CANNIBAL CORPSE Bassist Alex Webster On Band Being Censored - "In General It's Been Okay And We've Been Able To Play Whatever We Want"
November 18, 2009, 14 years ago
CANNIBAL CORPSE bassist Alex Webster spoke with Dave Herrera from Westword.com recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:
Westword: Did your latest album (Evisceration Plague) get banned in Germany or anywhere else right away and do you know why Germany and Australia lifted their respective bans on your previous albums?
Webster: "As far as I know, things are okay in Australia these days. Even though we're in the band and you'd think we'd keep up with that sort of thing, we don't really keep up with any of it, unless it affects us directly while we're on tour. With Germany, we do have problems with some of our older releases, but with Evisceration Plague, nothing so far. But in certain parts of Germany, Bavaria in particular, the local government will insist that we don't play certain songs. But most of Germany is alright. I guess with any law you can interpret it in a number of ways. Some of the areas of Germany will interpret the music censorship laws they have a little more strictly than others.
In general it's been okay, though, and we've been able to play whatever we want. The last time we played Munich, we had to cut a number of songs from the set, but a couple of years before, no problem. It comes and goes. It seems a little capricious to me but I suppose they have their reasons."
Westword: The picture in the middle of the lyric booklet is incredibly evocative. When did you first start working with Vince Locke, what drew you to his work and do you ever give him any direction on the artwork?
Webster: "We first got interested in Vince Locke because of this comic book Deathworld that he did in the late '80s and early '90s. It was a zombies taking over the world type of thing. Our original singer, Chris Barnes, contacted Vince and he was involved with our very first album. He's done artwork either for the interior or the cover for every album we've done since then. Vince is great. The kind of art he does is right up our alley, so it's really a no brainer to use him. He's perfect. We don't have to coach him that much. He kind of knows what we want. We'll generally give him song titles and let him go for it from there, when we ask him for a piece of art. We maybe give him the lyrics as well and say, 'Hey, do your thing.' We don't give him that much direction."
Westword: What has fueled your continued interest for going on three decades for the type of music you're making?
Webster: "It's just my favorite kind of music. I listen to tons of other music, too, and so do the other guys in the band, but the stuff that I think is the best is well done death metal - well done forms of extreme metal. Of course I don't love every death metal band or every black metal band or every thrash band, but when it's something really aggressive and done well, it's the best. It doesn't take a lot of motivation to want to play your favorite music. We're able to play our favorite kind of music and get paid to do it. It's how it makes me feel - the aggression and the darkness. Some music is aggressive and some music is dark. Thrash is aggressive but death metal is both of those things. It's capturing something I have a lot of [laughs]. It hits the spot. It's the kind of music that reaches something in me. It's hard to put into words. That's why I love music so much - because it can express things that words can't. It's the right kind of music for me."
Read the entire interview here.