CANNIBAL CORPSE — Eaten Back to Life (review)

CANNIBAL CORPSE — Eaten Back to Life album cover

Album · 1990 · Death Metal

3/5 · 2010-05-14
UMUR

"Eaten Back to Life" is the debut full-length studio album by US death metal act Cannibal Corpse. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in August 1990. Originally formed in Buffalo, New York in 1988, Cannibal Corpse initially consisted of members from two local acts (Beyond Death and Tirant Sin), that came together to play the most savage, brutal, and vile music imaginable.

Initally they played very brutal thrash metal, but they soon started playing a more death metal oriented style with gory lyrics. It´s easy to hear the band´s early thrash metal influences on "Eaten Back to Life", but Cannibal Corpse took the word brutal to a whole new level on this album. Considering the time of release, "Eaten Back to Life" was among the most savagely brutal death metal albums released up until then.

So stylistically the music on Eaten Back to Life is brutal death metal predominantly played in a really fast pace. Where not talking ultra fast blasting though and there are heavier sections featured on the album too. The gory cover artwork and especially the lyrics are quite explicit, and earned Cannibal Corpse bans in several countries. Most known are probably the ban they received in Germany, which lasted until 2006. Chris Barnes vocals are semi-intelligible growling on this album. So the almost completely unintelligible growling vocals on the two successors, are generally quite different from the vocals on this album. The vocals are still very brutal and paired with the vile lyrics, there´s a reason Cannibal Corpse, where considered one of the most extreme metal bands of their time.

Tracks like "A Skull Full of Maggots", "Mangled", "Shredded Humans", and "Born in a Casket", are some of the highlights of the album (the two former features backing vocals by Glenn Benton from Deicide and Francis H. Howard from Incubus to great effect). It´s not all tracks on the 11 track, 36:27 minutes long album that stand out as much as those above mentioned tracks do, and there are actually quite a few tracks on the album that are forgotten as soon as they are over. It wouldn´t be completely wrong to call the music a bit one-dimensional either, as there is generally very little variation on the album.

The musicianship is on a pretty high level for the style, and the Morrisound Studios recorded and Scott Burns produced album, features a powerful, raw, and brutal sound production, which suits the music perfectly. I´m not sure I think it´s aged that well (especially the guitar tone isn´t that well sounding), but back then this was considered one of the most brutal sound productions ever created. So all elements go hand in hand on "Eaten Back to Life" and together create a decent quality product and an overall promising first release by Cannibal Corpse. It´s quite different sounding from the rest of their discography, and in that respect it´s the odd one out, but to my ears that´s only an advantage. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.