Alex Webster

To say nothing of his astoundingly fleet-fingered playing and prolific songwriting, you’d be hard pressed to find a nicer, more articulate guy in all of

Alex Webster

To say nothing of his astoundingly fleet-fingered playing and prolific songwriting, you’d be hard pressed to find a nicer, more articulate guy in all of death metaldom than Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster.

Born in Batavia, N.Y., in October 1969, Webster grew up in a musical family and took an interest in music at an early age. He took up bass guitar in 1984, reasoning that when trying to learn Van Halen songs, the Michael Anthony parts would probably be easier to play than the Eddie Van Halen parts (“a more modest goal,” Webster said). Nonetheless, he found that he had a real affinity for bass and love for its sound and role in a band, and he was drawn to inventively nimble finger-style players such as Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, Steve DiGiorgio and Cliff Burton.

Webster joined his first Buffalo, N.Y.-area death/thrash band, Beyond Death, in 1987, before co-founding Cannibal Corpse in December 1988. Debut album Eaten Back to Life appeared in 1990. Since then, Cannibal Corpse has recorded and toured nonstop, selling well over a million albums over the course of nearly a dozen studio albums (as of 2009’s Evisceration Plague, that is) and several world tours.

Despite many lineup changes, Webster has been in every incarnation of Cannibal Corpse, for which he is not only bassist but also a principal songwriter. Further, Webster has contributed bass tracks to good friend Erik Rutan’s Band, Hate Eternal (a 1997 demo and 2008’s Fury and Flames), and also currently plays in Blotted Science, a progressive metal side project with Watchtower/Spastic Ink guitarist Ron Jarzombek.