Cannibal Corpse has been bringing the lyrical gore nonstop since 1990. It's gotten the band in a bit of trouble here and there, though fans over the years have fallen in love with it. Now in 2017, drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz was asked during The Metal Podcast how he feels about the band's violent imagery toward women, and the bottom line is that he really doesn't think it's that big of a deal.
Mazurkiewicz adds that over the years, the band has kind of moved away from the whole "shock and splatter" sort of approach to its lyrics, and has gone more of a horror film route.
"For us, we just do our thing, I guess. We don't even really think about any of these issues or the mentality of that. I don't know. We just write our songs. Some have a little bit more brutality, I guess, towards women. It doesn't seem to be a lot more in the newer albums than the older stuff. But I don't know… I think girls know what they're getting into, if they're going [to a death metal concert]. If you're a female into death metal, you know the mentality of the music and what it's about and all that. So I would think most girls that are going to see death metal are into it and not just gonna go to do something and then go and be offended because whatever something about women is going on here. I think it seems like a lot of it's just an overreaction and blown out of proportion, maybe, a little bit. I just wanna play death metal."
Anyone who's going to a Cannibal Corpse show knows exactly what's up with the music. It's been around for nearly 28 years, and if you're not sure if you're cool with the subject matter, then don't go to the show. Plus, Cannibal Corpse isn't actively advocating violence against women any more than Saw is telling you to go out and put some people in a room so they can do all types of fucked up stuff – fans should be able to distinguish what's just subject matter and what's reality, and if you can't, then music with explicitly lyricisms probably isn't for you.
Which also isn't to say there aren't bands out there who absolutely advocate violence against women, or minorities, or whatever, and to those bands I say fuck 'em. Cannibal Corpse has stated time and time again that its view on its own lyrics is akin to watching a horror flick. It's just fiction, please don't act on it.
