Gelap Pekat

James R. Chesna of ABC12 recently conducted an interview with drummer, songwriter and vegetarian Paul Mazurkiewicz of Florida death metallers CANNIBAL CORPSE. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ABC12: You guys have always been controversial. There was something that Marilyn Manson recently said about music being a negative thing, that people say it causes people to do bad things, and imagine if it was actually reaching out and doing as much good, a release? Would you agree with that?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: Of course! I think it's a positive thing. I think to the outsider it's going to come across it as a negative kind of a thing. Negative music, negative attitude kind of a thing, but really it isn't, y'know? I mean, so many of our fans are just down-to-earth, regular people that come to our shows. They're not ... we're not bringing out the delinquents and the bad people in society that come out because we're playing some kind of crazy music that's controversial. To the outsider, everything kind of seems worse, because hey just don't understand it, y'know? The people that come out, it's a release for them. I can't name how many times people have come up to us and said, "Man, you're such an inspiration," and "You got me through hard times," and that kind of thing like that and that's really what it's about. And when you hear those things, you feel like you've done some good for some people in the world on a personal level, y'know? But unfortunately there's going to be some ties, some bad seeds that — like anything else — it's not the music that's going to make people do anything. There's going to be some underlying issues with somebody if they're going to go out and do some vicious acts, or you hear unfortunately about people committing murders and the tie it in with, "Oh, he was listening to that," or, "They were listening to or wearing this shirt." It's not the music; it's the person. It's mental, it's upbringing. But unfortunately, yeah, you're going to get some of the detractors, some of the people who don't understand the music or what this scene is about.

ABC12: Can you talk about the new album?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: It's great. It's been awesome. It's been out — what — since February, so it's been out for a few months. I mean, really, this is the first major tour we've done for the album in the States. We did something back in April-May, but it was only maybe 10 shows in the States and it was secondary markets, so really getting out and seeing the reactions in the major cities, I mean, it's been phenomenal, really. We getting great reaction. Everybody's coming up and saying, "Great album, love the production" and all that so we really do feel that it is our best album. I mean, it sounds cliche, but I compare all our albums and I look in the direction we've been going ... I think with "Evisceration Plague", we're really on top of our game maybe more so than we ever have been. We're really pleased as a band with "Evisceration Plague". We're glad that the fans are as well.

ABC12: Where are you going to be headed next after this tour?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: We're going to be going to New Zealand and Australia for a few days over there, a few dates, early September. Then we go back to Europe for a headlining tour in October. And then we'll be back in the States in November-December kind of doing like a headliner/co-headliner kind of a thing. That's being worked on right now. And then actually 2010 will bring a lot more touring as well. So we're just riding the wave of "Evisceration Plague" and, you know, doing a bunch of touring. And I'm sure after that's all done we'll do it all again.

ABC12: Is it as satisfying for you now as it always has been? Is it harder to get there in the first place or is it harder to maintain success?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: It might be harder to maintain. I mean, it's really kind of a crazy thing for us to think about, talk about, too, because it's like since day one, we put out our first album and we didn't do any touring for that or what have you, but we had a good buzz right off the bat. And, man, our first tours we do, we're headlining. And we release "Butchered" and we go to Europe for the first time and we're headlining status. And we've never looked back in that sense, so it's kind of weird because we were almost right there in the midst of it early on, and it only kind of got bigger and better. I've always looked at ourselves and talked about ourselves starting here and slowly going up that slight incline, y'know? And that's what it seems like it's been doing for 20 years. So definitely we're doing better than we ever have album sale-wise and popularity kind of a thing, I think we're doing better than we ever have — which is a great thing — but it's still phenomenal and it's still overwhelming to some extent to us for us to have started this band back then with no expectations other than playing music that we love to play. Yeah, of course you hope other people like it, and here we are 20 years later, like I said, riding up that little wave kind of a thing and it's just like every step of the way has been something that ... "This is awesome. I can't believe it. This is a great thing." Luckily for us, exactly, you have to maintain that. Because we started out sort of ... not on the top, but we didn't go through, "We opened so many times and were struggling along and then finally our break came," so we've just really got to stay focused on really what we do, which is writing music that we all started writing back then. And if we can maintain that -- which I think we have — then we'll be around. Eleven albums, 20 years, on the top of our game, I guess it's all worked out.

Read more from ABC12.

Mark Thompson of SMNnews conducted an interview with Paul Mazurkiewicz on July 12, 2009 at the San Bernardino, California stop of this year's Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. Watch the chat below.