Corpsegrinder: Respect The Neck!

There’s few names as unequivocally synonymous with death metal as George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher. The indomitable frontman joined legendary death metal pioneers CANNIBAL CORPSE in 1995 and has remained at the helm ever since, helping to take the band from one of the biggest outfits in death metal to one of the biggest outfits in metal as a whole. 

Despite creating 11 LPs behind the mic with CANNIBAL CORPSE and the rigorous touring schedule that comes with a band at the top of the genre, Fisher hasn’t shied from lending his distinct, guttural roar to a host of other albums and projects over the years from Tampa melodic death metal outfit PATHS OF POSSESSION to SERPENTINE DOMINION with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE’s Adam D. and former THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER sticksman Shannon Lucas, and countless guest appearances in between. His most recent vocal offering comes as something a little bit special, though – his new solo project and it’s self-titled debut: Corpsegrinder. 

But how did CORPSEGRINDER, the project, come to be? What inspired Corpsegrinder, the artist, to go solo? Turns out, as with so many things in heavy music over the last decade, HATEBREED’s Jamey Jasta is at the heart of it. 

“Basically Jamey and I did a song on his solo record, They Want Your Soul. It turned out so good, the reception was great for that song, and a few months later he sent me a text and said ‘Hey, look, I have an idea.’”  Fisher begins, telling the story of how his solo record came to be. “Jamey wanted to call it CORPSEGRINDER because if we called it something else, it mighty not be seen as a solo record – but with CORPSEGRINDER being on it, you know it’s 100% a solo record. He came to me with the idea of doing a record with me, and because They Want Your Soul turned out so great I was like ‘Yeah, of course man!’” 

“I didn’t know exactly the particulars, Jamey just said ‘Look, I want to do this album. You’ll write some songs, lyrics, whatever. If you want to write some music or lyrics, it’s up to you but I’d like to call it CORPSEGRINDER.’ The next thing I know, he was sending me songs and we booked some studio time. Obviously we did Violence Unimagined [CANNIBAL CORPSE’s 15th album] before I recorded the CORPSEGRINDER record, but I did the CORPSEGRINDER vocals maybe two months after we did Violence Unimagined, so it’s been it’s been around. We’ve had it for a while. We just had a lot of stuff going on.”

So the idea behind CORPSEGRINDER may have come from Jamey Jasta, but was this a chance for Fisher to flex his creative muscles? Famously, Paul Mazurkiewicz [drums] and Alex Webster [bass] have been the two main songwriters and lyricists in CANNIBAL CORPSE for decades, so did this offer Fisher a chance to to put pen to paper and tell his own stories, or try his hand at a bit of riff-magic?

“Oh, no, Jamey wrote the lyrics, and Jamey and Charlie Belmore [DEE SNIDER] wrote the music. it’s probably not a secret that I don’t ever view myself as a lyricist at all. I’ve written a few songs,  wrote a song in MONSTROSITY, I wrote lyrics for a song in PATHS OF POSSESSION, I’ve contributed here and there and I’ve written a few things, especially early on, in CANNIBAL CORPSE. But I’ll sit and try to write some shit, if something’s pissing me off or I want to write about Warcraft or something, I’ll sit and write and I just hate it. I throw it away…  I always look at my voice as another one of the instruments – I would never say I’m a composer.” 

On a casual listen, you would never accuse Fisher of moving outside his comfort zone with CORPSEGRINDER. Blast-beats, double bass, distorted break-neck riffs and blitzing solo work can all be found across his solo debut in abundance. But this isn’t just a bonus CANNIBAL CORPSE album, minus 80% of the band. Hardcore and thrash run at the very core of the record, traditional death metal stylings working to enhance the sound, rather than being the foundations. 

“When Jamey came to me, he asked if I had any riffs or ideas I wanted to bring, but he had the majority of it all laid out for me, a bunch of songs and ideas. I just wanted to put my voice, my stamp on what he had done. And it’s not like my voice is anything different from what I’ve ever done, but the music is definitely outside the box of what you would expect from CANNIBAL CORPSE.” Fisher explains on the writing process, before offering a hint of what might come from CORPSEGRINDER in the future. 

“I’ve always thought of writing some music, but I don’t play guitar. Everyone has riffs in their head, but I never thought about doing a record where I wrote everything. But you know what, I’ll never say never, that’s a possibility somewhere down the line. If I wrote to Jamey tomorrow and said ‘Hey, I have 10 songs, I’m ready to go.’ we’d figure it out – because we do intend to do another record for sure, at least another one. But for this one, Jamey just had a bunch of songs ready and they were awesome, so I said ‘Let’s fucking do this.’ Dude, if I wrote my own songs, I like to think they’d have sounded like this.”

Corpsegrinder is out now via Perseverance Music Group.

Follow CORPSEGRINDER on Instagram.