Written By Lucien Drake
Cannibal Corpse have spent nearly four decades making extreme music look brutally simple.
Get onstage. Detonate. Leave the audience flattened. Pack the gear and do it again somewhere else tomorrow.
But behind one of death metal’s most reliable killing machines, there are some interesting loose ends.
Drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz has spoken candidly about the increasing difficulty of life on the road. Longtime guitarist Rob Barrett was absent from the band’s 2025 U.S. tour, with former The Black Dahlia Murder guitarist Brandon Ellis taking his place. And while work toward a Cannibal Corpse new album has been discussed, the follow-up to Chaos Horrific remains largely hidden from view.
Nearly forty years after Cannibal Corpse formed, the band is not disappearing. But there are plenty of questions about what its next chapter will look like.
PAUL MAZURKIEWICZ SAYS TOURING IS GETTING HARDER
Cannibal Corpse drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz did not bother pretending that spending months packed into buses and venues still feels the same as it did when the band was younger.
Speaking with “Reckless” Rexx Ruger of Pod Scum in September 2026, Mazurkiewicz acknowledged that touring has changed dramatically for him after almost four decades.
The excitement is different now, and age has made both being away from home and constantly living on a tour bus considerably harder.
“The older we get, the harder it is,” Mazurkiewicz said while discussing touring life. That does not mean Cannibal Corpse have lost their desire to perform.
Mazurkiewicz made it clear that performing for fans remains important. What has changed is everything surrounding those hours onstage.
Taking care of his body, eating properly, staying hydrated, walking and exercising have become increasingly important parts of surviving the road.
That reality becomes even more striking when considering what Mazurkiewicz actually does every night. Death metal drumming is not exactly shuffleboard.
Cannibal Corpse formed in Buffalo, New York in 1988, and Mazurkiewicz has occupied the drum throne since the beginning. Nearly four decades of blast beats, touring and physical punishment eventually collect their bill. Yet he is still playing.
ROB BARRETT MISSED THE 2025 TOUR, AND HIS FUTURE TOURING ROLE REMAINS UNCLEAR
There is another unresolved question hovering around Cannibal Corpse.
Longtime guitarist Rob Barrett did not participate in the band’s September and October 2025 U.S. tour with Municipal Waste, Full of Hell and Fulci.
Instead, former The Black Dahlia Murder guitarist Brandon Ellis stepped into his position.
Ellis was specifically announced as standing in for Barrett rather than as a permanent replacement. Cannibal Corpse did not announce that Barrett had left the band, nor did the initial announcement provide a detailed explanation for his absence.
For Ellis, the assignment involved walking into one of death metal’s most established bands and learning a catalog that leaves very little room for improvisational guesswork.
The goal was not to turn Cannibal Corpse into the Brandon Ellis show. It was to make sure Cannibal Corpse still sounded like Cannibal Corpse.
Since that tour, however, there has been little public clarification about Barrett’s future touring role.
There has been no definitive announcement saying Barrett has permanently departed the band. There has likewise been no clear public statement confirming when he will return to the road. Anything beyond what Cannibal Corpse or Barrett himself has publicly confirmed is speculation.
For now, one of the questions surrounding the band’s eventual return to more extensive touring is simply who will be standing on that side of the stage.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE CANNIBAL CORPSE NEW ALBUM
Then there is the corpse in the room, new music.
The Cannibal Corpse new album will follow Chaos Horrific, the band’s sixteenth studio record, released through Metal Blade Records in September 2023.
Earlier comments from Mazurkiewicz made it clear that another Cannibal Corpse record was part of the plan as the band entered a quieter period following extensive touring.
That would make the next release studio album number seventeen. But anyone waiting for Cannibal Corpse to start spraying clues across social media has mostly been staring into darkness.
As of September 25, 2026, there is still no publicly announced title, track list, lead single or confirmed release date for the Cannibal Corpse new album.
There also has not been a significant recent update explaining exactly how far the writing or recording process has progressed.
The band’s silence does not mean the record has disappeared. It simply means Cannibal Corpse are not telling us much yet. And there is something almost refreshing about that.
This is a band that existed long before musicians were expected to document every guitar take, coffee break and studio bowel movement on Instagram.
When Cannibal Corpse have something ready to unleash, history suggests we will hear about it. Until then, album seventeen remains somewhere behind the curtain.
CANNIBAL CORPSE ARE APPROACHING FOUR DECADES
The timing makes the next record particularly interesting.
Cannibal Corpse are approaching forty years as a band, an almost absurd lifespan for an act that emerged from the underground playing music once considered too extreme to have any meaningful commercial future.
Mazurkiewicz and bassist Alex Webster remain from the original lineup. George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher has now fronted Cannibal Corpse for three decades.
It is a strange and rather wonderful contrast. One minute Mazurkiewicz is behind Cannibal Corpse detonating “Hammer Smashed Face.” The next he is making melodic, seventies-rooted hard rock.
Erik Rutan, who spent years producing Cannibal Corpse records before becoming an official member, has moved from the control room directly into the band itself.
And somewhere in that evolving lineup sits a Cannibal Corpse new album that will push their studio catalog into its seventeenth chapter.
There are plenty of veteran bands still touring. Far fewer can release album seventeen and have listeners genuinely curious about what fresh violence they have invented.
PAUL MAZURKIEWICZ HAS SOMETHING ELSE COMING FIRST
Cannibal Corpse may be keeping quiet about their next record, but Mazurkiewicz is not musically dormant.
His hard rock project Umbilicus will release a new five-song EP, Ambiguous, on November 20, 2026 through Listenable Insanity Records.
Umbilicus features Mazurkiewicz alongside Deicide and Inhuman Condition guitarist Taylor Nordberg, bassist Vernon Blake and vocalist Brian Stephenson.
The band inhabits a completely different universe from Cannibal Corpse.
Instead of guttural death metal and blast-beat carnage, Umbilicus digs into the classic hard rock Mazurkiewicz grew up loving.
The first single from Ambiguous, “Take Off,” has already been released.
Mazurkiewicz said the five new songs demonstrate the band’s growth, while the EP includes “Take Off,” “Lord Stormbrew,” “Prelude: Eternity,” “Winter’s Warmth” and “Magus Stellarum.”
Apparently nearly forty years of death metal still leaves room for a few curveballs.
WHAT COMES NEXT FOR CANNIBAL CORPSE?
None of these developments individually points toward some dramatic crisis inside Cannibal Corpse. Taken together, however, they make this a fascinating period in the band’s history.
Paul Mazurkiewicz is openly acknowledging that touring becomes harder with age while remaining committed to performing.
Rob Barrett missed an entire U.S. tour, and his future touring status has not yet been publicly clarified.
Brandon Ellis proved capable of stepping into one of death metal’s most intimidating substitute jobs.
Mazurkiewicz has new Umbilicus music arriving in November. And behind all of it sits the Cannibal Corpse new album with no title, no release date and no first single. Not yet.
After nearly forty years, Cannibal Corpse have earned the right to move at their own pace.
But death metal fans have also spent decades learning that silence from this band rarely lasts forever.
Something is being assembled behind the door. Eventually, somebody is going to open it.
About The Author:
Lucien Drake is a writer and archivist at Metal Lair, contributing across features, essays, cultural commentary, and long-form series including Deep Cuts, Road Riffs and editorial projects exploring music, memory, and resistance.
Known for treating heavy music as living history rather than nostalgia, Drake focuses on influence over canon, context over hype, and the stories that survive outside official timelines.
Read More From Lucien Drake:
The Underground Never Needed Your Approval – Only the Real Ones Survived
Before Algorithms Hunting Metal Was Bloodsport
The Metal Sex Playlist: Bang Your Head… and Each Other
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