The Wretched Spawn is the ninth studio album by 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...

. The cover art is by Vincent Locke. This is the last studio album to feature 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...

, one of the band's founding members, and to date, the last with a graphic

Graphic violence

Graphic violence is the depiction of especially vivid, brutal and realistic acts of violence in visual media such as literature, film, television, and video games...

 album cover. The album was distributed with 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....

 produced by Nick Sahakian. The Wretched Spawn is Cannibal Corpse's fourth album to be named after one of the tracks on the album.

Song meaning(s)

"For songs like "Nothing Left to Mutilate", and "Decency Defied", I looked to friends for ideas they had. "Decency" was based on a friend who had a nightmare that her tattoos were being torn off while she was still alive. "Nothing left" was based on ideas from a friend who was studying pheromones in college, and told me all about how a woman's scent drives men crazy. So if my imagination doesn't kick in, I draw from other things. "Slain" was based on the Eastwood film High Plains Drifter

High Plains Drifter

High Plains Drifter is a 1973 American Western film, with a hint of the supernatural, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and produced by Robert Daley for The Malpaso Company and Universal Pictures. Eastwood plays a mysterious gunfighter hired by the residents of a corrupt frontier mining town...

. And "Festering in the Crypt" is my own idea of dealing with the finality of death."- Jack Owen

Track listing

1. "Severed Head Stoning" (Pat O'Brien
   Pat O'Brien (guitarist)
   Pat O'Brien is the lead guitarist for the death metal band Cannibal Corpse. He was born in Northern Kentucky. He graduated from Conner High School in Hebron, Kentucky in 1983. He currently resides in Florida and is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. He owns a collection of guns...
   
   , Alex Webster
   Alex Webster
   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...
   
   ) – 1:45
2. "Psychotic Precision" (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:...
   
   , O'Brien) – 2:56
3. "Decency Defied" (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...
   
   ) – 2:59
4. "Frantic Disembowelment" (Mazurkiewicz, O'Brien) – 2:50
5. "The Wretched Spawn" (Webster) – 4:09
6. "Cyanide Assassin" (Webster) – 3:11
7. "Festering in the Crypt" (Owen) – 4:38
8. "Nothing Left to Mutilate" (Owen) – 3:49
9. "Blunt Force Castration" (Mazurkiewicz, O'Brien) – 3:27
10. "Rotted Body Landslide" (Webster) – 3:24
11. "Slain" (Owen) – 3:32
12. "Bent Backwards and Broken" (Webster) – 2:58
13. "They Deserve to Die" (Webster) – 4:44
14. The Making of The Wretched Spawn [Bonus DVD]

Line-up

• George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher
  George Fisher (musician)
  George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher is the vocalist for the American death metal band Cannibal Corpse and the lesser-known melodic death metal band Paths of Possession. He previously recorded two albums with Florida's Monstrosity before leaving and joining Cannibal Corpse in late 1995, replacing former...
  
   - vocals
• 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...
  
   - guitar
• Pat O'Brien
  Pat O'Brien (guitarist)
  Pat O'Brien is the lead guitarist for the death metal band Cannibal Corpse. He was born in Northern Kentucky. He graduated from Conner High School in Hebron, Kentucky in 1983. He currently resides in Florida and is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. He owns a collection of guns...
  
   - guitar
• Alex Webster
  Alex Webster
  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...
  
   - bass
• 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:...
  
   - drums

Chart positions

• Billboard
  Billboard (magazine)
  Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
  
  Top Heatseekers
  Top Heatseekers
  Top Heatseekers refers to either of two separate "Breaking and Entering" music charts issued weekly by Billboard Magazine: the Heatseekers Albums chart or the Heatseekers Songs chart. They were introduced by Billboard in 1993 with the purpose of highlighting the sales by new and developing musical...
  
  : #27
• Billboard Top Independent Albums: #20