Alex Webster
Encyclopedia
Alex Webster is an American bass player
, who is best known as a member of the American death metal
band Cannibal Corpse
. He is one of two current members who were of the original lineup of Cannibal Corpse
, the other being drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz
. He is also is the bassist for the bands Hate Eternal
, Beyond Death and Blotted Science
.
Webster was originally of the band Beyond Death, with ex-Cannibal Corpse guitarist Jack Owen
, back in 1987. Both met up with Chris Barnes
, Bob Rusay and Paul Mazurkiewicz
, all of whom were in the band Tirant Sin. He was the one to come up with the band's name, Cannibal Corpse. In an interview he said that he thought it was a very catchy name for a band. He has a reputation for being friendly to his fans, often asking questions, and genuinely caring what his fans think, regularly answering questions on the band's forum. Alex was a bassist for Erik Rutan
's death metal band Hate Eternal
. Erik produced Cannibal Corpse's latest album, Evisceration Plague, and also Kill (2006). In 2005, Alex was contacted by guitarist Ron Jarzombek
about a possible collaboration which became Blotted Science
, an all-instrumental extreme metal project. They released their debut album, The Machinations of Dementia
, in the fall of 2007.
When asked about his favorite Cannibal Corpse song, Webster answered: "I don't know, it would be hard to choose one that's the "best", but one of my favorites is "From Skin to Liquid", mainly because it was so different for us. It showed we didn't necessarily have to be playing at warp drive and have gory lyrics to be heavy."
in death metal
and the metal genre in general. He can play at exceptionally fast speeds, and does a signature 3-finger walk (a "galloping" finger motion). He revealed in a making-of DVD
for The Wretched Spawn
, where he initially started playing guitar
but changed to bass because he felt he could master the instrument more quickly. He also plays without using a pick
, as well as using a clean clear tone, which helps retain clarity in the complex and very fast lines he plays in conjunction with the heavily distorted guitars.
“When I was six years old I took some acoustic guitar lessons. It didn't really work out because I was six and didn't really want to learn “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and those were the kind of songs I was being taught. I wanted to play Elvis
. I liked all the old 50s music. My dad had a bunch of old 50s records because that's when he was a teenager. Those were what I listened to, because when you're six you don't have the money to go buy stuff, so I just listened to his records. Nobody was going to teach me how to play the guitar like that, out in the country where I lived. I just gave it up until I was 13 or 14. I met a kid in school who played bass in the high school jazz band. He wanted to make some extra money and it was five bucks a lesson. He did a good job too. His name was Mike Hudson. I don't know if he plays anymore. I lost touch with him. He's the one that got me started. I always wanted to play in a band, and to learn how to play lead guitar was going to take like five years. But I really liked the sound of the bass. I liked AC/DC
and figured I could do that. I thought I could learn Cliff Williams
’ bass parts faster than I could learn to play Angus Young
's guitar parts. It was motivation, because I wanted to be in a band. I never wanted to sit around and play music by myself. I wanted to play with other people, and the fastest route to that was playing an instrument that wasn't a lead instrument, and bass was that. Now I've learned to make it a lot more difficult. I've made my job a lot harder than it probably needs to be. But it's just fun. In the beginning my concern was playing in a band.”
"I took some lessons from a friend of mine when I first started. He was in the school jazz band and he taught me the basics. I didn't take lessons for about a year, but I started again when I was a senior in high school. I've had about four different teachers throughout the years, but I never took lessons for more than a few months. I did, however, gain a lot from them and I've tried to learn as much on my own as I can. Anything I can learn about music or bass playing, I'll try to learn. I mean, the more you learn and the more you apply to your playing, it just makes you a better musician."
”I liked the bass player from AC/DC. I really loved the stuff he did. Peter Baltes from Accept was another. I liked the really good guys too, but that seemed out of reach at the beginning. Geddy Lee from Rush and Steve Harris were like gods to me. Billy Sheehan was from Buffalo, and we all knew about Billy before the rest of the country did. Billy has been a legend in Buffalo for a long, long time. He's still one of my favorites. By the time I was listening to Cliff Burton I was getting a little better. I had been playing a year or so before I started listening to Metallica. I thought he was great. I always thought he could have been a little louder on those albums though. That's the thing. In thrash metal or any other kind of metal where the bass is playing exactly what the guitar is playing, automatically the bass went down in the mix. If you notice those older bands like Accept, the bass is doing something that's a little bit different from the guitar. It's more with the kick drum instead of playing the riff the guitar is doing. In thrash metal and then death metal, the bass player always wound up playing what the guitar player was doing most of the time. It's been a decade long fight for us to be heard in the mix.”
"I'd like to do some instructional material, but I'm still not sure if I'll try and do a DVD or book though. It will probably be easier to do a DVD, actually. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some stuff that's worth releasing. I definitely won't put anything out until I'm sure it's of really high quality, and full of lots of good information. Also, you might have heard about the possibility of us doing a tab book. Well, we still haven't found a publisher for that."
"I practice the most when I have something I'm working on that's difficult, like one of Pat's songs for example. I usually won't practice for more than 3 or 4 hours a day unless I'm really inspired, or I have some kind of deadline."
Besides playing bass, Alex has also contributed to lyric and music writing on many occasions for the band, some examples being "Fucked with a Knife," "Puncture Wound Massacre," "I Will Kill You," "Devoured by Vermin," "Unleashing the Bloodthirsty" and "Murder Worship".
Alex is also known for his bass guitar solos/fills in such songs as "Addicted to Vaginal Skin", "Mangled", "The Undead Will Feast", "Crushing the Despised", "Fucked with a Knife", "Hammer Smashed Face", "The Discipline of Revenge", "Put Them To Death", "She Was Asking For It", "Staring Through The Eyes of the Dead", "Bloodlands", and "They Deserve to Die".
Quantum 5 and Spector
'Alex Webster Signature Edition' and Euro 5XL basses, DR Strings, and EMG pickups. He also used a white 1987 Fender Precision bass on the albums "Eaten Back to Life" and "Butchered At Birth", an Ibanez Sabre on the album "Tomb of the Mutilated", an Ibanez Soundgear on "The Bleeding" and both a 1971 Precision Bass as well as a Spector NS Series 5-string bass on "Vile". In the past, he used an Ampeg SVT200T with an Ampeg 8x10 cabinet, then switched to the SVT-4PRO head. Recently, he signed an endorsement deal with SWR and currently uses 2 SWR SM-1500 and 2 SWR Megoliath 8x10 cabinets.
" where he comes off as musically knowledgeable and well-spoken.
"Cannibal Corpse’s bassist Alex Webster exudes a quiet, intellectual and particularly amiable persona which seems so at odds with the music that he is a driving force behind that one is immediately reminded of the old adage about not judging books by their covers."- Sinister Online
When asked about what he likes to do in his spare time outside of Cannibal Corpse, Webster commented: "Hang out with my wife and my dogs, read books, exercise, watch movies...." He also likes: "working out, I’ve been doing some martial arts stuff for awhile now, so I just like to run, I like to go mountain biking"
"I'm not very proud of myself if I lose my temper. That's something I would love to be able to change. I've worked on it throughout my life and hope to eventually have it conquered and react as peacefully as Gandhi in the worst situation."
"Forrest Gump, that was OK actually, but I prefer... I'll tell you what one of my favourite all-time movies was, as far as horror. I like The Shining
and I like Jacob's Ladder
. I don't know if you'd call Jacob's Ladder horror anyway, but I really liked that movie. I like, Jesus there's a lot of them... I like the Evil Dead stuff, just total splatter action and Necromantik from Germany. I have a very bad copy of Necromantik 2 and it's all in German and you can barely watch it. You can't even see the picture, really, but I saw Necromantik 1 and it's classic. I was just in a bar in Paris where they were playing Necromantik while you were just hanging about in the bar - yes!" "I just like the really low budget splatter. It's fun. And I like high budget psychological horror like Jacob's Ladder and The Shining. Everything's entertaining for different reasons. Here's kinda the way I see it: you can appreciate a lot of different things for what they are. Like, we're obviously a much different type of death metal band from, say, My Dying Bride
or something like that, but there's no reason you can't appreciate both of them for what they are. I like Anathema
and My Dying Bride. I also like Morbid Angel
and Vader
, and I also like us and Autopsy
- of course I like us! I'm in the band! You know what I mean. It's good for what it is. When I see a movie like Evil Dead I don't expect it to be like The Shining, just like a person who likes Cannibal Corpse. They shouldn't expect us to be like Anathema. You know what I'm saying? But they can like us for being... the Evil Dead of death metal! [laughs] And they can like those other bands for being more psychological or whatnot."
, Fargo
, The Reflecting Skin, Burnt Offerings
, The Shining
, Goodfellas
, Casino
, Braveheart
, Saving Private Ryan
, The Exorcist
, Full Metal Jacket
, The Warriors
, City of God, Romper Stomper
, The Lord of the Rings trilogy
, Freddy Got Fingered
, The Road Warrior, and tons more..."
Television: "Most of the original programming on HBO; I also watch the news a lot."
Books: 1984
by George Orwell
, Murder Machine by Gene Mustain and Jerry Capeci
, The Westies by T.J. English, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion
by Tolkien, Gulag
by Anne Applebaum
, etc..."
When asked about his favorite song on the Morbid Angel
album "Altars of Madness
", Webster answered: "that whole album is so amazing, it's hard to choose. Maybe "Chapel of Ghouls", "Immortal Rites", or "Visions from the Darkside"."
In an interview, he commented that his favorite albums of the last five years are Spawn of Possession's “Cabinet,” Necrophagist's “Epitaph,” Aeon's “Bleeding the False," Hate Eternal's “I Monarch," and Spastic Ink's “Ink Compatible.”
His five all-time favorite albums are (in descending order) Accept
Restless and Wild, Immolation's
Dawn of Possession
, Sadus
' Illusions, Iron Maiden
's Powerslave
and Slayer
's Reign in Blood
.
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
, who is best known as a member of the American death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
band Cannibal Corpse
Cannibal Corpse
Cannibal Corpse is an American death metal band from Buffalo, New York. Formed in 1988, the band has released eleven studio albums, one box set, and one live album...
. He is one of two current members who were of the original lineup of Cannibal Corpse
Cannibal Corpse
Cannibal Corpse is an American death metal band from Buffalo, New York. Formed in 1988, the band has released eleven studio albums, one box set, and one live album...
, the other being drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz
Paul Mazurkiewicz
Paul Mazurkiewicz is the Polish-American drummer of Cannibal Corpse, and one of two remaining original members, the other being bassist Alex Webster.-Musical History:...
. He is also is the bassist for the bands Hate Eternal
Hate Eternal
-Biography:Hate Eternal was formed in 1997. The group's original line-up included Erik Rutan - guitars/vocals, bassist and co-vocalist Jared Anderson, drummer Tim Yeung, and guitarist Doug Cerrito of the band Suffocation...
, Beyond Death and Blotted Science
Blotted Science
Blotted Science is an instrumental technical death metal supergroup headed by Ron Jarzombek , bassist Alex Webster and drummer Hannes Grossmann...
.
Musical biography
Webster stated "I just always liked music since I was a little kid. Music was always a soundtrack in my head to things going on in my life. I always wanted to play. I wanted to play drums when I was about three. I made a drum out of an old butter container and hit it with tinker toys. I was going to make music. Most people who are musicians didn't have to have anyone tell them to do it. I would never push music on someone, because it is something that doesn't need to be pushed. If you're going to make music, you're going to make it."Webster was originally of the band Beyond Death, with ex-Cannibal Corpse guitarist Jack Owen
Jack Owen
Jack Owen is an American guitarist, best known for his work in the death metal genre. He was one of the founding members of Cannibal Corpse. He stayed with the band from their formation in 1988 until 2004 when he left because he wanted to move on as stated in the Centuries of Torment DVD...
, back in 1987. Both met up with Chris Barnes
Chris Barnes (musician)
Chris Barnes is an American singer-songwriter, best known as a death metal vocalist recognized for his very low guttural vocals and explicitly violent lyrics...
, Bob Rusay and Paul Mazurkiewicz
Paul Mazurkiewicz
Paul Mazurkiewicz is the Polish-American drummer of Cannibal Corpse, and one of two remaining original members, the other being bassist Alex Webster.-Musical History:...
, all of whom were in the band Tirant Sin. He was the one to come up with the band's name, Cannibal Corpse. In an interview he said that he thought it was a very catchy name for a band. He has a reputation for being friendly to his fans, often asking questions, and genuinely caring what his fans think, regularly answering questions on the band's forum. Alex was a bassist for Erik Rutan
Erik Rutan
Erik Rutan is an American heavy metal musician from New Jersey. He currently leads Hate Eternal on lead vocals and guitar and has also spent time with Morbid Angel and Ripping Corpse...
's death metal band Hate Eternal
Hate Eternal
-Biography:Hate Eternal was formed in 1997. The group's original line-up included Erik Rutan - guitars/vocals, bassist and co-vocalist Jared Anderson, drummer Tim Yeung, and guitarist Doug Cerrito of the band Suffocation...
. Erik produced Cannibal Corpse's latest album, Evisceration Plague, and also Kill (2006). In 2005, Alex was contacted by guitarist Ron Jarzombek
Ron Jarzombek
Ron Jarzombek is an American guitarist best known for his work with Austin, Texas progressive metal trailblazers WatchTower, '90s madcap trio, Spastic Ink, technical extreme metal band Blotted Science, featuring Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster and Obscura drummer Hannes Grossmann, and most...
about a possible collaboration which became Blotted Science
Blotted Science
Blotted Science is an instrumental technical death metal supergroup headed by Ron Jarzombek , bassist Alex Webster and drummer Hannes Grossmann...
, an all-instrumental extreme metal project. They released their debut album, The Machinations of Dementia
The Machinations of Dementia
The Machinations of Dementia is the debut album by the instrumental technical death metal band Blotted Science, released September 18, 2007 on guitarist Ron Jarzombek's EclecticElectric label...
, in the fall of 2007.
When asked about his favorite Cannibal Corpse song, Webster answered: "I don't know, it would be hard to choose one that's the "best", but one of my favorites is "From Skin to Liquid", mainly because it was so different for us. It showed we didn't necessarily have to be playing at warp drive and have gory lyrics to be heavy."
Bass playing
Alex is recognized as a very talented bassistBassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
in death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
and the metal genre in general. He can play at exceptionally fast speeds, and does a signature 3-finger walk (a "galloping" finger motion). He revealed in a making-of DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
for The Wretched Spawn
The Wretched Spawn
The Wretched Spawn is the ninth studio album by American death metal band Cannibal Corpse. The cover art is by Vincent Locke. This is the last studio album to feature Jack Owen, one of the band's founding members, and to date, the last with a graphic album cover. The album was distributed with a...
, where he initially started playing guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
but changed to bass because he felt he could master the instrument more quickly. He also plays without using a pick
Guitar pick
A guitar pick is a plectrum used for guitars. A pick is generally made of one uniform material; examples include plastic, nylon, rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal, glass, and stone...
, as well as using a clean clear tone, which helps retain clarity in the complex and very fast lines he plays in conjunction with the heavily distorted guitars.
“When I was six years old I took some acoustic guitar lessons. It didn't really work out because I was six and didn't really want to learn “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and those were the kind of songs I was being taught. I wanted to play Elvis
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
. I liked all the old 50s music. My dad had a bunch of old 50s records because that's when he was a teenager. Those were what I listened to, because when you're six you don't have the money to go buy stuff, so I just listened to his records. Nobody was going to teach me how to play the guitar like that, out in the country where I lived. I just gave it up until I was 13 or 14. I met a kid in school who played bass in the high school jazz band. He wanted to make some extra money and it was five bucks a lesson. He did a good job too. His name was Mike Hudson. I don't know if he plays anymore. I lost touch with him. He's the one that got me started. I always wanted to play in a band, and to learn how to play lead guitar was going to take like five years. But I really liked the sound of the bass. I liked AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
and figured I could do that. I thought I could learn Cliff Williams
Cliff Williams
Clifford Williams is an English bassist and backing vocalist, who has been a member of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC since mid-1977. He had started his professional music career in 1967 and was previously in the British groups Home and Bandit. His first studio album with AC/DC was Powerage...
’ bass parts faster than I could learn to play Angus Young
Angus Young
Angus McKinnon Young is a Scottish-born Australian musician, and the lead guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the rock and roll band AC/DC. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other members of AC/DC in 2003 and is known for his energetic performances,...
's guitar parts. It was motivation, because I wanted to be in a band. I never wanted to sit around and play music by myself. I wanted to play with other people, and the fastest route to that was playing an instrument that wasn't a lead instrument, and bass was that. Now I've learned to make it a lot more difficult. I've made my job a lot harder than it probably needs to be. But it's just fun. In the beginning my concern was playing in a band.”
"I took some lessons from a friend of mine when I first started. He was in the school jazz band and he taught me the basics. I didn't take lessons for about a year, but I started again when I was a senior in high school. I've had about four different teachers throughout the years, but I never took lessons for more than a few months. I did, however, gain a lot from them and I've tried to learn as much on my own as I can. Anything I can learn about music or bass playing, I'll try to learn. I mean, the more you learn and the more you apply to your playing, it just makes you a better musician."
”I liked the bass player from AC/DC. I really loved the stuff he did. Peter Baltes from Accept was another. I liked the really good guys too, but that seemed out of reach at the beginning. Geddy Lee from Rush and Steve Harris were like gods to me. Billy Sheehan was from Buffalo, and we all knew about Billy before the rest of the country did. Billy has been a legend in Buffalo for a long, long time. He's still one of my favorites. By the time I was listening to Cliff Burton I was getting a little better. I had been playing a year or so before I started listening to Metallica. I thought he was great. I always thought he could have been a little louder on those albums though. That's the thing. In thrash metal or any other kind of metal where the bass is playing exactly what the guitar is playing, automatically the bass went down in the mix. If you notice those older bands like Accept, the bass is doing something that's a little bit different from the guitar. It's more with the kick drum instead of playing the riff the guitar is doing. In thrash metal and then death metal, the bass player always wound up playing what the guitar player was doing most of the time. It's been a decade long fight for us to be heard in the mix.”
"I'd like to do some instructional material, but I'm still not sure if I'll try and do a DVD or book though. It will probably be easier to do a DVD, actually. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some stuff that's worth releasing. I definitely won't put anything out until I'm sure it's of really high quality, and full of lots of good information. Also, you might have heard about the possibility of us doing a tab book. Well, we still haven't found a publisher for that."
"I practice the most when I have something I'm working on that's difficult, like one of Pat's songs for example. I usually won't practice for more than 3 or 4 hours a day unless I'm really inspired, or I have some kind of deadline."
Besides playing bass, Alex has also contributed to lyric and music writing on many occasions for the band, some examples being "Fucked with a Knife," "Puncture Wound Massacre," "I Will Kill You," "Devoured by Vermin," "Unleashing the Bloodthirsty" and "Murder Worship".
Alex is also known for his bass guitar solos/fills in such songs as "Addicted to Vaginal Skin", "Mangled", "The Undead Will Feast", "Crushing the Despised", "Fucked with a Knife", "Hammer Smashed Face", "The Discipline of Revenge", "Put Them To Death", "She Was Asking For It", "Staring Through The Eyes of the Dead", "Bloodlands", and "They Deserve to Die".
Equipment
Webster currently uses ModulusModulus Guitars
Modulus Guitars is an American manufacturer of musical instruments, most notably bass guitars built with carbon fiber necks. The company, originally called Modulus Graphite, was founded in part by Geoff Gould, a bassist who also worked for an aerospace company in Palo Alto, California.The name may...
Quantum 5 and Spector
Spector
Spector is an American based company that manufacturers bass guitars. Founded in 1974 by self-taught luthier Stuart Spector, Spector's first few instruments were essentially crude experiments in instrument design and craftsmanship...
'Alex Webster Signature Edition' and Euro 5XL basses, DR Strings, and EMG pickups. He also used a white 1987 Fender Precision bass on the albums "Eaten Back to Life" and "Butchered At Birth", an Ibanez Sabre on the album "Tomb of the Mutilated", an Ibanez Soundgear on "The Bleeding" and both a 1971 Precision Bass as well as a Spector NS Series 5-string bass on "Vile". In the past, he used an Ampeg SVT200T with an Ampeg 8x10 cabinet, then switched to the SVT-4PRO head. Recently, he signed an endorsement deal with SWR and currently uses 2 SWR SM-1500 and 2 SWR Megoliath 8x10 cabinets.
Personality
Webster is prominently featured in the heavy metal documentary "Metal: A Headbanger's JourneyMetal: A Headbanger's Journey
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a 2005 documentary directed by Sam Dunn with Scot McFadyen and Jessica Wise. The film follows 31-year-old Dunn, a Canadian anthropologist, who has been a heavy metal fan since the age of 12...
" where he comes off as musically knowledgeable and well-spoken.
"Cannibal Corpse’s bassist Alex Webster exudes a quiet, intellectual and particularly amiable persona which seems so at odds with the music that he is a driving force behind that one is immediately reminded of the old adage about not judging books by their covers."- Sinister Online
When asked about what he likes to do in his spare time outside of Cannibal Corpse, Webster commented: "Hang out with my wife and my dogs, read books, exercise, watch movies...." He also likes: "working out, I’ve been doing some martial arts stuff for awhile now, so I just like to run, I like to go mountain biking"
"I'm not very proud of myself if I lose my temper. That's something I would love to be able to change. I've worked on it throughout my life and hope to eventually have it conquered and react as peacefully as Gandhi in the worst situation."
"Forrest Gump, that was OK actually, but I prefer... I'll tell you what one of my favourite all-time movies was, as far as horror. I like The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...
and I like Jacob's Ladder
Jacob's Ladder (film)
Jacob's Ladder is a 1990 American psychological thriller/horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin.-Plot:Jacob Singer is a U.S. soldier deployed in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War...
. I don't know if you'd call Jacob's Ladder horror anyway, but I really liked that movie. I like, Jesus there's a lot of them... I like the Evil Dead stuff, just total splatter action and Necromantik from Germany. I have a very bad copy of Necromantik 2 and it's all in German and you can barely watch it. You can't even see the picture, really, but I saw Necromantik 1 and it's classic. I was just in a bar in Paris where they were playing Necromantik while you were just hanging about in the bar - yes!" "I just like the really low budget splatter. It's fun. And I like high budget psychological horror like Jacob's Ladder and The Shining. Everything's entertaining for different reasons. Here's kinda the way I see it: you can appreciate a lot of different things for what they are. Like, we're obviously a much different type of death metal band from, say, My Dying Bride
My Dying Bride
My Dying Bride are an English doom metal band formed in 1990. To date, My Dying Bride have released eleven full-length studio albums, three EPs, one demo, one box set, four compilation albums, one live album, and one live CD/DVD release. The band released their tenth studio album, For Lies I Sire,...
or something like that, but there's no reason you can't appreciate both of them for what they are. I like Anathema
Anathema
Anathema originally meant something lifted up as an offering to the gods; it later evolved to mean:...
and My Dying Bride. I also like Morbid Angel
Morbid Angel
Morbid Angel is an American death metal band based in Tampa, Florida. UK music magazine Terrorizer ranked one Morbid Angel album in its “Top 40 greatest death metal albums”, with their 1989 debut Altars of Madness appearing at number 1...
and Vader
Vader (band)
Vader is a Polish death metal band from Olsztyn, formed in 1983. According to Piotr Wiwczarek, the band's founding singer and guitar player, the band's name was inspired by Darth Vader from the Star Wars film series. Lyrical themes include stories by H. P. Lovecraft, WW2, horror and anti-christian...
, and I also like us and Autopsy
Autopsy (film)
Autopsy is a 2008 American horror film directed by Adam Gierasch and from the producer of the Final Destination film series. It was premiered on August 24, 2008 in the United Kingdom at the London FrightFest Film Festival...
- of course I like us! I'm in the band! You know what I mean. It's good for what it is. When I see a movie like Evil Dead I don't expect it to be like The Shining, just like a person who likes Cannibal Corpse. They shouldn't expect us to be like Anathema. You know what I'm saying? But they can like us for being... the Evil Dead of death metal! [laughs] And they can like those other bands for being more psychological or whatnot."
Favourites
"Films: PhantasmPhantasm (film)
Phantasm is a low-budget "cult classic" horror film produced in 1977 and released in 1979. The film was directed, written, photographed, co-produced and edited by Don Coscarelli...
, Fargo
Fargo (film)
Fargo is a 1996 American dark comedy-crime film produced, directed and written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant police chief who investigates a series of homicides, William H...
, The Reflecting Skin, Burnt Offerings
Burnt Offerings (film)
Burnt Offerings is a 1976 horror film based on the 1973 novel of the same name by Robert Marasco. It is about a family who moves into a haunted house that rejuvenates itself with each injury and death that occurs inside of it...
, The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...
, Goodfellas
Goodfellas
Goodfellas is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese...
, Casino
Casino (film)
Casino is a 1995 crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese...
, Braveheart
Braveheart
Braveheart is a 1995 epic historical drama war film directed by and starring Mel Gibson. The film was written for the screen and then novelized by Randall Wallace...
, Saving Private Ryan
Saving Private Ryan
Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American war film set during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Robert Rodat. The film is notable for the intensity of its opening 27 minutes, which depicts the Omaha Beach assault of June 6, 1944....
, The Exorcist
The Exorcist (film)
The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...
, Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is an adaptation of the 1979 novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford and stars Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Arliss Howard and Adam Baldwin. The film follows a platoon of U.S...
, The Warriors
The Warriors
The Warriors is a 1979 American cult action/thriller film directed by Walter Hill and based on Sol Yurick's 1965 novel of the same name. Like the novel, the film borrows elements from the Anabasis by Xenophon.-Plot:...
, City of God, Romper Stomper
Romper Stomper
-Awards:The film was nominated for nine Australian Film Institute Awards. It won Best Achievement in Sound, Best Actor in a Lead Role and Best Original Music Score.-Box office and Reception:Romper Stomper grossed $3,165,034 at the box office in Australia,...
, The Lord of the Rings trilogy
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...
, Freddy Got Fingered
Freddy Got Fingered
Freddy Got Fingered is a 2001 American comedy film directed, co-written by and starring Tom Green. Some of the scenes feature similar antics to those seen in his own The Tom Green Show and scenes in Road Trip. It is largely built around gross-out and shock humor...
, The Road Warrior, and tons more..."
Television: "Most of the original programming on HBO; I also watch the news a lot."
Books: 1984
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, Murder Machine by Gene Mustain and Jerry Capeci
Jerry Capeci
Gerald "Jerry" Capeci is an American journalist and author who specializes in coverage of the Five Mafia crime families of New York City. Capeci has been described by news organizations, such as CNN and BBC, as an expert on the American Mafia.-Gang Land:Capeci writes a column called Gang Land...
, The Westies by T.J. English, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, who later became a noted fantasy writer. The Silmarillion, along with J. R. R...
by Tolkien, Gulag
Gulag: A History
Gulag: A History, also published as Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, is a non-fiction book covering the history of the Soviet Gulag system. It was written by American author Anne Applebaum and published in 2003 by Doubleday. Gulag won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the...
by Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is a journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has written extensively about communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She has been an editor at The Economist, and a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post...
, etc..."
When asked about his favorite song on the Morbid Angel
Morbid Angel
Morbid Angel is an American death metal band based in Tampa, Florida. UK music magazine Terrorizer ranked one Morbid Angel album in its “Top 40 greatest death metal albums”, with their 1989 debut Altars of Madness appearing at number 1...
album "Altars of Madness
Altars of Madness
Altars of Madness is Florida-based death metal band Morbid Angel's debut album. Bonus tracks were included on the CD version as well as the remastered 2003 release. These are remixed versions of songs from the album...
", Webster answered: "that whole album is so amazing, it's hard to choose. Maybe "Chapel of Ghouls", "Immortal Rites", or "Visions from the Darkside"."
In an interview, he commented that his favorite albums of the last five years are Spawn of Possession's “Cabinet,” Necrophagist's “Epitaph,” Aeon's “Bleeding the False," Hate Eternal's “I Monarch," and Spastic Ink's “Ink Compatible.”
His five all-time favorite albums are (in descending order) Accept
Accept
Accept is a German heavy metal band from the town of Solingen, originally assembled by former vocalist Udo Dirkschneider, guitarist Wolf Hoffmann and bassist Peter Baltes. Their beginnings can be traced back to the late 1960s...
Restless and Wild, Immolation's
Immolation (band)
-History:The band formed in May 1986 by Andrew Sakowicz and Dave Wilkinson under the name Rigor Mortis . The name was changed to Immolation in April 1988, after the Warriors of Doom demo which was recorded as Rigor Mortis and Demo I which was recorded as Immolation...
Dawn of Possession
Dawn of Possession
Dawn of Possession is the debut album by Immolation. Released in 1991, it was their first and last album released on Roadrunner Records.-Track listing:# "Into Everlasting Fire" – 5:10# "Despondent Souls" – 4:13# "Dawn of Possession" – 3:04...
, Sadus
Sadus
Sadus is an American thrash metal trio from Antioch, California.-History:Sadus was formed in 1984 in Antioch, California. While their very first efforts were influenced by early thrash metal bands, such as Slayer or Death, the band would later develop its own musical style by adding complicated...
' Illusions, Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in east London, formed in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Since their inception, the band's discography has grown to include a total of thirty-six albums: fifteen studio albums; eleven live albums; four EPs; and six...
's Powerslave
Powerslave
Powerslave is the fifth studio album by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden, released on 3 September 1984 on EMI in Europe and its sister label Capitol Records in the US ....
and Slayer
Slayer
Slayer is an American thrash metal band formed in Huntington Park, California, in 1981 by guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King. Slayer rose to fame with their 1986 release, Reign in Blood, and is credited as one of the "Big Four" thrash metal acts, along with Metallica, Megadeth and...
's Reign in Blood
Reign in Blood
Reign in Blood is the third studio album and the major label debut by the American thrash metal band Slayer. It was released on October 7, 1986 through Def Jam Recordings. The album was the band's first collaboration with record producer Rick Rubin, whose input helped the band's sound evolve...
.
Musical tastes
Alex Webster is a big Slayer fan. "I got into them back in the mid 80's. I learned about them through word of mouth from some other metal heads at my school. They were the best of the evil thrash bands at the time. I can't really stress how much I and the other Cannibal guys listened to Slayer. They were a massive influence on us." He said that his favorite song lyric would be "anything by Slayer.." He also said if any band could cover a Cannibal Corpse song, it would be Slayer.Quotes
"When Cannibal started I had just quit a job that I'd had for a year and a half at a wax products factory. I put wax products in boxes all day. I became a full time student at Buffalo State college after that, but I worked during the summer breaks at a couple of different jobs. The last job I had before we started touring (our first full tour was for Butchered at Birth, not Eaten) was packing wood products at a factory. Unskilled assembly line jobs are good temporary work for musicians, because you can learn what you need to do for work quickly, and you can look like a freak and nobody cares."
“I cleaned horse stalls for a couple months. That's just shoveling crap, but it's not as bad as people think. You (get) used to it. Telemarketing sucked ass. I did that one summer between college. I got a job selling magazines on the phone. It was just miserable. Every person that picked up the phone was pissed at me. It was a horrible job.”
"I got suspended for wearing a Megadeth “Rattle your god damn head” shirt back when I was in high school"