Thrashman’s Metal Pick Of The Week

Since I'm having a "Flashback" this week, let's go back to 1991's Butchered At Birth from my most favoritest death metal band Cannibal Corpse. I'll be the first person to tell you that A) As much as I love Chris Barnes I think Corpsegrinder's the man and B) The Bleeding is the best album they've ever done, but this week it's about the album that made me a fan of the band.

Butchered At Birth was when I officially "got" Cannibal Corpse...and oddly enough, I didn't hear the album until 1996. I was a couple of months away from getting out of the Navy and one of my fellow headbanging squids let me borrow it in exchange for the Shannon Doherty Playboy (as much as I was into her at the time, I look back and think I got the better end of the deal). Anyway, I never got my magazine back and he didn't get his CD back and I've been jamming it ever since.

Butchered At Birth is just damn creepy...from the absolutely over the top artwork to the crazy-ass intro to the opening track "Meat Hook Sodomy" it's an album with a horrific atmosphere. It's a brutal barrage of death metal yet there's still plenty of dynamic...for me, it's hard not to listen to the album front-to-back but there are definitely standout tracks on the album. "Gutted", "Covered with Sores", "Rancid Amputation" and "Meat Hook Sodomy" are standouts amongst a stellar collection of tunes.