by Leslie Mathew
Cannibal Corpse emerged fully formed out of Florida's famous death metal swamp with this one. All the trademarks are in place, from the B-horror movie album cover art to the ludicrously over-the-top lyrics -- "Brains devoured in a frenzied slaughter, thirst for gore nothing more/Bile is dripping, puss from wounds, as the coroner drinks it down." Chris Barnes growls his vocals like Satan on a diet of razor blades and paint thinner. The playing is uniformly savage and, alas, uniformly one-dimensional. On paper Cannibal Corpse is the perfect death metal act, but in reality, their pursuit of lyrical and musical extremes was something of a joke from this first release on. Too many tempo changes, too much monochromatic double-bass slugging, not nearly enough variety, texture, or interesting guitar work. Cannibal Corpse's single-minded devotion to their cause is admirable; too bad the results of that dedication are not very interesting: Eaten Back to Life isn't much more than death metal for dummies. Try Deicide (whose vocalist Glen Benton guests on background vocals here) instead.