The night of October 15, 2025, The National in Richmond became a proving ground for death metal endurance. Cannibal Corpse returned to Virginia with the same intensity that’s carried them for over three decades — no nostalgia, no gimmicks, just the sound of precision and brutality in perfect sync.

The room was already restless when Fulci opened, draping the venue in a cinematic kind of darkness — slow, suffocating, almost ritualistic.  Full of Hell took that chaos and bent it into something harsher — noise, grind, feedback, and fury rolled together into a single, disorienting force. Municipal Waste, Richmond’s own, flipped the energy instantly; thrash riffs ricocheted off the walls, and the first real pit of the night broke loose.

By the time the house lights dimmed again, the floor had become one living organism, and Corpsegrinder’s silhouette appeared under the red wash. From the first guttural growl, it was clear: this was not a band revisiting old glories. This was a unit firing at full strength. Paul Mazurkiewicz’s drums were locked in, relentless; Alex Webster’s bass work cut through the mix with that trademark clarity and menace. Rob Barrett and Erik Rutan made every riff feel like a blade pressed to the throat — sharp, technical, and never indulgent.

The set moved seamlessly through eras — Evisceration Plague, Stripped, Raped and Strangled, I Cum Blood, and newer material from Chaos Horrific. The newer songs didn’t feel like filler; they stood shoulder to shoulder with the classics, executed with the same venom. The sound inside The National was brutal but surprisingly balanced — loud enough to rattle rib cages without burying the detail.

They closed with Hammer Smashed Face, and by the end, the room looked wrecked — people gasping for air, grinning, ears shot, necks sore. There’s a certain kind of silence that follows a perfect show, when the feedback fades and no one’s quite ready to leave. That’s what hung over The National.

Cannibal Corpse doesn’t evolve for the sake of evolution. They refine, sharpen, tighten — and nights like this prove why they’re still the gold standard of death metal. Nothing forced, nothing nostalgic. Just the sound of a band completely sure of who they are, and still playing like they have something to prove.

Richmond felt that. Every riff. Every hit. Every scream.

 

Text and Photos by Rafael Barbosa

RB Photography