Cannibal Corpse's most offensive lyrics

Death-metal band Cannibal Corpse has never been subtle. From 1990's Eaten Back to Life through through this year's Evisceration Plague, the Tampa-via-Buffalo quintet has been hacking apart eardrums musically and lyrically. What critics don't understand is that not only do metal fans have a bleak sense of humor—a necessity for enjoying something called death metal—but being this disgusting requires a lot of hard work and creativity. In advance of Cannibal Corpse's April 17 show at Station 4, Decider takes a look at some of the band's most awesomely offensive lyrics.

1. "Sex with the dead / now I must breed / within the stiff corpse / planting my seed" ("Born In A Casket," from 1990's Eaten Back To Life)

If this one bothers you, stop reading now. A far cry from Tears For Fears' "Sowing The Seeds Of Love," the sixth track from CC's debut album lyrically plants the seed for the next two decades of off-putting sex songs. (See also: "I Cum Blood" and "Fucked With A Knife.")

2. "Maniacal mass murderer / mutilating mortals" ("Vomit The Soul," from 1991's Butchered At Birth)

An excellent example of alliteration, this gem comes from one of CC's few blatantly "Satanic" tracks. (It even features fellow Floridian Glen Benton from Deicide on guest vocals. Yes, that's the guy with the inverted cross burned into his forehead.) Believe it or not, but this is one of the tamer moments on an album that features zombie doctors stringing up a dead woman's fetus on the cover.

3. "Memories came back to me / in the night, I hear her screams" ("She Was Asking For It" from 1994's The Bleeding)

Original vocalist Chris Barnes' lyrical style was often—and unfortunately—misogynistic (along with paranoid, tense, and just plain creepy). On the "bright" side, "She Was Asking For It" is one of the few remorseful-sounding CC tunes, telling the story of a woman who gets revenge from beyond the grave. True, remorse is only being felt by the narrator due to the possibility of being dragged off by his undead former lover, but it's still remorse.

4. "My job is almost finished, only one remains / in the corner terrified, behind the grisly slaughter / I'll take my time on this last scumbag." ("Puncture Wound Massacre," from 1996's Vile)

Penned by vocalist George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, bassist Alex Webster, and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, this song is about bursting into a room and stabbing everyone inside to death. It sounds gross, but Fisher spews the lyrics at a pace previously unheard in any Cannibal Corpse song. Rarely is this band's impossible-to-decipher vocals as much a blessing as they are here.

5. "Sawing the neck, I am engulfed in fantasy / chew the esophagus, cannibal delicacy" ("Hacksaw Decapitation," from 1999's Bloodthirst)

Fisher helped to shift Cannibal's lyrics from Barnes' woman-hating prose to anonymous, sexless slaughter and self-mutilation. As "Hacksaw Decapitation" indicates, the lyrics also became monosyllabic, a tribute to Fisher's abilities as a wordsmith. (You try to rhyme "fantasy" with "cannibal delicacy.")

6. "How do you kill what is not alive? / break them down to stop their descent / smash the bastards into the ground / and when they're down, shatter their bones" ("Shatter Their Bones," from 2009's Evisceration Plague)

Revisiting a zombie-theme that's been prevalent from its first album, Cannibal Corpse once again envision what would happen if all of a sudden you had to fight a horde of undead maniacs, and offer some handy suggestions on how to kill them. (See also: the cover art to 2002's Gore Obsessed and the songs "Pit Of Zombies," The Undead Will Feast" and "Unleashing The Bloodthirsty.")