Special report by "Metal" Tim Henderson

Tampa, FL’s godfathers of death metal, CANNIBAL CORPSE have just completed work on Evisceration Plague, their brand new studio album due out on February 3rd, 2009 via Metal Blade Records. The album marks the follow up to the band's extremely successful 2006 release Kill (debuted at #170 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart), which has become the fastest selling Cannibal album in their storied career as well as their highest selling album since 1996’s Vile (debuted at #151 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart).

Evisceration Plague was recorded at Mana Recording Studios with producer Erik Rutan (who also produced Kill) at the helm. Evisceration Plague tracklisting: 'Priests Of Sodom', 'Scalding Hail', 'To Decompose', 'A Cauldron Of Hate', 'Beheading And Burning', 'Evidence In The Furnace', 'Carnivorous Swarm', 'Evisceration Plague', 'Shatter Their Bones', 'Carrion Sculpted Entity', 'Unnatural', 'Skewered From Ear To Eye'.

BraveWords.com caught up with Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster and guitarists Pat O'Brien and Rob Barrett as they were putting the finishing touches to the album. The first part of our Q&A; interview reads as follows:

BraveWords.com: Evisceration Plague seems to have arrived quick?

Webster: "It was the same amount of time we always take to write. It's been working out the same way the past several albums - we seem to be finished up touring shortly before the holidays and then we get in there and start digging and writing material in January usually. And that's what we did, at the end of January 2008 we started writing and we were finished writing by the middle of August. It was a lot of months ... we didn't do one single show in 2008. We've been working on the album all year. The last show we did was down in Brazil in 2007 in October, so we've been off for a long time and we've spent most of it writing. Some bands take four, five years off between albums - as soon as we finish a tour, we like to get in and start song-writing again so we can get back out there and do more tours, keep things going."

BraveWords.com: Were you antsy to get back to work?

Webster: "It's nice to be home for a while. As you get older, you tend to enjoy your time at home with the family even more. But we love to go out and tour, so we are chomping at the bit at this point. We're just dying to get out there and we start touring at the end of January, so we are counting the days."

BraveWords.com: Cannibal Corpse arguably one of the oldest entities in death metal. Describe the aging corpse writing and recording in 2008.

Webster: "We are always trying to improve. If we stayed at the same level that we were before, it would probably be getting easier. But we always like to push ourselves. It seems like if we solve one kind of problem on the last one, we create new ones. So we are always creating new problems for ourselves to sound better. It's hard to go into detail, but on this one there were some really technical riffs. You might not hear it first time around, but there were. In trying to come up with more musical ideas you end up going into territory that's a little bit out of your comfort zone as a player. So we went out of our comfort zone on some of these riffs. Same thing with Paul (Mazurkiewicz) - he stepped up a lot and did a lot of different things. He recorded to a metronome this time, which is something a lot of other bands do, but we'd never done that before. So that was a big step for him to give that a try. It can be difficult for some drummers to do that, but he took to it really well. We just wanted to give it a try, because on some of the previous records - even though you can't really hear it - there are points where things might be subtly slow or speed up due to human error. And when you have somebody play along to a click-track, it will generally keep the tempo consistent from the beginning of the song until the end. It worked out really well, so we will probably do it again. Drummers are human beings and they will speed up or slow down, depending on if they are getting excited or getting tired and a click-track forces them to maintain a steady tempo. Paul took to it really, because he always had great tempo, so it actually came pretty natural for him."

BraveWords.com: What were the issues with the guitar work:

O'Brien: "We ran into a few problems here and there. We tried a few different things, tried out some different gear, experimented around with some different stuff. But there was some stuff that was a lot harder to do than I thought it was going to be. It was a very challenging album."

Webster: "There's a lot going on in this record and it will take more than one listen for people to get all of it. There was a lot of time put into these songs, trying to make sure all these details are good."

Barrett: "Even in the more technical songs, there are catchy parts in between the confusion."

Webster: "One thing I want to make clear to everybody is that even though we are pushing ourselves to become better musicians, better song-writers, all that stuff is being done with the intent on making the band heavier. It's not done so we can become some kind of progressive band - we are not a progressive band, we are a death metal band. A brutal death metal band that uses whatever we can to get to that end. If that means writing a technical song, or writing a slow easy song, it doesn't matter to us as long as the end result is a really brutal, heavy, catchy song."

BraveWords.com: But obviously you still want to progress as a band?

Webster: "Yes, definitely, but I wouldn't say we are leaning in some kind of direction where we are trying to be some technical kind of band."

O'Brien: "We are only trying to bring in technical ideas so we can abuse them."

BraveWords.com: How do Cannibal Corpse keep on reinventing the wheel then?

Webster: "We just trying to think of different ways to go for the same thing. I know that sounds contradictory - the goal of Cannibal Corpse is to be brutal, fast, heavy, aggressive death metal band. Our challenge is figuring out how to do this again and again without it being repetitive and that's why I start looking at different rhythms, scales - a different way to make a song sound heavier. Working with time signatures a different way, different notes, different song structures. here's just lots of different things you can do with music. You've got your 12 notes and beyond that you are limitless."

BraveWords.com: Evisceration Plague is not out until February 3rd. Can you give fans a quick snapshot - musically and lyrically - of the record.

Webster: "Lyrically there are not too many things that are different from what you'd expect from us. There are songs with the usual Cannibal topics in there. 'Priests Of Sodom' are going to make people look twice as it's not necessarily something we've done before. It has nothing to do with the Catholic Church - it's actually a fictional story idea based on some evil ancient blood orgy going on in Sodom a coupla thousand years ago. Nothing topical. Once again, there's no real message to any of the lyrics. It's all strictly dark fantasy violent entertainment. It's not anything with a social message at all as usual. We've rarely had anything with any sort of social message to it."

BraveWords.com: Cannibal Corpse is always known for their extreme artwork - explain the visuals this time around.

Webster: "The artwork this time is by Vincent Locke. The name of the album is called Evisceration Plague. We sent him the lyrics to the song 'Evisceration Plague' and he actually came up with some ideas to fit pretty much what the lyrics were about. It was really cool because his idea that he came up with was very much what the lyrics were about, before we even sent him the lyrics. So it worked out well. We are going to have two pieces of art; one on the cover which is more subtle and dark and on the interior it's a bit of a bloodbath in there. That just seems the best way to do things so we are not just getting censored left and right. We can give everybody a really graphic piece of art on the inside and the cover still looks good."

BraveWords.com: Howzabout formats?

"They are talking about doing some kind of deluxe collectors edition, but it's too early to say right now."

Stay tuned for part II of BraveWords.com's exclusive in-studio interview with Cannibal Corpse soon! Check out more photos from the band's "secret" rehearsal space in Tampa here.