returning to the theme, it's not like every other song is about a different thing. The whole "I was normal now I am possessed to kill" thing comes up time and again, the flesh-eating zombie first-person narratives, and a couple of other things.

http://www.darklyrics.com/c/cannibalcorpse.html

I'm done looking at that crap. You count.

 

[DBB]

Dave, I hate you so much for making me go through all this shit to prove you wrong.

Better you than me.

I'm done looking at that crap. You count.

That is about the way I feel.

I could read interviews with Chris Barnes all day, though. Maybe I'll pull out a couple of my favorites and take a looksee.

I do think that I'm going to go take a look at the flap caused by Bob Dole targeting Cannibal Corpse as a threat to the morality of America. I haven't thought about that in awhile.

 

[DBB]

I don't want to reach down the gullet of a horse, rip out its intestines and then whip it to death with pieces of ropey viscera, but this is an interesting and relevant old article:

Peter Gilstrap “The Sunshiney, Funshiney World of Cannibal Corpse: An Autopsy of the Nastiest Band in Death Metal.” Miami New Times July 13 ,1994

Pablo Picasso once said, "The chief enemy of creativity is good taste."

Of course, Pablo never heard Cannibal Corpse.

He never heard songs like "Fucked with a Knife," "Stripped, Raped and Strangled," or "Force Fed Broken Glass," and he's no longer around to tell us whether good taste should perhaps win this round over "creativity."

Bone fragments clot to the hatchet
Knee-deep in the blood of the dead
Cranial separation
Sex with her severed head.

-- "The Pick-Axe Murders"

Despite the graphic nature of Corpse's lyrics, the violent scenarios that frequently involve females as victims, distaff followers say they aren't troubled by what they hear. "I think some of those girls enjoy some of the things we write about," says lyricist-vocalist Chris Barnes, his voice a quiet, congenial rasp over the long-distance line. "But they understand it's not violence toward women. That's ridiculous."

He started the band five years ago, along with guitarists Jack Owen and Rob Barrett, bassist Alex Webster, and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz in Buffalo; the group was signed to Metal Blade Records almost immediately. Corpse's latest release, The Bleeding, was anointed by Request magazine as "death metal at its nastiest and most unpleasant." Which, to a death-metal fan, is the equivalent of telling a coprophiliac the plumbing just backed up. Yes, Cannibal Corpse is red hot.

To nonfans, however, Barnes's lyrics are revolting, and to some, they're stupid and predictable, as if he sat down and purposely tried to write the most offensive things he could come up with. When this is suggested to him, he is grossly insulted.

"That's not how we go about things musically, and that's not how I go about things lyrically, either," he says emphatically. "I just write what's on my mind. I think of a cool story to write about, something that's just bone-chilling. A lot of things I write about frighten me. I'm very serious with the lyrics that I write, I treat it as an author would treat a short story or book that he's writing." Barnes also readily admits that the girls in the audience aren't the only ones getting a charge out of his words. "When I write the stuff," he says quietly, "it tends to arouse me sexually."

I wrapped my hands around her neck
Squeezing out her breath
Eyes rolled back in her head
Clawing at my skin
I know that it's not my fault
She was asking for it.

-- "She Was Asking for It"

As nature has National Geographic, as pornography has Hustler, death metal has Sounds of Death. It is a slick, well-informed publication distributed internationally, put out by editor David Horn. "I define death metal pretty loosely," he says from his home in Kirkwood, Missouri. "Thrash, speed, grindcore, there're a number of different genres I group together. It's all the intensity of the music."

He's quite familiar with the Cannibal Corpse oeuvre. Horn has written articles about the band and interviewed Barnes a number of times. "Chris Barnes is pretty genuinely a sick motherfucker, I think," offers Horn. "He's not one that goes out and does these things, he just has a very twisted mind as far as being desensitized to sexual violence, which is really what he writes about." Yet the editor rates the head Corpseman above many in the field. "There are certain players that actually have these sick beliefs and Chris Barnes is certainly one of them," he says. "But he's using his music as an outlet much as Stephen King would use his novels as an outlet for his thoughts."

While Barnes has his outlet writing and performing his music, there are plenty of kids out there who find their release in listening to it. Though the band has seen audience members as young as 10 and as old as 50, at shows around the world, the core following is in the 16- to 25-year-old range. According to Barnes, the mostly male audience are good kids reared on gore films and comic books, just looking to blow off a little steam via the ultrafast power of Corpse. His own introduction to blood, guts, and violence was "watching horror films on TV with my father on Sunday afternoons."

Flesh starts to rip/Gouging through skin
From the throat blood gushes/Glandular eruption
Blistered skin secretion/Internal punctures
Blood regurgitation.

-- "Force Fed Broken Glass"

"We haven't met anybody who's out there, like, murdering people and shit," says Barnes's bandmate, Alex Webster. "I would hope that no one would do that, but I've met a few fans that seem really extreme."

It's the classic argument against rock lyrics (usually leveled against words that sound like nursery rhymes next to the fodder found in Corpse songs) , an argument that's as old as the music itself: Can lyrics drive listeners to commit violent acts? Webster, obviously, thinks the answer is no.

"We've had people give us brains," he says. "Seriously, we've received three pig brains in formaldehyde, and we had a brain thrown at us in Montreal -- it landed onstage -- and then I got a bag of pig parts, legs and innards, in Germany. As long as they're not committing a crime or hurting anybody, I'm not going to stop them from expressing themselves."

If you're not into death metal, it may be hard to look beyond the lyrics, but the music itself is of the utmost importance. "I don't care that much what the lyrics are as long as it fits the music, that's the number-one priority," says Webster. "The lyrics have just got to be some kind of brutal shit to fit the music. There are some really great musicians in death metal , but it's overlooked when people hear the vocals and see the song titles and it's all done."

One person who apparently appreciates the big picture is actor Jim Carrey. He landed Corpse a cameo, playing itself, in his recent blockbuster Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. "It would probably make more sense for us to be in a horror movie," says Barnes. "But Jim was into heavy music, and we thought, Cool. We just went and did what we do."

What they do. Is it on par with Stephen King, or the most extreme version yet of rock guaranteed to piss people off, or an advocacy of sick, misogynistic behavior?

"I don't think there's really anything to advocate," says Barnes without a hint of irony. "I'm just telling fictional stories. I write as a fiction writer that might take some true-to-life experiences and possibilities into consideration. I don't think there's any for or against. I'm basically neutral."

I don't want to hurt you
I just want to kill you.

-- "An Experiment in Homicide”