Review Summary: Weed and Death Metal. two great things that make a highly contagious, if volatile combination.
Cannabis Corpse Is the side project of Municipal Waste bassist Land Phil. They formed as a tribute act to, obviously, Cannibal Corpse and weed. Note that these are not cover songs, but original compositions. The albums title is a play on the excellent Butchered At Birth, and is their first album. The recording quality is similar to that of an early 90's death metal album, with chunky, subdued bass, loud, down-tuned guitars, and drums and vocals taking center place. That only adds to the nostalgia factor this provides.
Musically, Cannabis Corpse play Cannibal Corpse-circa-1991 style death metal, with lots of chugging guitars and insanely fast blast beats.The guitarist knows that soloing isn't required, therefore there is little to none on here. Instead, he plays fast-paced, death metal riffs with a focus on groove over technicality giving the album a multitude of catchy riffs. The bass playing, when hearable. is also quite excellent. Land Phil has that early 90's, thick Florida-style bass tone that provides a huge wall of low-end sound. He syncopates the bass with the drums and locks himself into a groove from start to finish.
The drumming on Blunted At Birth is pretty typical of itself. It's your standard blast-beat with little variation to speak of. There is the occasional drum fill or instrumental section where the drummer gets to shine, but other than that, he's relegated to playing hyper-speed blast beats to fill in as part of the background. The vocalist, WeedGrinder, is the one who really stands out here. He has that early Chris-Barnes-before-he-sucked growl with the gurgling grunts and the occasional soda-being-sucked-through-a-straw roar to further bring the attention to him. He really has Chris Barnes style down well.
Blunted At Birth is by no means a bad album. It's that Cannabis Corpse has got the early death metal style down too well. Any metalhead could mistake these for Cannibal Corpse b-sides. That's why this couldn't get a higher score. They need to add some different elements to stand out a little bit more. If you're looking for a solid death metal release and you don't care what it sounds like, take a listen to Blunted At Birth. If you want a little more originality in your metal, you're better off listening to something else.
