With over a million records sold worldwide, Cannibal Corpse, who formed in 1988 are one of the biggest death metal bands in the world and have been dominating the scene for nearly 20 years since the release of their controversial, debut album Eaten back to life (1991). This set the trend for their following albums to come, a trend which makes me believe that each song draws plenty of inspiration from ridiculous 80’s horror films and is written with the aid of a thesaurus. This is obviously a successful technique, as 10 albums later, Cannibal Corpse are still playing to the (blast) beat of the same drum and still have a loyal following of gore obsessed fans and a nice little number of overly sensitive folk, who just can’t bear to see a mutilated corpse on an album cover (these seem to have been toned down for the more recent albums) being shown to our browsing children in a record shop, cursing their very existence. This is a plus for any band, controversy is cool...

Evisceration Plague (An extremely messy concept) is the 11th studio album from Cannibal Corpse and achieved their highest charting debut position to date.

Evisceration Plague follows in the same vain as Cannibal Corpses 2006 album Kill and in that matter the other 9 albums released before that; devastating death metal that makes you want to punch God in the face, just because you’re a hardcore bastard, or at least you think you are throughout the duration of this album. The opening track Priests of Sodom wastes no time blasting us right into the brutal assault of death growls, seemingly inappropriately placed fret wanking, pounding drums and chugging down tuned guitars that is Evisceration Plague. The music is as technically impressive as any previous efforts and George Fisher or Corpsegrinder for short continues to spew brutal and depraved lyrics at us which Cannibal Corpse are known and loved for. It just wouldn’t be a Cannibal Corpse album without several songs about the massacre of the innocent now would it?

Evisceration Plague delivers exactly what the fans want from a new Cannibal Corpse album. Brutal death metal. Anything other than this simply wouldn’t be Cannibal Corpse. Evisceration Plague however, doesn’t strike me as anything new or exciting for the band, it hasn’t pushed the boundaries of ‘Heaviness’ to a level which hasn’t already be demonstrated in previous albums, which is something that Cannibal Corpse intends to do with each album. In all fairness though if Cannibal Corpse did get much heavier they would probably just sound like Satan with a sore throat using a pneumatic drill to make his way back into the depths of hell, whilst listening to the soundtrack for the apocalypse composed by Glen Benton and an orchestra of terminators, a sound that has already been coined by Australia’s finest; The Berserker. Evisceration Plague still rapes the listener’s ears, but after 20 years they’ve become used to it, like Andy Dufresne would have if Bogs never got beaten down.

The lyrical content of the more recent Cannibal Corpse albums and Evisceration Plague especially, seems to be a progression from the previous albums, with more songs being about genocide rather than boring old homicide, which just isn’t brutal enough for Cannibal Corpse these days. Morbid lyrics are almost as important within death metal as the brutality of the music. To the unraped ear, Evisceration plague may seem like an album that could have only been written by a convicted murder or maybe Vlad the Impaler but to an avid Cannibal Corpse fan, Evisceration Plague is the aural equivalent of a Heston Blumenthal meal, technical and very weird but at the same time wonderful.

The stand out track on Evisceration Plague has to be Evidence in the Furnace. Towards the end of this track Corpsegrinder replaces the deep growls or death grunts with aggressive higher pitched screams, this is the only part of Evisceration Plague that stands out from the rest album which just seems to blend together to create a gore filled mess, a bit like a butchers cocktail.

Evisceration Plague won’t lose Cannibal Corpse any of their fans, but at the same time I can’t see it bringing in a new wave of mini moshers turning up at their gigs just to get beaten down in the pit and leave after the first song, crying.