Rockezine.com interview with Cannibal Corpse on Feb 14, 2002

with Jack Owen on Feb 14, 2002

After 11 Years the members of Cannibal Corpse are still unstoppable. I wonder what their inexhaustible source of inspiration is. I spoke to the brilliant guitar player Jack Owen to maybe meet his mind for just a little bit. How do you express this in half an hour when there’s already 11 years of expression on CD? On their latest album Gore Obsessed there are fragments of their minds blowing out of the speakers, but still I wonder. Is there a line to draw, or is the never-ending will to express gore ready for a next step? My first impression is a cool guy with a particular ease in his voice. The poor soul had to stand three days of interviews from all over the world. Well, poor certainly not, the pack seemed to enjoy themselves and of course there’s always the escape into another reality.
		Can I relate the music you create to movies? Maybe you can compare them, because what we tried to do literally on the latest 3 albums, is making each song an independent short story which I guess could be turned into a 2 or 4 minute movie. And there goes our imagination again, we could take one song and with our imagination probably turn it into a two-hour movie.
		Well, looking into the future, maybe we`ll see his name appearing in a movie one day. That seemed to be hidden in his mind. What is your personal favorite movie anyway? Well there haven`t been too many good gore movies but anything by Peter Jackson (Braindead, Bad Taste,.....) is cool. What I really don`t like are the Wes Craven series (Scream) because the actors are not like real human beings. If I had to make a list of five I’d say, as far as horror is concerned, the Evil Dead series are great. The two Hellraisers of course, Susperia by Gario Argento, Zombie by Lucio Fulci and finally Saving Private Ryan. I think that’s a very good movie and there`s enough gore in there to compete the death metal fan as well.
		What is for you the main issue in splatter and gore? Well, Night of the Living Dead has brought to life a nice concept, like the end of human existence, we kind of expand on that. It`s all build into our psyche really, because we watched all the movies when we were kinds, we thought they where real. We all had older brothers who watched the crazy movies on TV so it infected us from an early age and now all we want to see is the most extreme thing, so that’s where were stuck and so that’s what happened in our nutshell.
		How did you find the artist who paints your covers? That was a guy who used to do a comic book about zombies taking over the earth so who better to do the artwork than that guy. That guy is named Vincent Locke, his comic book was called Dead World. Its a pretty good comic book actually, I mean; zombies rule!
		Who would you consider worse: You, or the audience who listen to your music? Definitely us hahaha, because we`re the ones who make the audience so it`s all our fault. It`s like a chain reaction because we give them the material, they go crazy, and when they go crazy we want to write more material. It’s like a bottomless pit.
		How sceptical are you in the real world? Well, I just look at people as people, really, I don`t look at colors or anything. Male/ female is the only difference I see in people. Everybody is cool in his or her own way and everybody is shitty in his or her own way. That’s the whole human nature right there, some people suck and some people are cool.
		What do you think is more important: gore or humor? Probably humor, but it`s a tough one. I think you can`t have one without the other because they just balance each other out. If you`d take it all too serious you`d probably shoot yourself, ... or someone else, and it happens.
		What do you think of the fact that Cannibal Corpse is banned in some countries? Well, that`s just something that happened to us. Were just looking into how they support the freedom of speech in these countries and if it`s in the constitution there is no reason why we shouldn`t bring the albums out and come play there. On the other hand, in countries like Korea and New Zealand we`re completely banned and treated as criminals, but there`s nothing we can do right now. I certainly don`t want to act my creativity from behind bars.
		Is the band a primal condition in your life? The only way I would not play the guitar is when I was disabled. But if I’m not playing in Cannibal, I’m playing with another band that I have and if I’m not playing in that band I’ll just play with a friend and we just do acoustic songs in a bar down the street. So I’m always jamming in some form. That’s the thing with music, it keeps on going.
		How often do you practice? Well, for me, I play in three bands like I said but Cannibal tries to play five times a week and we`re just jamming in the afternoon because nobody works, really.
		I wonder, what would you rather do: the big festivals or the smaller performances? Well, we like to do both but if I’d pick one I like the smaller clubs because it sounds better and you’re right in the face of the crowd which is cool. They`re all our friends and we are just having a big party and we happen to be the entertainment, so we like the smaller gigs. The bigger festivals are cool, you get a broader face and maybe make them like our music. There are plusses and minuses in every situation.
		How do you experience being on tour? It depends on where you are, what the conditions are. I guess the further east we go the worst the conditions get, hahaha. So there are plusses and minuses again. But we`ll play anywhere. The only thing that we`re trying to do now is go to the places we`ve never been. That’s the only thing we want to accomplish.
		Where haven`t you been then, in the 11 years of Cannibals’ existence? Like in South Africa, the Middle East and China, Hawaii, stuff like that.
		Are you doing some smaller gigs in Europe in the near future? When we headline we play in smaller places. The last one in Holland was in 013 which is kind of big, but it’s packed full of death metal people and that works. But we won`t tour Europe headlining until September/ October. I`m sure we`ll have some Dutch shows in there.
		Well, I`m looking forward to that! Sure, after we do Wacken and Fullforce and Graspop we`ll just tour for ourselves again in September.
(Dennis Melkert)