Cannibal Corpse

Some friends of mine described this demo as "the Cannibal Corpse demo where they sound like Cryptic Slaughter". I think they've got a point. These tracks, later all re-recorded for the band's well-known debut album "Eaten Back to Life", here are presented in a thrashcore aesthetic that seems to better suit them. Not by coincidence, this demo contains most of the album's shorter-running tracks, most notably "Put Them to Death" running under two minutes. Chris Barnes is pretty much unrecognizable: he doesn't growl at all, he basically sounds like your average thrashcore vocalist in the vein of Cerebral Fix, D.R.I. and, indeed, Cryptic Slaughter. This may not be on par with the chilling, ground-breaking guttural growls he would later exhibit on "Butchered at Birth", but as a huge fan of this rough, punky vocal style that was so common in late-80's obscure thrash, I'd take this all day over Barnes' current degraded pseudo-growls and eeeeeees.

To be honest, I never was a huge fan of "Eaten Back to Life". It's definitely a good album, but I always found it to be a bit lacking when compared to similar US death/thrash acts of that era, such as Devastation, Solstice, Num Skull and Epidemic (and even Gammacide, if we're willing to count them among that league due to their sporadic usage of blast-beats): it's an album that feels at times a bit too boneheaded and simple-minded, especially during the first half (the best example being the obsessively choppy riffage of "Shredded Humans"), paling in comparison to the riff galore of competitors such as "Idolatry" or Solstice's self-titled debut. Yet, I think this demo encompasses most of the album's better tracks, with a more primitive execution that seems to better embody their original spirit. The thrashy, lo-fi guitar tone, the E standard tuning, Barnes' punky vocals, the somewhat sloppier drumming - each of these ingredients seems to better fit these songs compared to their Morrisound versions. It just feels like their natural dimension.

The riffing is still quite percussive and choppy, but the less precise execution emphasizes a somewhat more fluid nature in these riffs, compared to the more rigid album versions. This is especially helpful for the faster sections, such as the razor-sharp, almost Wehrmacht-life riffing from the verses of "A Skull Full of Maggots" or the untamed tremolos from "Bloody Chunks". It's also quite shocking to hear such an improved version of "Put Them to Death", way more chaotic and less restrained, with the thrashy guitar tone and tuning working far better and giving you the feeling that Scott Burns kinda neutered the band's primitive, unrefined sound, homologating it to the nascent Florida death metal trend (after all, let's not forget the band relocated to Tampa around that time, just to better profit from the commercial opportunities of that scene). The best track, however, remains "Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains", with its frightening melodic interval that was so common for thrash bands around the late 80's.

This demo is ultimately a great slab of primitive death/thrash with occasional thrashcore/crossover undertones. The short running time and the kinda chaotic, pummeling chords during the fast sections do really convey a distinct thrashcore feel, which on these recordings is more apparent than ever compared to the album versions. It's clear, by listening to this, that Cannibal Corpse were a foreign entity compared to the rest of the Tampa scene, and with "Eaten Back to Life" they just jumped on a bandwagon by rebranding their early material with different aesthetics that didn't fully fit their original attitude. Luckily enough, they would later manage to find their own distinct sound within that scene, carving their own path and writing some fundamental pages in the history of death metal with undisputed classics such as "Butchered at Birth" and "Tomb of the Mutilated" (and the cameo in "Ace Ventura", hehe). This remains the best slab from the band's early era. I just wish some other tracks from the album were present, such as "Rotting Head" and "Born in a Casket": I'd be curious to hear them in a more primitive, sloppy, thrashy version.