Cannibal Corpse – עולם של דת' מטאל

Bodies, diseases, killing, murder, abuse, blood, vomiting, and death – this is just breakfast for the members of Cannibal Corpse, a band that has been producing uncompromising Death Metal albums for more than 20 years. This group has some of the most vicious minds in the metal realm, but most notably of them all, is the lead singer George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, who has been spearheading the band's global campaign of killing for 15 years now. One of the next stations on the band's murder route is Israel, and since it will be the first time that Cannibal Corpse come here, we thought it would be a great idea to catch Mr. Corpsegrinder for a conversation. So, what started as a relatively basic interview, quickly rolled into exciting and serious discussion about some not-so-serious subjects, such as the successful computer game World Of Warcraft, and current comics-to-film adaptations, among other things. It's going to be very long, so with no further elaborations, lets begin.

Hey George, how are you? Firstly, do you prefer people calling you George or Corpsegrinder?

I'm all right… [Laughs]… it doesn't matter what you call me, either one, I'm used to both.

I understand you've recently returned from a headlining tour, how was it for you to headline once again?

It was great. Basically, I like to headline, it's all we ever do… but this past year, we've been doing a lot of opening up, and it was refreshing just to play, watch the other bands, and actually to hang out instead of putting the whole thing. It was good for us, but it's also good to headline and be able to play a full set.

You decided to shoot 2 of the shows for an upcoming DVD. What can you tell me about these shows? Have you done anything special on them regarding the set-list or performance?

I don't know if it's anything different, we just played the shows, and even for us it wasn't more special – no matter what show you do, you can't mess up. OK, so maybe this song will be here and not there, but we didn't really think any different, we didn't really mix our set-up than what we've been doing over the years. Nothing really seemed out of the ordinary, we played lots of stuff, but there's nothing really crazy going with us, we're pretty boring [Laughs]…

It's been more than a year since "Evisceration Plague" came out… What do you think of it nowadays? Has your opinion changed over time?

Well, I don't really listen to the records that much, but, when we first toured for this album, we opened for Children Of Bodom, and when we got on the road, somebody would put the album and listen to it. After we record an album, we take a break from it, we practice the songs that we're going to play live, but nothing other than that. After you're on the road for a few months, you listen to it and think about things that could have been done differently. I don't really think that I like it more, but maybe there's parts of the record that you thought while doing them, are your best, and then you listen to it, and it's not… but you're not in the studio, you're not stressed out, you can perfectly critic it. There are times when you say you could have made it better, done this or done that, and then you start thinking what I could make better for the next record – not a lot, since we're busy, but when we take a break after touring, I definitely think about things that I would like to do on the next record.

I always wanted to know how you guys come up with song ideas. Do you first think of a certain body-organ that will explode and then start to write the lyrics or music?

[Laughs]… a little bit of both. Everyone has ideas that they come with when we're in writing mode, and then, there are also ideas that go around… we have some titles that turn to music and sometimes it's the other way around. Of course we have ideas, like you know, "what is a good instrument of death", or "what is the best way for someone to get killed" [Laughs]… We usually have text ideas, and some music ideas behind them. We say "OK lets write 10 songs for this album" – we have a couple of songs, a couple of titles, next to that there will be a piece of paper with ideas, and sometimes we can combine or whatnot…

To be honest, I wanted to do this interview for a long time now, for some personal reasons. I bet you don't remember this, but 5 years ago at the Party.San Festival in Germany, you've partied with an Israeli group called Brothers Of Beer, including me, and it was a hell of a crazy night. You even dedicated a song to us on your show, as far as my drunken memory remembers…

Yeah sure, I still have the [Brothers Of Beer] flag [Laughs]…

Nice! what I do recall from that night, was you saying that Israel is a place you want to visit, but can't do at that time, because you had a little daughter and you were a bit afraid, maybe? What changed now?

A lot of these things… First, we were probably ignorant than anything else, I know it. Everyone had a different concern, but then we thought about it, and we realized why shouldn't we go play anywhere? Obviously from that night I knew there were many people that wanted us to play there, and we're really excited. Actually the funny thing about this, the show we will be playing is on my birthday…

Yeah! I wanted to ask about that.

[Laughs]… I'll turn 40!

Are you planning a big celebration there on your show?

Ah, not really [Laughs]… its celebrating turning 40 and I don't like celebrating getting old. If somebody brings me stuff, that will be totally cool and I'll be totally happy. Myself, I'm sure that after the show, I'll have some beers, definitely, I mean, it's my birthday, and whether I say I want to celebrate or not, I will. People will be like "hey, happy birthday, have a beer", and it's really cool, and you can't really say "no". You know, I played shows on my birthday before, and the places we've played in were great, no offence, but this place we never played in all the years we've been around, it's the first time being there, its a big deal! Who can say that for one, they've been in Israel for their birthday, and two, that they played a show, a violent show. That's pretty cool.

Thinking about it, at first I didn't want to play a show on my birthday… but that's kind of cool, it's what we do, and we love to do it. I don't know how many people know about my birthday, but I don't try to make a big deal of out it. For us, getting to Israel… I don't know why we were concerned. In this day and age, there's lot of things about going over there, but it's not on our mind, I'm not nearly worried to go and play there, or anybody doing anything, or anything going crazy… it's just as crazy here in the United States, you know, or anywhere else, anyone can do anything anytime, anywhere. I mean, why should we stay at home afraid of our own shadow, and not want to play places, and see people?

Like I said, meeting you guys convinced me "hey, why are we not going over there? It's ridiculous we don't want to do it" so when the offer came up we didn't even think twice about it, we wanted to go. Hopefully everything will work alright and go smoothly, we'll get to the country with no problems, and we'll be having plenty of rest. You know, we're doing Wacken this year, and Graspop, and all these different festivals, it's really big shows, but this [show in Israel] is as big as any other show, because of the fact we haven't really been there. We really want people who've never seen us, or watched the DVDs and whatnot, to go home satisfied, and we definitely want to make it worth the wait. Then hopefully we can come back all the time, and not just take 20 more years to visit…

I guess the only crazy thing that night will be you getting smashed in Tel-Aviv after the show, or something…

It will be awesome!

Now, the 2nd reason behind this interview is World Of Warcraft. I know that since your famous interview from Wacken, everyone asks you about it, but unlike most of them, I play this game for 6 years now… So, let's talk serious! Firstly, which is your favorite character to play there and why?

My main character is an "Enhancement Shaman". The guild that I co-lead with Nick Goodyear, who plays drums on my other band, Paths Of Possession, doing right now "Icecrown Citadel", but we're not playing as much. My main is pretty bad-ass, I never been "Restoration" or "Elemental Shaman", I'm more of a melee / damage guy, of course I can cast, but I like to be kicking ass at the front…

It seems that everyone is "raiding" less because of the next expansion, "Cataclysm"…

Yeah… on the last tour we did, there were a lot of people leaving the guild, we were going to "ICC", we were at the "Lich King" in "10 men", but we had a bunch of cool people leave, and we had to kick some out, so it was not really working out with the guild. People wanted to get new content, but I wasn't online, and Nick wasn't online, so the "raiding" kind of ceased, since I wasn't able to get online on the tour. If you don't have a really good connection its really hard to "raid", let alone play at all, so I was online only once in the whole time we were on tour, and that's like a whole month. People were leaving, so now we're building it back up. We killed "Lich King" but I want to kill him on "Heroic 10", and I want to kill him with "25 men", and maybe press it into "Heroic 25". I don't know exactly when the expansion is coming out, but we would like to do all that before. When they definitely announce when "Cataclysm" will be coming out, we'll probably start thinking more about that… Face it, the better your gear is when "Cataclysm" is coming out, the faster you're going to level and get into the new "raids", and that's what we want to do.

Yeah, but it always sucks when you work hard to get an item, and then when you level up on the newer cap, something better drops from a trash mob.

That's the hard to this all, but I mean, it's the 3rd expansion, you know there will be more than that. I remember when "Burning Crusade" [1st expansion] came out, and I replaced "Epics" with "Greens", and I was like "oh, man, that's terrible, that really sucks, I don't want to do that"… but better is better, even though it sucks that you work hard for some stuff. I remember when my Shaman got "Rising Tide", the axe from "High Warlord Naj'entus", on "Black Temple", and I had to replace it, it was so hard, I still have it in my bank. That's actually the first boss, I just remember, when we finally killed him, it didn't drop the first time, but only on the 2nd or the 3rd time is when I got it. But you know there were other people who wanted it, so this was lucky, because you know that you never going to get it or its never going to drop.

I still have a mace I got from a boss in Blackrock Spire in my bank…

Yeah, I mean, there's many people going on "Molten Core" right now, trying to get "Bindings Of The Windseeker", because soon it will be gone because they bring "Ragnaros" back. I really know how hard it is to replace these items, but I kind of get excited by it. I like leveling, I just finished leveling a "Death Knight", 3 days ago, I got my "Death Knight" to 80, I've been running with it "Heroics" and stuff, trying to get "Badges" and gear him up, but that's my 7th or 8th "Level 80" [Laughs]…

Myself, I used to play on a PVP [Player versus Player] Server a lot before the 2 expansions, back when it was fun, but now it's just mean in my opinion. Are you still playing PVP Servers?

Now it's ridiculous, people "Gank" [attack by ambush] you, camp on you for hours and waste your time during the day, while you're "raiding" at night, and trying to quest or "farm" for the "raid". They just waste your time, and you know, that's what really spawned the whole interview I did in Wacken. It was the fact that some people were killing and attacking me, and I attacked them as a defense, while trying to "farm" some stuff for raiding after the show. It got really frustrating, so when I was doing the interview, I just went off about it.

Well, with that you "came out" so to say, and since then you were the Metallic World Of Warcraft Ambassador…

Besides that interview, I never really mentioned any of my characters, but I had a "Rogue" as a "main" [character], and then I did an interview with MTV, where they were talking to me, and I gave out my Rogue's name, so I had a lot of "Alliance" coming after me… People knew who my Rouge was, and everyone wanted to kill the singer of Cannibal Corpse. People "ganked" me, and wanted me to come on "Ventrilo" and talk to them, I was really pissed. You know, I tried to be really cool, but people were messing with me… I had people, on the "Horde" side, that when we were doing "Tempest Keep", or "Serpentshrine Cavern", just whispered me. I don't really mind, I'm flattered that people go and take the effort to find my characters (it wasn't really hard because I gave the name on an interview), but once people knew about it, they've been whispering me, I would try to answer all of them during these raids, and then the raid leader would ask me "what's wrong?", and I'm like "dude I'm getting 30 whispers right now". I was trying to answer them all, but I was miss-telling people because I had the whole screen with texts, no raid-text. It started to get crazy, so I had to transfer and change my name…

Blizzard should have made you drop loot from getting killed…

I don't really care about people trying to kill me, or coming after me, because, OK, they could have done it anyway, but I had people following me around [Laughs]… they were emailing things to me, and "/cheer" at me, and other people would come up and sign in the air or something… People still do it now, because players in my guild give out my name. Most people that get in our guild, I don't mind the fact they know my name, but people who leave the guild, or stop playing WOW, they spread it, and say "hey this is George, that's his character". Some people don't really respect the fact that I rather not want everyone to know my name. The policy now on the guild is never give up my names, of course, people keep asking who I am, but we don't give up names. If you join the guild, you find out who I am. Some people look for my other characters, and I just won't answer unless I know who it is…

I mean, I talked to some people whom I know in real life, who wants to join the guild, and get them in the guild. Like when I transferred my Rogue just to get away for a while, I went to a server that Jonathan Davis, the singer of Korn, plays on… he plays WOW, I found his character, and I asked "hey man is this Jonathan from Korn?", and he's like "No, I don't know who is this" (they do that, I don't know who are you, so I don't want to tell you who I am, until I know its you) so I was like "yeah dude, it's George from Cannibal Corpse", and he was "oh shit, what are you doing here?"… I mean, people know what his name is, he had a guild called "Children Of The Korn". I don't know if he's playing anymore, but he had a guild and he stayed there a lot. I know he gets more people than me, since Korn is huge, so it can be hard… everyone wants to talk with you, and of course, I want to talk to everyone else, I want to be an ambassador for metal and my band, but it kind of got hard when I was raiding "oh, I know you're in 'Serpentshrine Cavern', but hey when are you guys touring again?!" [Both Laugh]… I mean, you know we are raiding, at least wait until you see I'm in "Shattrath City" and that I'm not really doing anything!

My Rogue was originally called "DorkCraft" (you know WarCraft-DorkCraft, because we're all dorks and we play online), so now I have a level one DorkCraft, that's in Gorehammmer, and I get on him sometimes. He's a "banker", he is just Level 1, and if I see people looking for me on chat or something, I get on him and say, "Hey this is me"… a lot of time there are people looking for me but when I tell them its me, they're like "bullshit!", and then I talk to them, and they realize they were wrong, because I tell them to go to my MySpace, and see this is my page, and these are my friends, and people would do that.. it's understandable why they wanted to talk to me, I try to talk to people now, but people who go for my other characters, unless I really know them, I usually don't say anything back, I don't put them on "ignore", but I just don't respond.

Gorge The Corpsegrinder
WOW character based on George Fisher

I know every player has a different reason, but why do you like the game so much? What makes you come back there all the time?

I don't know. Look, later today we're going to go back on "Heroic"… 18:30 this afternoon I'll be right in there. I don't know, there's so much to do, especially if you have "Alts" [alternative characters], I mean, right now I'm leveling "Jewel-crafting" and "Mining", so it's something to look forward to… "OK, I'm gonna get online, I'm gonna go here and try to get my mining up" – you set goals. Of course when you're doing a "raid" on another character, you're like "OK, we're going to raid Heroic ‘Deathbringer Saurfang', we killed him before, 10 men, but everyone got tired, we wiped a couple of times, we say OK we come back tomorrow, we kill him and start working on ‘Festergut' or ‘Rotface'… hopefully kill them."

The first time we were on "Heroic ICC 10 Men", we killed the first 4 bosses, and then we didn't have much people showing up, which is a problem for us. I think a lot of people are getting ready for "Cataclysm", and not really try "raiding"… If you're in a hardcore guild, and won't do much "raids", they won't put up with that, and kick your ass out. Nobody wants to leave a hardcore guild since there's gonna be "10 Men raids" right away on "Cataclysm", I don't think they will wait to realize it, they will have one out there, and everyone will race to get to 85 to start doing those "10 Men"… That's what I like to do, get us some decent gear, so when we're getting to "5 Men instances", we're not really replacing as much gear. You know, if you had "Black Temple" gear, back when "Wrath Of The Lich King" [2nd expansion] came out, or even "Sunwell" gear (if you were that lucky), that wasn't getting replaced until Level 78 or something, and some you even had on 80 from "Karazhan"… so we'd like to be well-geared and well-prepared, and now we will have new stuff with the guilds, and all the incentives to level your guild as well, that's a new twist – so people need to get as much gear as they can now to make it much easier.

They're also going to have new raid before "Cataclysm", called "Ruby Sanctum".

The bad thing about it, I think it's coming out as we get ready to leave for the tour. That's the thing, I'm going to say this now, I know I'm not gonna live up to it, but my plan is to get to the hotel right after a show, and get on the internet, and do some runs, but its gonna be so late… I mean, if we're in Germany and we play at 6 in the afternoon, get work done by 12, and get to the hotel by 1, that's 7 o'clock here, then yeah I can get on and maybe raid. But normally I see all my friends, and all the people we met over the years, all the fans, and I just… that would have more priority than raiding "Ruby Sanctum". I want to be there, but hey, this is what I love to do, and that's how it is. Hopefully, they wait a bit longer, and it will come out a little bit after I get home, since we have a little bit of a break before we go back to do Wacken.

For me it really helps to have these breaks during the summer, and then I come back and play all fresh.

If I didn't have a break I wouldn't care, I love it so much. I have a new tattoo, you'll see it, and it's the "Horde" symbol – on my forearm, so everyone can see it. It is good to get a break from it, and the break I get is obviously being on tour, but if it wasn't for how things go on our tour, where you go to each town, and see people you haven't seen in years and after the show have a beer with them in the bus before you're leaving… its really hard to play in a bus on the road, when your signal for the internet goes on phone, the phone goes in and out and you get disconnected, and its frustrating, you don't really want to keep doing it. I don't get much done, and then we get to the next town, I get up around 3 or 4 pm, and we're playing around 10 or so, and its 6 hour window for eating, hanging out and talking to people, and then there's friends you haven't seen for a while again. It gets hard to go online and do real playing, you have interviews as well, and meet and greets. So that's my break, but I don't really want to take a break, I would want to play all the time if I could, I really would.

Like I said, there's so much to do in the game, no matter how geared you are, there's always, and if you're super-geared and its your only character and you don't have anything else to do, but gearing that person, you still want to get achievements – that's what people do now in the higher-end guilds, they're out getting achievements and stuff. There's always something to do in the game, that's the beauty of it, its so close to real life in some ways, because like there, you wake up every day and think about things you have to do (like pay these bills, or go here and get this, I need a new handle, etc'). I have two daughters, I get up and play with the girls or whatnot, you know, running around and chasing them, that's not really things you have to do, that's fun, that's like playing World Of Warcraft as well, it's even better.

I consider this as fun, not a job, but in life, there's things I gotta do, and in Warcraft it's the same thing… you get online and like "OK, I'm gonna go here and 'farm' this or 'mine' that, and try to get this achievement down", its almost like a daily planner for when you log on into the game. They did such a good job with putting so much content into the game, that whether you have one character or 10… you know, with all the "Alts" that I have, "we're gonna run this, OK, on this guy he needs something from there", its crazy the amount of content, the amount of things to do, the amount of reasons to go back to the old world, to go back to "Shattrath", there's tons of reasons to do that. You see people get achievements for doing old Dungeons they never did, people going to the "Black Temple" and destroy it with ease, just to get the achievement, or have laughs and giggles about beating Illidan… but its kind of cool to have done that.

Would you ever consider writing songs dedicated to World Of Warcraft, or killing Rogues and stupid Gnomes or stuff like that?

[Laughs]… It's funny, there's couple of songs, seriously, where the lyrics were kind of about big battles and stuff, with swords and shit, and I definitely had Warcraft in mind when we're singing them, but never anything for Cannibal… I mean, I brought enough of the video game into the band, just by my whole stand against the "Alliance" and whatnot [Laughs], with the interviews and all that, it helps somewhat… I didn't mean it to be that way when I did that interview, it was just supposed to be Cannibal Corpse and the guy was asking about Warcraft like now, and it turned into a Warcraft interview…

It really wasn't meant to be that crazy, but I just got to the festival site, and not even 3 hours before, I was on the internet in the hotel, and I was all prepared to do some "farming", so when I get back after the show I would be playing, and I was so pissed off because these assholes were "ganking" me and I just started attacking them, wasting my time fighting them, and they were fighting me. When it happened I was so mad about it, then he asked me about Warcraft, and that's why I went off… that's really what triggered me to go off… people just think I was drunk or something, but I hadn't had anything! We were playing later that night, I was really happy with the festival site because we saw our friends from other bands and stuff, we had a couple of interviews planned and I think that one wasn't even on the schedule but I said "yeah sure, I can do it", and so it was just out of the blue when the Warcraft stuff came up. There were some people that said he put words in my mouth to make an interesting interview, but I say "Fuck you! they just got me at the right time"…

That's how it starts…

You can't really plan to do it… it wasn't like "hey George, go crazy about the Alliance, here, go ahead", so no, he was just asking me about it, and I'm me, I went off… the funny thing is, that as much as I was riding on "Paladins" and whatnot, I have an 80 Level Paladin right now – I made one because I wanted to see what his "tanking" was all about, since I've been a tank with my warrior for years. My warrior now is Level 80 and he's a "Fury Warrior", he just crafted the "Shadow's-Edge" axe…

Better to know your enemy by playing with one of their common classes.

I never played the "Alliance", never ever made an "Alliance" character, I just wanted to see what tanking with Paladins is all about. I made one maybe 6 months before "Burning Crusade" was finished, maybe even longer, and I was tanking all the time, going crazy with him, and I was like "meh, it's so goddamn easy". It can be challenging in "Wrath…", but I haven't played with him lately. There are some people, when I tell them that I have a Paladin, they're like "What?!", because I cursed them so much in that interview [Laughs]… I wish we [the horde] didn't get those. You know, I wish we were getting "Worgens", it seems they're giving a brutal race, a race that would be more like the "Horde", to the "Alliance"… come on man, they try to mix both of us.

I think it's balancing, because the "Horde" gets a Gnome-type of creatures, with the "Goblins".

Yeah, its bullshit… The "Horde" is the "Horde", you don't need to have all these pretty races.

But at least in Orgrimmar, we will have a new leader, Garrosh Hellscream…

Yeah, they're going to have a Garrosh Hellscream action figure which I'm gonna buy… By the way, I have all the figures, the only one I don't have is Illidan. I need to get the Illidan figure, he's awesome.

Don't want to sound like a nag, but getting to 40, do you ever think of growing up? Maybe stop playing WOW, stop reading comics, stop singing about murders and such?

Hell no, I'm never growing up. Too late for that now, it's too late, I'm 40, it's too late… Maybe I'm gonna grow up in 20 years, when I'll be 60 and stop playing, but I don't think so… I think it's over for me, I'm a kid, I'll always be a kid at heart, and that's just the way I am. You know, some people live their lives, everything is serious for them, and they go about things in different ways, and that's OK. You got to do what is best for you. Then, you have people like me, who play video games and always collect… There's a comic book from years ago, Marvel had this thing called "Secret Wars", and they released a "Secret Wars" 2-pack action-figures, and I just bought the one with "Thor" on it, and the "Enchantress". I had to have the "Thor" figure. I'm having all of them, like "Mr. Fantastic", I got that one. I don't want to change, that's what I love, and that's what I'm interested in. I mean, I spent a bunch of money to get "Frostmourne" [the famous sword of the Lich King from World Of Warcraft], and I have it, I have a room that has all my junk in it, and I have "Frostmourne" there, so….

Since I already mentioned comics – what do you think of this movie trend of bringing all those characters on the big screen, like the upcoming Avengers?

I can't wait for what they're doing next year, there's going to be a "Thor" movie, and "Captain America" movie, and "The Avengers" movie… I hope they'll make another "Fantastic Four", since the dude who made the recent "Fantastic Four" movies [Tim Story] is an idiot, he's basically an idiot, and I hope that if he reads this, that I make him feel bad. I really hope that he feels BAD, I hope he CRIES, I thought the 2nd FF movie SUCKED, and it was a JOKE with what they did with "Galactus", they didn't put him in the movie. This is me speaking to him: YOU ARE AN IDIOT, SIR, for not putting "Galactus" in it. I read an interview a couple of weeks before "Rise Of The Silver Surfer" came out, where they asked "Is 'Galactus' in the movie?" and he's like "Well, we've been trying not to tell people, but yes, you see 'Galactus' in the movie, and I hope people like what we're doing" – He was a fucking cloud! You never saw him in the movie! It was a joke! Far out, it was a fucking joke!

Yes, "Silver Surfer" kind of confronts him, and you kind of see his face in the fire, but its bullshit… that was the moment everyone was waiting for, to see the "Silver Surfer", which they did a good job on by the way, and "Galactus" in there, but not putting "Galactus" was a joke, and I'm hoping that… I read that Marvel intend to do a "Silver Surfer" movie and "Galactus" will be in it, the way we all know and love him. They really blew it on the "Fantastic Four", I think overall it wasn't a bad movie, but they screwed it, they fucked a cake on "Galactus"… With that, I like the new "Hulk" movie, I even liked the old "Hulk" movie, I thought it was great that he threw tanks and smashed everything up, and in the newer movie, "Abomination" was pretty cool, and I thought it was decent. I mean, "Iron Man" is their flag ship right now, "Iron Man" is awesome, 1 and 2 are great, awesome movies…

You're more into Marvel Comics than DC?

Completely Marvel, screw DC, no offence… I just never been into DC, other than "Jonah Hex". I like "Jonah Hex", and the movie is coming out soon, I'm excited to see that… I never really followed "Batman", or "Superman", I never cared about them. I mean, I love "The Dark Knight" and "Batman Begins", those are 2 of the best movies in recent years… "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" made me want to get more into Batman than any of the comics ever did, to be honest with you. I never really read a lot of comics that inspired "The Dark Knight" and whatnot, but I should go back and read them… Just the performance in the movies, especially from The Joker, you know, it was so incredible… that and Iron Man, its 2 of the best… I always thought DC – years and years, from the first "Superman" with Christopher Reeve – were better than what Marvel made with their movies. There was even a "Fantastic Four" movie made years ago, I own a copy of it….

Yeah, I think they also did a movie with "S.H.I.E.L.D." starring David Hasselhoff…

[Laughs]… Yeah, David Hasselhoff. Well, those were bad attempts by Marvel movies. There's a "Dr. Strange" movie, I had a "Captain America" movie on video cassette, I have one video cassette with the "Fantastic Four" movie that never got released, but got leaked. It was pretty bad in certain aspects, but some things like "Dr. Doom" were awesome. Actually, "Dr. Doom" in that movie is better than "Dr. Doom" in the newer movies. In the newer movies they totally fucking ruined him, they screwed up his origin. Some people take these movies and they look at the lore of Marvel Comics and they decide that they're going to change it slightly… like with the X-Men movies, I like the X-Men movies but lets face it, "Wolverine" is not an original X-Men, that's not how it is, but I can deal with that, I mean, its OK since he's like the biggest X-Men there ever was, in popularity, so putting him in there just kind of make sense. I'll deal with that. Its kind of like rehashing, they change the story a little bit, retelling of it, but if you go and fuck the cake like they did with "Galactus", when they really go and do something that is so far of whack that makes no sense, it's…

For example, "Dr. Doom" origins, just because they don't want to have him try rescuing his mom from hell, basically, and his face getting scarred completely, so he blames "Reed Richards" [Mr. Fantastic] for that. I mean, [in the movie] they already made him hate Richards, right off the bat. That wasn't the case, they were friends, they were rivals in school, as far as both are super intelligent, but they're friends, and he blames him for his face-skin all smeared up because Reed tells him "hey, calculations were off", it cost him, and he hates him – that's too far fetched?… By the way, you have a comic book where the dude is fucking made of rock, that's too far fetched? Make him as close to comics as you can. The one thing I hate is [weird voice] "we're gonna make him a little bit more realistic, ’cause it wont make any sense if he's just made of rock", NO… trust me, the people who are making the movies what they are, are the fans who grew up reading the comic books. You can still get some other people that are not much into the comics by putting the actual facts of what happened in the comic books, really, in my opinion – for example, what they did with Iron Man, it was a great a job.

And what do you think of the Spider-Man movies? Do you like them?

Yeah, they're alright movies, but I think that "Venom" shouldn't have been there. First of, Venom looked dumb in that movie, Venom is huge, Venom is a monster, but they made him look like Spider-Man in that movie, the suit can grow and they gave him a "costume" because he looked just like Spider-Man – a skinny-ass dude… Venom is a monster, he is devastating, that's why he's so great, and they totally ruined him in that movie, they really did. He looks cool, he does look cool, but he should just be bigger and more ferocious.

Definitely, like a wrestler or something.

Yes, exactly, you can put anybody under that CG, you could put anybody in the costume and make him Venom, and that guy [in the movie] just didn't do it right. I heard that Marvel really wanted Venom in the movie, so they kind of rushed it.

Yeah, they pushed him on Sam Raimi, the Director.

Ah-ha, they pushed it on him!… they shouldn't have. What they should have done is to tell him "listen, forget the 'Sandman', make him the sub-character, let's put Venom in there, let's sort of build the whole thing up"… Really, they could have done that, or at least put Venom inside slightly, don't make him part of the thing with Sandman, just make Venom appear in the end (like when Venom first appeared in comics, you just see him in the end) and then you set it up for Spider-Man 4, where Venom is wrecking a fucking hell on Spider-Man's life. That's what they should have done.

Actually, they're going to reboot the Spider-Man movies too, its exaggerated with all these reboots right now…

Yeah, they're gonna make him when he's in high-school, and to me, its just dumb, its closing the door on the 3rd or any other movie. Hopefully, they're gonna do another X-Men movie, they're taking a break, they're gonna do a couple of "Wolverine" movies, they do the "Magneto" movie, hopefully gonna do "X-Men: First Class", and that's fine if they do them… Then 5-6 years later they will come back with a brand new X-Men movie. That would be cool…

Oh yes, we can actually talk about it for hours, but before someone starts taking any of your songs literally on me, lets get back to music. Do you have plans for the next Cannibal Corpse record, or any other musical projects, yet?

[Laughs]… We're [Cannibal Corpse] so busy with touring right now, but we kind of have a target date – not exact date, but a month next year – to record the new album. We're probably gonna take a month after we're done with tours, maybe a little bit longer, and relax, get the music out of our head and whatnot, and then we're gonna start writing the new album. Hopefully by 2012 I would say, it will be out, maybe a little bit before that. I don't know with dates and times, its hard to tell, because I don't know how long the writing process is going to take us. Besides that, I'm hopefully gonna do another record with Paths Of Possession. We have a 3rd album that we had a bunch of songs written for, and we just have to get the lyrics written, get together and practice, and hopefully we're gonna record that sometimes next year, if everything works out. I have a couple of other things I'll be doing on some other projects, so definitely it's going to be busy next year.

On one of your latest interviews, you were talking about meeting Brendon Small, creator of Metalocalypse [Dethklok]… Maybe you know when the show will come back?

In 2010 they're gonna do a 4th season, hopefully they will want me to be a part of it. That would be cool, but if not, I still appreciate the fact that they put me in the first 2 seasons. I saw Brandon on the Hatebreed tour in December, I didn't see him the last time we were in L.A., – I saw some of the other people that work on the cartoon, but no Brandon or Tommy at all. So I haven't talked to them about that, but if they call me up and say "hey man, we want you to come and do this", I'm totally down for that, I love the cartoon, I love those guys, they're awesome, I love all the people that I first met while doing the voice-over, everyone was awesome and treated me so great. So if they want me to do anything else with Metalocalypse, then I'd be 100% into it.

Cannibal Corpse has been a world wide phenomenon, from your gruesome album covers, to performing on the Ace Ventura movie, to doing voices for Metalocalypse, and having a character named after you in World Of Warcarft. Is there anything you guys haven't achieved yet and still want to get?

Yeah, I want to be RICH.

Point!

[Laughs]… I want millions and millions and millions of dollars.

…So you can buy more World Of Warcraft action figures!

Yes… Hmm… Is there anything we haven't accomplished? Hopefully, just do more tours – there's bunch of bands I'd love to play with, to open for, or just headline over or co-headline with. There's lot of more festivals that we haven't done, there's lot more fans out there, more people that we want to win over, bring into the fold, make them Death Metal fans. There's lot of stuff. Hopefully, I get to go to "Blizzcon" [the annual Blizzard convention] this year… that's not totally Cannibal Corpse related, that's personally. There's always more we can do, we can definitely make a better album than "Evisceration Plague" when we record next year. That's definitely on the list, and one of the things that I really want to do – I want the next record to totally destroy "Evisceration Plague". I know that everyone else in the band does as well, we all want to make the next record our best, even best ever, just like how we felt with "Evisceration"… We'd like to kick ass this summer, have great time, and have a blast seeing all our friends, all the fans from around the world like in Wacken… Wacken always has people from everywhere coming together, all the metal-heads, it's awesome. I think this year it will be a little melancholic because Dio passed and whatnot, but we look forward to the festival, it's a celebration, and Dio will be there in spirit.

Do you plan to release the DVD before the next record?

I believe so… I haven't seen anyone in the band for a few weeks. When we finish off a tour, everyone goes and does their own thing. I really had a rough time after the last tour, I had a really bad cough, and I'm just getting over it now, you can hear that my voice is worse than usual… you know what I mean…

You mentioned in the past that you always sound like a sick person, so I couldn't really guess.

[Laughs] Yeah… I normally sound sick, but this is a little bit more rough than usual. I'm just getting over that and taking a break. I feel fine, but I think I need a little more break to get the voice back, to get ready for the wear and tare that we're gonna put on it this summer. We all kind of doing our own thing, and I don't know exactly what is the target date for the DVD, but I'll find it out soon enough. I'm sure the other guys already know and they've been talking about it with Metal Blade. I just want it to get out, assuming it's gonna be out before our next record – it's not gonna make sense to not have that before then.

Basically when you're not touring, recording, or playing WOW… do you listen to any current metal albums? Do you have any recent favorites?

Aeon just released a new album, it's pretty good. I actually got from one of the guys that work in Metal Blade US, a bunch of albums including the new Aeon. I listen to them and to some other stuff as well, like a punk-rock band called "Off With Their Heads", they just put out a new album, they'll do a show here, but we're gonna be in Europe, damn it. I sort of like a lot more punk-rock stuff lately, that and the new Aeon of course – it's fucking incredible, because these guys, they rule, they can do no wrong, they're awesome.

You like Aeon's take on your style with this anti-Christian twist?

Yeah, I don't care, I dig that stuff, Aeon, come on… With Death Metal, there are different styles in a way, some bands are about the gore and killing everything, and then there are bands like Decide, Aeon, and Morbid Angel that sing more about religion stuff. Each one of the guys in CC have their own take on religion, but we don't let that into the lyrics, we don't have any message, its all horrible stuff, that's what we're about. I don't think Aeon is more about Satan than actually liking religion, they're just fed up with religion, and they use Satan as kind of example. I think there's a lot of ways to look at it, I don't want to speak for Tommy who writes the lyrics, but I dig them, and I love the band. The lyrics are brutal and sometimes they're just down-right sadistic brutal so [Laughs]… it's cool and I love it. They're really one of the best new Death Metal bands… well, they're not really new-new, and they've been around for a while now… But yeah, they're one of the Death Metal bands I think most people better listen to these days, and if you don't know who they are, you need to go and check them out.

When you'll be in Israel, do you plan to do any sightseeing or something?

I don't know what the schedule is like, I haven't really looked at it. Probably not, we're probably gonna get in there, go to the hotel and sleep, we're gonna be exhausted from the flight before… we might have a day off in between, I'm not sure, I have to look at the schedule and see how much time we have after the show or before. I'm more of a hotel guy, I'll sit in the friggen hotel all day, but we'll see what happens, maybe we gonna do something. Right now it's too hard to tell until we get there.

Last but not least, do you have some brutal words for your Israeli fans regarding your upcoming show here?

Stay metal… we can't wait to see everyone, we can't wait to put a show – hopefully it will be worth the wait for us to get there, and hopefully people will be happy with the performance, which I think they will be. We're always ready to play, and we're definitely psyched to put the show, as much as any other shows we ever done. It's going to be a special show… [Cute Voice] bring some presents or beer and stuff, it's my birthday… [Laughs]…