Review by Daniel for Cannibal Corpse - Eaten Back to Life (1990)

I got heavily into Buffalo death metallers Cannibal Corpse in the early 1990's & they'd become a major influence on the early works of my own death metal band Neuropath. Despite my getting a fair bit of enjoyment out of it, their debut album "Eaten Back To Life" never seemed to be quite as appealing as their subsequent records though. This revisit hasn't seen that opinion changing much. The band hadn't quite hit on their more brutal signature sound as yet & there's still a decent thrash influence on display but I don't think too many people would be claiming this as a thrash release with front man Chris Barnes now attempting an admittedly fairly crude death growl that is definitely the weak point of the album.

The tracklisting is pretty consistent though with only "Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains" failing to hit the mark. There's a naive innocence about the rest of the record that is hard not to enjoy with Cannibal Corpse throwing the kitchen sink at you with a multitude of memorable riffs. Drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz's performance is a little loose but is almost refreshing to hear him still feeling the freedom to try new things given his fairly repetitive approach on Cannibal Corpse's later material. I think it's fair to say that songs like "Shredded Humans", "Born In A Casket" & "Buried In The Backyard" have a right to be tagged as death metal anthems for a teenage me & I still connect with them very easily so "Eaten Back To Life" has maintained a similar level of appeal to what it offered me all those years ago, despite being comfortably the weakest Barnes-fronted Cannibal Corpse record.