A Review of the Album "Vile" by American Death Metal Band Cannibal Corpse

“Vile” is the 5^th studio album by American death metal band Cannibal Corpse and this is the first one without the vocals of Chris Barnes and it is the first one to have George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher on vocals and the album was released on May 20, 1996 which is the same day that I was in attendance at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game watching LIVE!

Usually, I am not picky about album cover art, but the one for Vile is outrageous! The cover art for this album depicts a dismembered, disfigured human corpse and it seems that the band could not get anything better than this done.

One thing that I can say about these guys is that their lyrical content gets old really quick. I know they are an extreme metal band, but they can do better than to have the same rehashed lyrical content about such graphic material. The album’s original title had been Created to Kill and had been partially completed while Chris Barnes was still a member of the band.

The first song called Devoured by Vermin is fast and has shouting death metal style in it but it is not as good as the first song on the previous album. Gone is the snake-like voice provided to fans by Chris Barnes. Mummified in Barbed Wire features some fast, rough, hoarse vocals whatever you want to call it but listening to this album makes me realize that it is lacking that extra punch that earlier albums and the one after this one have. It does not mean that this album is bad, but that it may lack some variety in terms of the roughness of the riffs but this is Cannibal Corpse and I guess they had to get accustomed to having a new front man in their band. “Bloodlands” though has an interesting beginning before it becomes slow and heavy. Musically, the beginning is similar to the song called “Return to Flesh.” The song called Relentless Beating isn’t something we hear from these guys every day. It is an instrumental song that has, well, the usual heavy riffing but I notice that the drums in terms of their style still have that fast beat to them but they are less of the double bass variety that we heard on the previous album. “Eaten from Inside” has that Napalm Death style riffing before becoming a bit more melodic and this is where the band would improve on in the next album which has one of the most cheesy and dumb album titles in the Universe but these guys are weird in that aspect though.

Overall, "Vile" is an album that has a good beginning and the song Bloodlands is melodic enough that it probably beats most of the other songs. Relentless Beating gives the album variety even though it is still heavy. Vile is a decent album but it is not as good as the band’s first four releases.