Review Fix Exclusive Interview with Cannibal Corpse’s Alex Webster- Part II

Check out part II of our exclusive interview with Cannibal Corpse’s Alex Webster.

Review Fix: What are the plans for Blotted Science following the Cannibal Corpse touring?

Alex Webster: Blotted Science- it does not look like we’re doing any live shows in the near future. The material is so complex and we need time to get together and practice it together. Its one thing to sit at home and practice but it’s another to get with the band and rehearse the material as a band. Given the distance that we live from each other and how challenging the material is I don’t see any live shows in the future. That said, we may write another record soon and Ron and I may get together and do something that is completely different from Blotted Science at some point. Blotted Science is pretty much a studio project for now and I don’t see it becoming any more than that at this time. I would love to do some live shows but realistically it can’t be possible unless we all live in the same city.

Review Fix: How do you feel about the new Blotted Science EP?

Alex Webster: I’m really proud of it. I got to do a bass solo that’s actually a solo – solo. That’s with the distorted tone and Ron added a little wah to it. He wanted to get the Cliff Burton feel to it and that’s on “Vermicular Asphyxiation.” I was really happy to be a part of that second Blotted Science recording. It’s challenging music and it takes a lot of work. I would have to sit in there and grind it out practicing and then recording the things that I had learned. It’s no small task but to hear the finished product is very rewarding. And of course the opportunity to work with great musicians like Ron and Hamas is awesome. They’re both superb players and I’m honored to be a part of it and I’m very proud of that EP as well.

Review Fix: Do you think Cannibal Corpse would ever do a tour with Six Feet Under or work with (original singer) Chris Barnes again?

Alex Webster: As far as anything with Cannibal and Chris it’s not likely but we would not be against Cannibal Corpse doing a tour with Six Feet Under. We’ve done a couple of shows with them already and I’m still friends with Chris. It’s something we’d have to talk about before we would go through with it, but I think that would be a possibility. I wouldn’t rule it out. As far as the singing goes we’ve really become a different band since George (Fisher) came into the band. For example even if George quit I don’t think Chris would be the right guy because so much of what George has done over the years is not Chris’s style. I don’t see that reunion taking place even though we do get along really well with Chris these days. I think we’ve gone our separate ways and that’s worked out musically for the best for both parties. I wouldn’t say never to anything but it’s just unlikely.

Review Fix: Let’s just say hypothetically that George did quit for whatever reason. Who do you think would be a good fit to replace him if this sort of thing were to happen?

Alex Webster: If George quit you know, (he) wanted to retire, or spend more time with his daughter, or something like that. The first guy I would look for would be, and of course whenever we asked someone from another band, we need you to make our band priority but you can be in your other band too, because ours tours so much. And this is of course, hypothetically speaking because George is definitely staying in the band and we’re stoked about it and I don’t see him leaving. But hypothetically speaking I would get Tommy Dalster from Aeon. He would be the perfect replacement given the kind of singing that we’ve had over the past 15, 16 years that George has been in the band. Jesus, it’s almost been 17 years now. He would be a good choice I think because there are not a lot of singers that can sing really low and really fast. This is of course, hypothetically speaking. George is happy where he is as far as I know so were good to go.

Review Fix: What do you do on your downtime?

Alex Webster: I wish I could say that I did a whole lot these days but I really don’t. When I do have free time ill do a lot of gaming. I’ll play shit like “Battlefield” and “Call of Duty,” but that’s not really a hobby. I’ll just kick in maybe an hour before bed here and there. As far as hobbies I spend a lot of time with my wife and our dogs. We’ll go to parks and just do very normal things. I like to mountain bike although I haven’t been doing that a lot lately. I like to exercise and read. Pretty standard stuff really. My wife and I like to travel. Last year we went to some Sierra Nevada National Parks like Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Those are the things we like doing together, going to parks and being outdoors.

Review Fix: How do you feel about the Summer Slaughter Tour going into it?

Alex Webster: I’m really excited about it. I hope our fans enjoy they tour a lot I think that they will. Half of the tour is going to be split between traditional death metal and new forms of extreme metal. I believe Goatwhore’s going to be on it, Exhumed and us of course. I’m not sure who else we’re getting we’re not a hundred percent sure what the rest of the lineup’s going to be. What we’re hoping is that of the 10 bands they have it’s going to be an even split between more straight-forward forms of extreme metal and more progressive forms because its going to be Between the Buried and Me and us ending it every night. We need maybe four bands like us in that category and they need four bands like them so that there’s and even chemistry between the fans and the bands, which I think there already is to begin with. I’m excited about it because as anyone can gather from my progress with Blotted Science that I’m a big fan of both. Like, I love punishing, Neanderthal, crushing old school death but I love really love modern progressive death metal like Obscura, Necrophagist, Spawn of Possession and The Faceless, so this tour will be a great combination of both and I’m very excited to see how it goes.

Review Fix: How does it feel to have been in a band that’s lasted 25, almost 30 years with no signs of slowing down? Did you ever think this would be possible?

Alex Webster: (laughs) No, I definitely did not think that ever. It’s been a very big surprise, of course. It’s a gradual surprise because you live day by day and then all of a sudden you look back. Then you get to a point you know, 15 years, then 20 years and then all of a sudden were approaching 25 years next year and Its unbelievable. I can’t believe its gone this far so we’ll see what the future holds. We never could’ve predicted that we’d be around this long and were very lucky to have had such a long career and we see no end in sight.

Review Fix: What would you like to see as a dream tour lineup?

Alex Webster: We would certainly love to do something like Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, and Behemoth. That would be amazing. Or maybe Slayer, Exodus, Cannibal Corpse and Behemoth. You know, something like that would be bad ass. I tell ya, think about that tour package format right there. Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, Exodus and Behemoth. I mean come on, (laughs) that would be so great. There’s a lot of different tours that we could put together. As far as a headlining tour, we could have us and a bunch of our favorite bands like us, Immolation, Krisiun, Aeon – we’ll put those guys on there. Something like that. There’s so many bands that we enjoy and that were also friends with there’s any number of great tours we could put together. We could put together a thrash metal/death metal kind of tour like the one I mentioned. Slayer obviously, that’s the dream lineup because they’re such an amazing band and they have such a huge following of bands that flaunt the evil side of metal, us included. Or put together a tour that has black, thrash and death metal. There’s no limit to the kind of great tours that we could do.

Review Fix: Would you ever write a book?

Alex Webster: Well I did write a bass book as a matter of fact, so you’ve opened the door for me to plug it. (laughs) I wrote a book called “Extreme Metal Bass.”Its available on Hal Leonard publishing and its about exactly what it says its about, which is playing bass in the extreme kind of way such as death metal, thrash metal, black metal as opposed to a more traditional kind of playing. I thought there needed to be a kind of instructional book for the more extreme side of heavy metal bass and that’s what I did.

Review Fix: What about a biography of some kind?

Alex Webster: Well it’s funny that you mention that, because we are talking with an author at the moment about a possible Cannibal Corpse biography so stay tuned.

Review Fix: Did you ever want to be a doctor or attend medical school when you were growing up?

Alex Webster: I never was interested in the medical stuff. If anything I never really knew what I wanted to do other than music and that only seemed like e a viable option after we had a few albums out. I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I’m going to have to do something that I don’t enjoy as much eventually, but we haven’t had to do that yet. To be lucky enough to be able to do this for a living is great but no, I never wanted to be a doctor or anything like that. As much as I enjoy gory movies and stuff like that -and this is something that a lot of people are going to be confused about- but I think that my hands would be too shaky. I have good dexterity in my fingers but I’m also a very agitated person so I guess that’s why I like to play such fast music (laughs). You can’t have shaky hands when you’re cutting somebody open for surgery.

Review Fix: Would you want to share any wilder tour stories?

Alex Webster: Believe it or not this is always a tough question. Not that much happens. We’re just playing shows every night and hanging out. It’s a lot of the same thing. Not much happens too often at the shows, it’s what happens on the way to the show that’s the crazy stuff. There was this one time we were in Spain. We were apparently parked in the wrong spot and the Spanish police were there and apparently we left our trailer next to a Spanish government building. They weren’t too happy about it because they didn’t know what was in the trailer and for all they knew, it was something dangerous. So they’re yelling at our tour manager and none of us spoke a lick of Spanish. I knew a little bit of Spanish so I went over there to try to see I f I could defuse the situation. I spoke enough for him to understand me but he spoke so quickly that I couldn’t understand him. He was getting pretty angry with me and I kept saying that I’m sorry and I don’t understand him and I said that in Spanish pretty well, so he got frustrated because he thought I knew more Spanish than I actually did. Eventually he let us go because he got so frustrated with me. He said “Go, just go” in Spanish (laughs). I understood that pretty well and we did. So then we leave and we think we’re out of the woods and the bus driver wasn’t paying attention. This is completely unrelated, but this is about 15 minutes after the incident with the angry policeman. This was a very tall bus and we were about to go into a tunnel where it would’ve torn the top of the bus off. Fortunately, they hanged two cables and a pipe on a telephone pole about 15 feet from the tunnel so the top of your vehicle will smash into the pipe before it smashes into the tunnel. You fucking know right away to hit your breaks before you completely destroy your bus in the tunnel. So we’re like “oh thank god we got away,” and then all of a sudden we smash into the pipe and WHAM we got all shook up and we were definitely wide awake after that (laughs). It’s always the weird stuff on the way to the show that I remember. I learned to keep my mouth shut in different countries from that situation.

Review Fix: What is your Superpower?

Alex Webster: Everybody always says that I have spider fingers so I guess something that has to do with spiders or Spider-Man or something like that. I like spiders too. I think they’re fascinating creatures. They’re one of my favorite animals so yeah, definitely something to do with spiders.