In a recent conversation with Alex Webster, he was asked what he thought of Chris Barnes’ recent words about the state of the death metal scene:
“I don’t pay much attention to all these points. I think people should be able to say whatever they want to say. And if people have their own opinion about music, why should they hide it, I think. If Chris doesn’t like something, he is completely free to say that he doesn’t like it. And then people are free to say they don’t like his opinion. So it doesn’t really bother me. I generally think everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and that’s fine.
We’re all madly in love with music, especially…. I’ve found that metal fans, we’re all so passionate about it that we’re willing to debate and argue. And I think that reflects how much we all care about the music. It’s not just a backdrop for us. If you walk into McDonald’s and you hear a song in the background, I don’t think it’s interesting enough to have loyal fans; it’s just background music. But metal and other kinds of music that really demands your attention and gets you involved… For us, it’s not just background literally or figuratively – it’s something very important to all of us. It’s in many ways our hobby, it’s something we’re passionate about and, yes, we’re going to argue about it sometimes because we care about it. So I don’t worry about that.”
When asked if the relationship between CANNIBAL CORPSE and Barnes even exists today, or if it’s “a sort of ‘you do your thing and we’ll do ours,'” he replied:
“Generally speaking, yes. Yeah, he does his thing and we do ours. If I see him, our meetings are always friendly. But I haven’t seen him in years. But, yeah, to each his own, and at the moment it’s all good. We don’t run into each other that often, though. They [SIX FEET UNDER] haven’t toured in a while. Usually when you see everybody and meet people, it’s at festivals, mostly European festivals, because that’s where most of the festivals are. And that’s where we meet a lot of people – bands we’ve toured with, friends, crew members we know who work with other bands. So that’s where I might run into him. And they haven’t done that kind of stuff for a long time. So maybe we’ll see him next year or something. Who knows?”
He was also asked about whether fans want CANNIBAL CORPSE and SIX FEET UNDER to tour together, especially now that SIX FEET UNDER features another former CANNIBAL member, guitarist Jack Owen:
“People have asked [about the two bands touring together], but I think, again, SIX FEET just don’t tour as much. And we probably wouldn’t do a joint tour. Yeah, like you said, it’s kind of cool, but it ends up being them doing their thing and us doing ours. And that’s fine.”
