Review Summary: Hammer Smashed Pleasure Projects
George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher is a name more synonymous with death metal icons Cannibal Corpse I’m sure. I mean a debut solo album under the “Corpsegrinder” name is going to have less steam right? Well…yeah. It’s a given that a passion project alongside Hatebreed’s goodest bad-boi of the hardcore scene, Jamey Jasta, would received a middling response built only from the hype that its contributing musicians would invoke and little else. As much as that’s a washed out response it couldn’t be any more accurate for Corpsegrinder’s…
Corpsegrinder, an album that fulfills the very need to insert George’s illustrious vocals into anything at all metallic.
Because that’s exactly what this is.
Corpsegrinder as a whole is familiar, predictable and a preening miss-mash of the defining guttural roar of Fisher and the laid back riffs a la Hatebreed. Better still, it hits right on the level of expectation we’d come to expect of combining the two main points above.
Corpsegrinder is good, hammer-smashingly-good—but that’s where the buck stops. Monster stomp riffs infuse with the beats while Gorge lays down a wall of hook phrases, unwavering with his signature roar. Album opener, “Acid Vat'' launches into clear-cut death metal aesthetics. This is mostly due to Erik Rutan’s (of Hate Eternal
and Cannibal Corpse) angular, cutting riffs. The track’s DNA is born from the mettle that spawns Cannibal Corpse legacy's. It’s no surprise that “Acid Vat” would at least be reminiscent
of that other death metal band. From here, the album loosens up literally into a grooved, hardcore effort that happens to feature the pappa-daddy of all death metal vocals. Close your eyes for a moment—remove George’s fierce growls from “Bottom Dweller”, “On Wings Of Carnage” and “Death Is The Only Key” and replace them with Jasta’s boyish man-shout and suddenly, we’ve got a
Jastagrinder album…
My point? While George is the album’s main selling point (which makes complete sense since it’s a fu
cking self-titled s o l o p a s s i o n project) most of these tracks are transferable to either the Cannibal Corpse or Hatebreed camps with some minor modification. Further to that rather obvious point; if we didn’t have the one and only George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, would we actually be giving this the time of day? The reality is that
Corpsegrinder is a novelty album, as solid as it is. Solid as
he makes it. Moving on, the album’s hardcore elements bleed from the song’s rhythm sections. Even George’s vocal phrasing sits well within the ringing chords and phrase ending noodle guitar fills. “Death Is The Only Key” (among others) moshes to the romp aesthetic of a typical hardcore track, giving more than enough room for an emotional, fist-pumping anthem. Instead, it’s the George show.
Despite this, it’s hard to simply just sit here and listen to George Fisher drop slabs of venomous death metal roars and dismiss
Corpsegrinder as a middling “best of both worlds” gimmick…except this passion project is exactly that, while leaving a lot to be desired in the creativity department. Stock standard instrumentation (with maybe an exception to the Erik Rutan contribution) meets a Cannibal Corpse vocalist on autopilot.
Corpsegrinder itself isn’t quality enough to worship, but it doesn’t suck either. Rest assured however that it’s going to be forever better than whatever droll bull*** Chris Barnes records next.
