What reality did you fantasize about as a kid? There's the ol' pitching in the World Series during the bottom of the ninth inning with a full count and the bases loaded up by one run scenario that has been passed down for generations, but for George Fisher, best known as Corpsegrinder, the hulking frontman for Cannibal Corpse, life was a little different — he had metal on the brain and wanted to sing... well, scream.

"My vocal coaches were basically all my records - any record that had the photo of the band or the lyrics on the back of the cover, I would line them up in my room," Corpsegrinder recalled, describing his childhood practice. Tacking the lyric sheets to the wall, he'd use the photos of his future metal peers as his audience, and pour hours into singing along to records from Slayer, Death and a lot more, striving to perfect his vocal technique.

Either he waited until nobody was home to belt out the visceral, throat-tearing expressions heard on Death's early albums like Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy, or he had quite the tolerant family who were thrust into familiarity with the most extreme metal out at the time. At around the age of 17, Fisher and a guitar player friend were hellbent on forming a band and ultimately assembled Corpsegrinder with others they had met at shows. The band's name was taken from the Death song of the same name and eventually took hold as the singer's nickname.

Fast forward over three decades later and Fisher is a death metal legend lauded for his rapid fire, intelligible delivery without sacrificing any bit of edge to his guttural bellows and eviscerating high shrieks. They're all intact on Cannibal Corpse's searing new record, Red Before Black, which you can pick up at the Metal Blade webstore.

See Cannibal Corpse in the 25 Best Metal Albums of 2017

 

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