Alex Webster: I think there was some remastering, and then the DVD was shot by our friend Jesse Schoppert and some of his friends. He's filmed a lot of our shows up in San Francisco and I knew he had some good footage from that tour. A couple of songs from a different camera angle had appeared on another video we did. The people at Metal Blade asked us if we had any good live show footage from that time because they wanted to make a special re-release. I got in touch with Jesse, and he said a few people filmed that show. He got in touch with them and they edited that together and it came out really well for something that's totally bootleg. It actually turned out quite good. We're very pleased with it. It makes it more worth it for people to buy the album if they get a free DVD, especially if they already have it.
Do you have any other re-releases planned?
I don't know. It's really up to the label. They're the ones that decide to do this stuff anyway, because if it were up to us we probably never would have never re-released any of them. That a just not the kind of idea that us guys in the band would have had. It's something that the label came up with. We agreed to it. They seem to re-release one every couple of years, so I wouldn't be surprised if they re-released Gallery of Suicide in two or three years. Who knows?
What you think the most underrated Cannibal Corpse album is?
Probably Bloodthirst (1999). It was one that we felt turned out really well. It has actually sold the least. We feel like it's one of our best albums and it didn't really sell that much. People did like it, but for sales it was a low point. I think all of us feel like it was one of our strongest efforts. I would encourage people to go check that album out if they haven't really listened to it, because I think it's a strong album that got overlooked. There were probably a lot of other great releases by metal bands that year. I would encourage more people to check it out because it's one of our best albums.
Cannibal Corpse has drawn a lot of controversy for your album art, song titles, lyrics and other things. Has that controversy gotten less over the years, or do you still face the same amount today?
It's around. We still deal with stuff once in awhile, especially when we're going to a place we've never been before. Sometimes some religious group might want to cause a protest or something like that. But in general it's not as bad as it used to be. Most of the places we play, we play there often, and they are used to us being there. The local authorities are used to us being there. It was when we first started out that we dealt with a lot of stuff, a lot of censorship problems.
Is the internet the single biggest change you've seen in the music industry?
I would say computers. They've changed the way bands record. They've changed a lot of things. It's totally different when you have programs like Pro Tools. The editing that can be done has changed the game entirely. A lot of things can be polished and cleaned up far beyond what could've been done 20 years ago. It's made making a good sounding album a much less expensive affair. Bands can make a great sounding album for $5,000. It used to be if you could make something sound good for $5,000 in the studio recording on analog tape, it was a miracle. But now with Pro Tools, a lot of bands’ demos are sounding better than albums from the late 1980s. Things have changed. I focus only on the positive side of it. Of course there are negative sides as well, but you might as well focus on the positive because these changes are here to stay.
Do you think CDs will still be around in five or 10 years?
In five or 10 years, yes, but beyond that it's hard to say. I definitely think they will be around for a while. If the price on iTunes is the same when you're just downloading it onto your hard drive, why not just go get the packaged version? You've already got a backup. Basically that's what CDs are now, a backup. Every time I buy a CD I put it on my iPod and file it away. If something ever happens to the iPod I still have those CDs. I don't think the packaging can be replaced by something digital. It's the same thing with the books. Who wants a digital book? You want to hold that paper in your hands. I think that people are going to want that for long time to come. The same with CDs.
As you look back on your career, is there anything you would change?
I guess with anybody there are things that they would do differently, but you can't change it, so why dwell on it? You've got to move forward. There are always things we could've done better, but we are in a pretty good spot now so I can't complain. Whatever we did we must've done something right because we’re still here. We're lucky to be where we are at and I'm not going to complain or worry about any mistakes.
What's your timetable for the next Cannibal Corpse studio album?
I've already started writing riffs to get ahead of the game. Our tour cycle for this album has been longer than usual. Normally we would already be writing a new album around now. But we’re still going to be touring for this record until October. We're doing another US tour in September and October. We're doing some shows in Brazil after that tour. We have a lot going on until October. November is probably when we'll get serious about the writing. We'll bring songs in starting in December or January to start working on them together. We would like to be recording no later than the summer of 2008 so we can get the album out by the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009.
Are you able to do any writing on the road?
It doesn't work out that way. We wind up being more concerned with where a good restaurant is or if there are enough towels for the shower after the show. That kind of stuff is occupying our mind more than being creative. It works out better if we just write at home where we don't have distractions.
