Cannibal Corpse is an American death metal band formed in Buffalo, New York in 1988, now based out of Tampa, Florida. The band has issued fifteen studio albums, two box sets, four video albums, and two live albums. Although the band hasn’t received much radio or television exposure throughout the course of its career, a cult following started to grow after the release of some of its early albums, such as Butchered at Birth (1991) and Tomb of the Mutilated (1992). (1992). At the end of 2015, they had sold two million units of all of their albums globally. Violence Unimagined entered the Billboard Top Album Sales Chart at No. 6 in April 2021 with 14,000 copies sold, giving Cannibal Corpse their biggest “first-week” sales of all time.
The band’s name, Cannibal Corpse, was created by bassist Alex Webster. Since their debut, their lineup has undergone a number of changes, with Webster and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz being the only constants. The members of Cannibal Corpse were initially influenced by death metal bands like Possessed, Autopsy, Morbid Angel, and Death as well as thrash metal bands like Metallica, Slayer, Dark Angel, S.O.D., Sadus, Sodom, Kreator, and D.R.I. The lyrics of the band, which frequently feature Vincent Locke’s artwork and heavily reference horror literature and movies, are quite divisive. At various points, a number of nations, including Germany and Russia, have prohibited Cannibal Corpse from performing inside their borders or from selling or displaying the band’s original album covers.