Review of the 11th Album "Kill" by American Death Metal Band Cannibal Corpse

Kill is the 2006 studio album by extreme metal band Cannibal Corpse. It is the first studio album without guitarist Jack Owen and it also marks the return of Rob Barrett. This is also the 11^th studio album by these extreme metal veterans, masters or whatever you would like to call them. Both veterans of the death metal scene and masters would suffice when describing these guys. Looking at the album’s title alone, it could cause some listeners to turn away from the album because of that. Analyzing the vocals of George Fisher in this album he seems to use a more guttural vocal approach in addition to his loud bellows which are present once again. This became the second such album by these guys to chart on the Billboard 200 coming in at #170.

Coming in as a bit of good news for some fans is that the cover for this album is one of just three Cannibal Corpse album covers to not feature an image that is too graphic.

Alex Webster Explains the Decision Behind the Design of the Album Cover

Bassist Alex Webster explained the reasons behind the decision saying that the band members could not come to an agreement on the album cover. Another reason for the change in style for the cover is that Webster said that the focus was to make sure that fans focused on the music instead of being distracted by the cover art.

Now that is a great focus to have because when the focus is on the music itself as opposed to just putting most of the focus on how the cover looks, then the finished product could be better. The band wanted to do something different. Doing something different musically is often times a good thing depending upon the approach that was used. The way that I look at the cover for this album as opposed to several of the other albums is that the cover for this one is rather simple. It looks like something that we would see upon analyzing blood samples through a microscope or to put it more simply it is something that looks like blood on the cover.

Opening up this album is the savage sounding “The Time to Kill is Now.” The song also has lead guitar taps or parts that are short and repeat themselves. We might as well say that the time to play horror inspired metal is now. “Make Them Suffer” is considered to be one of the other highlights of the album.

One fair and positive thing that can be said is that in this case, the song titles do not start with a profane word such as what happened back in 1994 with that really fast song on The Bleeding album. If you want to have an accessible album that is going to get fans’ attention, you have to keep the song titles reasonable in terms of the titles and socially acceptable. It may seem like everything sounds the same with these guys but it does not. In the Chris Barnes era, the vocals were either of a lower, deeper growl or a snake kind of voice whereas with this album, the vocals are of a rougher kind of death metal style. It is sometimes challenging to explain the difference in vocal styles. One thing that we don’t normally see from Cannibal Corpse is instrumental songs and there is one on this album called Infinite Misery. It does have musical touches of their older works but it does sound very modern. It does also have lead guitar “hissing” noises but that shouldn’t detract from a rather different musical approach from these guys. One other thing worth mentioning here is the drumming style is less about the double bass drumming that we heard in 1994 and the sound is more developed I would say. The melodic song “The Discipline of Revenge” is lyrically about using patience as an ally until it is time to make your move and get even with someone that has wronged you. This is one of the strongest songs in the later career of Cannibal Corpse because of the melody in it. Listening to Cannibal Corpse’s 2006 studio album there is much reason to see that it is in fact a better album than previously thought.