CANNIBAL CORPSE Bloodthirst CD (1999)

There are death metal albums, and then there is Bloodthirst, the record where Cannibal Corpse quietly shed any remaining doubt about whether they were the most technically precise, lyrically deranged band in the genre. Released in 1999, it arrived as a statement of intent after years of being everyone's favourite moral panic.

Produced by Colin Richardson, who spent the late nineties and early 2000s leaving his fingerprints on half the records that defined extreme metal, Bloodthirst is tighter and more focused than almost anything in the Cannibal Corpse back catalogue. George Fisher is in full command here, and the riff architecture across tracks like Unleashing the Bloodthirsty and Raped by the Beast is the kind of thing that sounds chaotic until you really listen. Then it sounds terrifying in a different way, because it's actually locked in. A genuine cornerstone of the death metal and horror-adjacent dark aesthetic that ALT CVLT was built around.

CD format. Originally released 1999 on Metal Blade Records. Copy sourced through ALT CVLT.

Fans of: Morbid Angel, Deicide, Dying Fetus