CANNIBAL CORPSE Rob Barret and Paul Mazurkiewicz
\r\n After the release of their last album “Kill”, Cannibal Corpse’s\r\nthird visit in Thessaloniki gave Metalzone the chance to talk with the\r\nguitar player Rob Barret and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz about their\r\nalbum, their tour and their Death Metal comments. \r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Hello to the Metalzone crowd, we’re backstage with Rob and Paul from Cannibal Corpse, welcome guys!
\r\nRob: How is it going?\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Fine! How are you?
\r\nRob: Good! \r\n
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\r\n Paul: Good!\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: You’re on the second week of touring, how were the previous performances?
\r\nRob: It’s been getting better as we go pretty much! Last night was good, it was a small room but it was a good time. \r\n
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\r\n Paul: But the shows have been good so far.
\r\nRob: They’ve been getting progressively better I think.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: If you had the chance to return for one more gig to any of those countries which one would that be?
\r\nPaul:\r\nWell so far the countries where we played, we’ve played before in the\r\npast, so actually coming up like tomorrow playing in Bulgaria for the\r\nfirst time and Romania for the first time, you know that’s a question\r\nthat would probably be better asked at the end of the tour. Because\r\nwe’re playing in Serbia and we’re playing in Latvia and Estonia\r\ncountries we haven’t played in a long time. Tomorrow Bulgaria and\r\nRomania the next day that and we’d never been there. \r\n
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\r\n Rob: That’s new for everybody.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYes but so far, we’ve played in Spain and of course in Greece yesterday\r\nin Athens they were all good shows so it’s hard to say that. \r\n
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\r\n Rob: Everywhere I guess. It’s all good!
\r\nMetalzone: Do you prefer playing in Europe or USA? \r\n
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\r\n Paul: There are good places everywhere in the world we’re fortunate to have fans everywhere so…
\r\nRob: It’s hard to favor a certain place, we like them all. \r\n
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\r\n Paul: It’s all good, it’s all fine.
\r\nMetalzone: Almost all the lyrics are written by Paul and Alex.
\r\nPaul: Yeah most of them.
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\r\nMetalzone:\r\nWhat is the reaction of the other members when they first read them? Do\r\nthey mean something to you or do you just read them and laugh?
\r\nRob:\r\nSome lyrics make us smile a little bit but most of them are great, we\r\nall support it. It’s interesting. It’s just a different perspective.
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\r\nMetalzone: The Cannibal fans are used to more extreme album covers and Kill’s cover was a surprise for us. What made you keep it simple?
\r\nPaul:\r\nWe’ve done it in the past. We obviously had many albums with very gory\r\nart and the guy holding the knife that was going to be the cover. And\r\nthen, the last minute we were not sure if we wanted to put that in a\r\ncover so we just decided: You know what? We’re Cannibal Corpse, the\r\nmusic is what it’s all about. The cover should not really matter. If\r\npeople are buying our cds just because of the cover we feel that\r\nthey’re not true Cannibal Corpse fans because, what is it about? It’s\r\nabout the music. We felt that the music stood on its own. So it was a\r\nlittle bit of an experiment, but also we looked at our biggest album\r\nseller which is The Bleeding. What is the cover of The Bleeding? It’s\r\nnothing. And that was right after the Butchered At Birth and Tomb Of\r\nThe Mutilated and then we put out a cover like The Bleeding and I’m\r\nsure the fans were the same way. Well this is not Butchered At Birth,\r\nthis is not Tomb Of The Mutilated, look, it’s nothing but it is our\r\nbiggest seller. Why? Because of the music, that’s why we felt like\r\nkeeping it simple and see what happens.
\r\nRob: It’s just a bold statement.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: If Death Metal and generally Metal didn’t exist at all, what music do you think you’d play?
\r\nRob: Death Metal! We would have invented it!
\r\nPaul: There you go! Rob would have invented it. If Death Metal wasn’t there we would have invented it! If not I’d play rock.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: What about you Rob? If not?
\r\nRob: Death Metal!\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: What would you say to the people who believe that Death Metal is not a type of music but just noise?
\r\nPaul: It’s not for them then.
\r\nRob: Change the channel.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYou can’t please everybody in the world. You can’t say: Everybody!\r\nDeath Metal is the best you must listen to it or you are stupid. You\r\ncan’t do that. That’s what is great about the music. There’s no right\r\nor wrong. It’s a matter of opinion. To us, yes, Death Metal is the\r\ngreatest; to the next person it’s noise so that’s why someone doesn’t\r\nneed to be involved. We play music for ourselves. Death Metal for us\r\nand there are fans who like it. If you don’t like it, that’s ok you\r\ndon’t have to like it, it’s not for you, no big deal. You just move on,\r\ndo your own thing. That’s what we’ve been doing for 18 years.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: In almost every gig you play some standard songs such as: Hammer Smashed Face or I Cum Blood. Isn’t that tiresome for a band?
\r\nRob: I think there’s fun to play some songs every time because the fans love these songs.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYeah that’s why it’s not tiresome. Sure if we were playing a song that\r\nnobody cared and we’ve been doing this for ever, well then yeah we’d\r\nbeen
\r\ntelling: Why are we playing that song? Nobody cares. And this\r\nisn’t fun anymore. But if you know that when you say the words Hammer\r\nSmashed Face everybody is going to roar, of course that makes us say:\r\nYes! Let’s go! It’s awesome!
\r\nRob: I like playing these songs!
\r\nPaul: I like playing any of the old stuff and I think everybody feels the same way.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone:\r\nFucked With a Knife: A song dedicated to the female fans and that makes\r\nsome believe that women are looked down on by you because of this. Is\r\nthat true?
\r\nPaul: No.
\r\nRob: No.
\r\nPaul:\r\nBack when that song was written the other singer who was in the band\r\nwrote all the lyrics. A lot of the lyrics ended up being like that. But\r\nwe, being a traditional, horror movie kind of band… Well, what is every\r\nhorror movie about? It’s about the women getting killed and the weak,\r\nnot really the weak you know what I’m saying, it’s just that a woman it\r\nportrays better. So that’s just why we ended up doing this.
\r\nRob: In orgasm through torture is a man. He has his dick cut off.
\r\nPaul:\r\nIt’s just songs. And we love women it’s not like we look down upon\r\nthem. It’s just a song you know. And if somebody is going to read them\r\nthe wrong way…
\r\nRob: Even Chris said: I love women!\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone:\r\nCould you tell us a few words about your co-operation with Jim Carrey?\r\nDo you still keep in contact after the Ace Ventura movie?
\r\nPaul: We have no clue!
\r\nRob: We would like to, but he’s been a busy man.
\r\nPaul:\r\nWe should have. When that was all over, we never kept in contact with\r\nhim, anybody. It’s one of those things we look back now and say: Damn!\r\nI wish I had a contact, to find out, we’re curious if he’s still into\r\nit. We don’t know it’s a long time ago. Was it a passing faze for him?\r\nOr does he still buy our cds? Did he buy our last cd and he is at home\r\nplaying Kill? We don’t know. It’s possible but we have no idea. It\r\nwould be fun to find out.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: What about Jack Owen? Do you have good relationship with him now that he plays with Deicide?
\r\nRob: Yeah.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYeah we never had a problem, when he left it was like: Ok he’s gone but\r\nthere was not any bad blood or anything. We’re still friends, he is a\r\nnice guy, good guy, we know him a long time and our sound engineer\r\nactually lives with him, I just talked to Jack a couple of days ago.
\r\nRob: We see him all the time cause his band rehearses in the same building.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYeah so there’s no hate. It’s just one of those things, if you are\r\nunhappy in your situation I guess you have to leave and that’s fine\r\nbecause it’s better to bring in somebody who wants to be in this\r\nsituation. Sometimes it’s unfortunate that things like that happen and\r\nmaybe cause set-backs, but in the end he wasn’t into it, he moved on\r\nand it’s not like we’re mad at him or anything, it’s like: Hey dude you\r\ndid what you had to do and Jack Owen is still a friend of ours.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Rob, how did you decide to leave Malevolent Creation?
\r\nRob: There was just some bad politics between me and the band, I’ll just leave it as that. But I’m still friend with them.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Which new bands make the top five in Death Metal now days for you?
\r\nPaul: Aeon from Sweden. Awesome band! One of the best! That’s my top five: Aeon, Aeon, Aeon, Aeon, Aeon.
\r\nRob: And mine too.
\r\nPaul: And Rob’s.
\r\nRob: Well we should tell some more.
\r\nPaul: I can’t. Well there are some out there I guess. There’s Disavowed.
\r\nRob: Yeah they’re pretty good!
\r\nPaul: Pretty sick! But Aeon though is the best.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: And which were the ones that influenced you in the beginning?
\r\nRob: Van Halen, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest.
\r\nPaul:\r\nWe started out with Rock n Roll cause we grew up old. We’re old now.\r\nOld men, so when we grew up that’s what was heavy back in 1978, Van\r\nHalen, Black Sabbath. The hard rock and of course getting into the\r\nheavy metal like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest.
\r\nRob: For the 70’s and 80’s it was all that. In the 80’s it was Metallica, Slayer…
\r\nPaul: Metallica, Slayer the usual… Dark Angel, Kreator.
\r\nRob: DRI.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYeah all this heavy stuff of the 80’s was all influence for us and then\r\nwe progressed with that and Death Metal was forming while we were\r\ngrowing as musicians and the fans of the music also.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Do you listen to any of the new-style bands such as Mudvayne for example?
\r\nRob:\r\nMudvayne is a cool stuff! I don’t own any of their cds but I’ve seen\r\ntheir videos and hear the music on the radio occasionally and they do\r\nhave some good stuff.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYeah there are some out there but we don’t really care so much for the\r\nNu-Metal sort of thing, we are not really into that as we are with the\r\nclassics or the new Death Metal bands like Aeon as I said.
\r\nRob: We’re definitely old-school.
\r\nPaul: We’re old school. We’re old.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone:\r\nIn 2006 you participated in the “Sounds of the Underground” festival\r\nwhere you played with diverse styles of bands such as: As I Lay Dying,\r\nTerror, The Black Dahlia Murder and others. Did you want to play with\r\nthem or would you prefer to co-headline with brutal bands?
\r\nRob:\r\nI think that tour was really good for all the bands because it brought\r\na big variety of people and then maybe we gained new fans from their\r\nfans.
\r\nPaul: It’s not the tour\r\nwe would want to do all the time, like every year go on a tour like\r\nthat, because we love a tour like this where is Death Metal, but that\r\ntour did help us out actually and we had a lot of fun.
\r\nRob: We basically had that tour as a positive thing to do for the band overall.
\r\nPaul:\r\nWe tried to gain new fans. We knew it was going to be done for that\r\nreason and not a reason like now where it’s a headlining show, it’s a\r\nDeath Metal show and we know what it’s going to be, it was like: Hey\r\nlet’s do it cause if we’re going to do something like that we may gain\r\nsome new fans cause a lot of these bands that we played with are of\r\ncourse bigger than us, so if we can play in front of a few thousand\r\npeople a day and maybe convert five, ten, twenty of those people every\r\nday then that’s going to expand our fans. It was a lot of fun to do but\r\nlike I said it’s something I don’t think we’d want to do all the time\r\nand every year.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: have you had any attacks from parents or Christian communities?
\r\nRob: A long time ago.
\r\nPaul: Just the Christian Yano, the German woman. That woman that got us banned about ten years ago where…
\r\nRob: ‘93?
\r\nPaul:\r\nNo it was a little later, it was ’96 or ’97 where just until recently\r\nthe albums in Germany were banned, the first three albums were banned\r\nand we could not play songs out of those albums. That was the biggest\r\nproblem we’ve ever had and that was because of this woman, that\r\nChristina Yano a school teacher in Germany. Other than that we have\r\nnever had a problem in the world, anywhere.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: If you were asked to make a movie-scene based on one of your song’s lyrics which song would you choose and why?
\r\nRob: Death Walking Terror would be cool. The video came out great so I guess we already did this.
\r\nPaul: It’s like we did a mini movie. I don’t know! That’s a good question, it’s a hard question to ask. I don’t know really.
\r\nRob: The Wretched Spawn is a good song to do.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYeah. There’s a lot of good ones but it would take a while to think of\r\nthat. I, myself, I think all of us we really don’t care so much about\r\nthe lyrics. Right now I probably can’t even remember half of the lyrics\r\nthat I wrote because it’s not like I’m thinking the lyrics all the\r\ntime, none of us are like that. We do it when we have to do it but it’s\r\nnot like we’re trying to have sick ideas all the time.
\r\nRob: The music is the main part.
\r\nPaul:\r\nYes we focus more on the music, the lyrics are secondary. If it was up\r\nto us we probably wouldn’t have any lyrics and singer because we love\r\njust playing the music.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Cannibal Corpse’s plans?
\r\nPaul: Well we got a lot of touring.
\r\nRob: We got a lot of plans for this year.
\r\nPaul:\r\nTouring, to get finished with this tour, we go to Mexico, we tour some\r\nmore Europe, do the big festivals, tour to the United States, go to\r\nCentral America…We got a lot of touring for this album this year and\r\nthen it’s just like every other year, we will start working on new\r\nmaterial so nothing changes in the plan too much, these formulas have\r\nbeen going on since the beginning of the band. To make an album, tour,\r\ngo home, make an album, tour, go home…\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Some words for the Greek fans?
\r\nRob: Kick ass!
\r\nPaul:\r\nIt’s all Greek to me! (Laughs) We appreciate the Greek fans because\r\nthey are supporting Death Metal and Cannibal Corpse and it’s great to\r\nplay here, we have great shows, they are great people, we would like to\r\nsay thank you and hope we come back again which I’m sure we will.\r\n
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\r\n Metalzone: Thanks a lot guys, I hope you have a great time at the rest of the tour!
\r\nRob: All right thank you very much!
\r\nPaul: Thank you, thank you very much! \r\n
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\r\nΡÎνα ΚουτσοÏ\r\n
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