00:00In 1994, Cannibal Corpse were playing in a Jim Carrey blockbuster. By 1995, a presidential
00:07candidate was holding them up as proof that American culture was rotting. Few bands have
00:13whiplashed between Hollywood cameo and national villain that fast and fewer have spent decades
00:19being banned, pulled from shelves, and policed across three continents. The Buffalo-born,
00:26Tampa-based death metal band formed in 1988 and never softened a single lyric to
00:32win anyone over. Governments, retailers, and courts tried to cancel them, but
00:37as you're about to hear, they failed miserably. So here are 13 dark and disturbing facts about
00:45Cannibal Corpse. Let's get stuck in. Number 13. Corpse grinder's neck became its own legend.
00:52In 1995, George Corpse Grinder Fisher took over vocals. While his predecessor favoured a guttural
01:00subterranean growl, Corpse Grinder brought a wider range, deep roars, sustained high shrieks,
01:07and a precise rapid-fire delivery that let the band play faster and more technically.
01:13Then there's his iconic meme-worthy neck. Corpse grinder's signature windmill headbanging
01:19is the stuff of heavy metal legend. Few can sustain that type of headbanging stamina for entire sets at
01:26a time. The result is his famously thick neck. Thicker than a space marine's helmet,
01:33bands joke it's wider than his head, and countless clips show him outlasting younger musicians in headbanging
01:41challenges. Which is what happens when you're the singer and frontman of Cannibal Corpse.
01:46Number 12. Jim Carrey personally demanded them for Ace Ventura. When Ace Ventura Pet Detective was
01:54filming in 1993, its star wasn't reaching for a safe radio act. Jim Carrey was a genuine death metal
02:01fan, and he insisted that Cannibal Corpse appear in the film. The studio went along with it, which was
02:07amazing for the time. The result is one of the strangest scenes in 90s comedy. Ace wanders into a club
02:14where the band, then fronted by Chris Barnes, is tearing through hammer-smashed face.
02:20Carrie thrashes in the pit like he belongs there. The song, a first-person account of a man bludgeoning
02:27someone's skull apart, played in multiplexes when the film opened in February 1994, putting the most
02:34extreme death metal band in America in front of millions of people who had never heard of death metal
02:40and never would have gone looking for it if it weren't for Ace Ventura Pet Detective.
02:46Number 11. Chris Barnes was fired mid-album and Six Feet Under was born from the split.
02:52At the time, Chris Barnes was the voice of every banned album. In 1995, the rest of Cannibal Corpse
03:00fired him. Turns out the tension had been building for quite some time. Barnes had started Six Feet Under as
03:07a side project with obituary guitarist Alan West, and its debut, Haunted, came out the same year.
03:14Bandmates have said they felt his commitment was split, and that the lyrics he brought to the new
03:19sessions were not up to standard. So Barnes went all in on Six Feet Under, which became a long-running
03:26act built on a slower style. The split has divided fans for years. Some still insist the Barnes era is
03:33the
03:33only real Cannibal Corpse, while others argue the firing saved the band. Either way, the album he left
03:41behind was rebuilt with Corpse Grinder and released in 1996 as Vile. Reportedly the first death metal album
03:50to enter the Billboard 200, but I may need someone in the comments to check that last fact for me.
03:56Number 10. 12 months after Ace Ventura, they were Exhibit A in a Moral Panic.
04:01Here's the paradox. The same song a Hollywood studio cleared for a hit PG-13 comedy became almost
04:08overnight evidence for the prosecution. By mid-1995, Cannibal Corpse had been singled out by
04:16Senator Bob Dole, Senators Joe Lieberman and Sam Nunn, and conservative commentator William Bennett
04:24as poster children for everything wrong with the music business. Nothing about the band had changed.
04:31The lyrics were the same lyrics Carrie had headbang to on camera. What changed was the political
04:37weather and that gap between good enough for the multiplex and threat to the nation runs through
04:45every Cannibal Corpse band that follows. Number 9. Eden Back to Life. The debut arrived on Metal Blade in
04:531990 recorded at Tampa's Morisound studio with producer Scott Burns, the engineer behind half the
05:00classic Florida death metal records of the era. Deicide's Glenn Benton added guest vocals linking Cannibal
05:07Corpse to the scene's most notorious frontman from day one. Vince Locke's cover art, A Ravenous Zombie
05:15Mid-Feast, set the visual template the band still uses. Songs like A Skull Full of Maggots and Born in
05:23a
05:24Casket announce the formula horror film gore delivered in first person with no moral distance. Germany,
05:33you know, the country that has never done anything wrong by anyone, banned it on release.
05:38Number 8. Germany banned the first three albums and their songs on arrival. Germany was the first country
05:46to try and cancel them. Every Cannibal Corpse album up to and including Tomb of the Mutilated was barred
05:53from sale as soon as it was released because of the cover art and the lyrics. But that wasn't the
05:58end of
05:59it. The ban went even further. Cannibal Corpse was also forbidden from performing any song from those
06:05three records on German soil, gutting the set list of its most famous material every time they crossed
06:11the border. This restriction didn't lift until June 2006 and the band's own biography notes that
06:19butchered at birth stayed problematic for the Germans even after that. Number 7. Australia pulled
06:26every album off the shelves in 1996. Here in Australia we delivered the most sweeping cannibal corpse ban
06:33of them all. From October 23rd 1996 sales of every Cannibal Corpse album was prohibited and stock was
06:42physically cleared from music shops. It coincided with the record industry rolling out a new labelling code
06:49for potentially offensive releases. The catalogue stayed off sale for a decade. Between 2006 and 2007
06:58all 10 studio albums plus live Cannibalism, the 15 year killing spree box set, the worm infested EP and the
07:07hammer smashed face single were finally classified and returned to stores. Even then the outrage hadn't
07:14called. When in 2006 a Perth politician had a whinge to everyone who would listen resulting in community
07:23groups demanding the band be blocked from playing the city. Bunch of crybabies. Number 6. New Zealand,
07:30Korea and decades later Russia. New Zealand joined in on the bands during the same mid-90s window.
07:37According to the band's own history, the sale of Cannibal Corpse merchandise was temporarily prohibited in
07:44New Zealand, Australia and South Korea within the span of three years. Then in 2014 orthodox activists
07:50campaigned against a Russian tour. Several shows were cancelled and police stopped a concert in Nizhny Novgorod
07:58mid-set. Months later, a court in Ufa outlawed Russian translations of the band's lyrics to protect
08:05children's mental health. Which is ridiculous because what's more child-friendly than horror-themed
08:11heavy metal with zombie entrails ripped out. Number 5. The Wretched Spawn is still escalating all these years
08:19later. Critics who assumed that Cannibal Corpse would mellow with age were dead set wrong. The Wretched
08:26Spawn, released in 2004, kept the tradition going with a Vince Locke cover of monstrous mutated offspring
08:34tearing free from their host. Like several earlier releases, it shipped with a tamer alternate cover
08:41to get it into mainstream stores. The songwriting had evolved into tighter technical death metal and it was the
08:49last album with founding guitarist Jack Owen. It was proof that even with the turn of the century and more
08:55of
08:55tech death polish, that the band still hadn't lost their edge. Number 4. Bob Dole's 1995 crusade and his
09:04satanic panic nonsense. To understand why Washington cared about a Florida death metal band, you need to
09:10look at the scene around them. Early 90s Tampa was the global capital of death metal and some of its
09:17neighbors leaned into genuine provocation. Deicide's Glenn Benton burned an inverted cross into his forehead
09:24and Vincent Crowley, leader of the satanic death metal band Acheron, ran a satanic youth group called
09:32The Order of the Evil Eye and spent much of his time debating televangelists. But Cannibal Corpse were
09:39gore storytellers and fans of horror movies, not satanists. Unfortunately, idiot politicians always have
09:47their own agenda. Enter Bob Dole running for the Republican presidential nomination who gave his May
09:541995 speech accusing the entertainment industry of peddling nightmares of depravity. Dole and his allies
10:03targeted Time Warner and Cannibal Corpse were among the acts held up as examples with Dole arguing their
10:10music corroded America's character, which goes to show that one man's depravity is just a fun night out
10:16for a metalhead. Number 3, Tomb of the Mutilated and Hammer Smashed Face. Tomb of the Mutilated pushed
10:23the lyrical content into territory that still tests some of the hardest metalheads, with track titles that
10:31cannot be printed in most outlets. The original cover, depicting two decomposing corpses in an explicit
10:39pose, was swapped for a censored version in many markets. It also contained Hammer Smashed Face,
10:46the song that became the band's unofficial hit. It was released separately as an EP in 1993,
10:54then immortalized in Ace Ventura the following year. That's the full absurdity in one track.
11:01Number 2, Butchered at Birth is the one that crossed the line. If there's a single image that made
11:08censors take Cannibal Corpse seriously, it's the cover of Butchered at Birth. Vince Locke painted two
11:16zombies in a makeshift butcher's shop, surrounded by the remains of a mother and her infants. Many
11:23retailers refused to stock it without a slipcase or alternate sleeve. The music got faster, denser,
11:31and nastier to match, and Glenn Benton returned for a guest spot on Vomit the Soul. Of all the early
11:39albums, this is the one that's proved hardest to rehabilitate, especially in Germany. The title alone
11:46guaranteed it would be quoted in every single outraged newspaper column for years to come.
11:51Number 1. The copycat crime panic and what the evidence actually shows. The darkest accusation
11:58thrown at Cannibal Corpse is that the lyrics inspired real violence. Politicians and campaigners have
12:05always tried to make that connection. Let's go back to those pesky conservatives in Perth.
12:11In 2006, they linked the band's planned show to the recent murders of two local girls, arguing the group's
12:19songs were unacceptable in that climate. Russia's 2014 ruling rested on the same logic, framing the
12:27lyrics as a danger to children. What's missing from that file is proof. No court has found that a
12:34cannibal corpse song caused a crime, and the band has consistently described its lyrics as fictional
12:41horror stories closer to a slasher film than a manifesto. Even Western Australia's Attorney General
12:48shrugged in 2006, observing that acts like this feed on negative publicity. The moral panic predicted a
12:56wave of copycat murders. What arrived instead was a ban that outlasted nearly every politician who tried
13:04to cancel them. So that's the darkest and most disturbing facts I could find on Cannibal Corpse. And yes, I
13:12know the
13:12most disturbing aspect was the fact that there's always been some conservative boogeyman that tries to
13:18silence them. But Cannibal Corpse have proven yet again that metal written about the joy of loving horror
13:26can never be stopped. Anyway, please like and subscribe and hit that notification bell. Massive props
13:33to the following outlets that helped flesh out my research. NME, Loudwire, Blabbermouth, and CityBeat.
13:42I love what you guys do. But that's it for now. I'll see you guys next time for the next
13:47episode.
13:48we've been done.
13:48you
13:48you
