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I NOTICED SOME OF THE NEW SONGS HAVE A DARKER MORE MELODIC APPROACH, ARE THERE ANY BLACK METAL INFLUENCES AT WORK?
I don't think so, I think it was just the fact that we just wanted to do something a little bit different than what we've done previously. I know myself that I don't listen to hardly any Black Metal. I know Alex doesn't listen to it either. George is kind of the Primary Black Metal listener. I think a lot of the songs that we have that sound like Black Metal are Jack's songs. Jack is a bit more into melody & playing the chords. I think we were just trying to still sound errie, just errie in a different way. We wanted to add a different dimension to the band, but not really consciously trying to sound like another Black Metal band. It's just something a little different for us.

VINCENT LOCKE HAS DONE THE ARTWORK FOR YOUR ALBUMS SINCE THE BEGINNING. HOW DID YOU GUYS HOOK UP WITH HIM & WILL HE ALWAYS BE CANNIBAL'S COVER ARTIST? IS HE STILL DOING DEAD WORLD?
We hooked up with him back when we were looking into doing our first album, we needed artwork. We wanted something visual & pretty sick. We knew that he was doing the comic book DEAD WORLD at the time. We've seen his covers & we were just really impressed by his artwork. So we tried to get a hold of the guy to see if he would be interested in our cover. So we called him & he was. It was as easy as that. It turned into this tradition thing, that we wanted to use his artwork for every album. It turns out that six album s & 8 years later we are still using his artwork. As long as he is willing to draw the art work that fits this band, we will be happy to remain with him. I know that DEAD WORLD has been done for awhile, but I do know that he was working on some penciling or something for D.C. COMICS. I really haven't talked to him in a little while.
WILL THERE ALWAYS BE A CENSORED & UN-CENSORED COVER?
I would probably think so. We had to do it this time again. The record chains won't carry it & instead of just having just a plain white or black cover or something. We would rather have some kind of art work. We will always have our sick covers censored, keeping it true. We are happy with the brutal art work. As long as we keep getting censored we will always make two covers. It would be nice to just have the one sick cover. We will probably wind up doing this for awhile.

WHAT ARE THE TOUR PLANS FOR THIS ALBUM AND WHO WILL YOU BE PLAYING WITH?
We've got a few tours set up now. We're actaully leaving next week to start a tour in Europe for 11 shows. It's a festival tour. It actually is a pretty good bill, it should be a good turn out. It's us, OBITUARY, ANGEL CORPSE,
MARDUK, IMMORTAL & GOD DETHRONED. So that should be pretty cool. We've had really good pre sales & it will be a good show. We do a head liner in May with a band from Czech Republic called KRABATHOR & I'm not sure who else, but that's just a headliner for a few weeks. Then we have plans to be touring in the states. We're not exactly sure who that will be with. It does look like one band we will be with in the states is ANGEL CORPSE & a possibility of DARK FUNERAL. That should be starting in July or August.

OUT OF ALL THE SHOWS YOU'VE PLAYED, DO ANY STAND OUT FOR ANY REASON?
I guess there's going to be a few that stand out here & there.The Metal fests have always been big. They are always stand outs for us. There was one particular show in Mexico that was an outside ampitheater & it was all concrete. I remember it was the biggest circle I have ever seen with all these Mexicans going crazy. It was awesome! That's one of those sights you never forget. We played another big show in Chile in a big arena, there was about 4000 people there just to see us. We headlined & that was the largest amount of people to see us, that also was crazy. After so many years of playing a lot of the places mesh together.

DO ANY OF THE BAND MEMEBERS LIVE UP TO YOUR NAME?
NO! (laughs) We're all pretty much normal, mellow guys. We are older now & we are basically into the music more than anything else. It's always been music 1st with us. We wanted to be a band that we would want to go see, so we just did it. We just went all the way with killer lyrics & sick music. We just made everything intense. We are just normal people writing & palying brutal music. If we were living up to our lyrics we would be in jail now or probably dead!

WHEN NOT TOURING, PRACTICING & DOING INTERVIEWS ALL DAY, WHAT DO YOU ENJOY DOING TO OCCUPY YOUR TIME?
Ice hockey! I play a lot of ice hockey. I guess being from up north, I've been playing my whole life. I love to play. I do it as much as I can when we are not busy on the road, writing material or in the studio. It's a lot of fun & it's my hobby.

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF YOUR FELLOW LABEL MATES GWAR?
Ummm...I've never thought of that. The image thing is cool. I think the whole show thing is pretty cool. I'm not really a big fan of their music, but their show is pretty elaborate. I definitely give them credit for that. That's cool there are other bands out there with intensity & shock value. It's cool!

IF YOU OPEN UP A RANDOM DEATH METAL ZINE YOU WILL SEE MANY BANDS DESCRIBED AS CANNIBAL CORPSE CLONES. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THESE BANDS & BEING ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL DEATH BANDS?
CANNIBAL CORPSE INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE...