Music review: Cannabis Corpse's 'Left Hand Pass' is worth a puff

Some of the best rock bands in history catch your attention with a gimmick or some kind of shtick. We don’t need to go down that list, but the musical landscape is covered with them. It is not a bad thing by any means to have a trick up your sleeve and when you combine a few gags that go hand and hand, that’s where the magic happens.

Take, for instance, death metal band Cannabis Corpse, out of Richmond, Virginia, which just dropped its latest release, “Left Hand Pass” Sept. 8 via Seasons of Mist Records. Before you ask, don’t confuse the band with veteran death metal band Cannibal Corpse out of Buffalo, New York.

Since 2006, Cannabis Corpse has been preaching the gospel of the dead with smoke rings and guitar strings with four albums and three EPs, plus an appearance in the 2009 BBC Movie “In The Loop.”

Cannabis Corpse is a death metal band that has songs about marijuana. (Courtesy of Cannabis Corpse)

With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Cannabis Corpse marries the genre with copious weed references and satire. Songs such as “Final Exhalation,” “Effigy of the Forgetful” and the epic “The Fiends That Come to Steal the Weed of the Deceased” do for ganja death metal what Ghost did for making satanic metal accessible to the new generation. Keeping it light in theme and heavy in tone is key here. The extremely capable chops of Josh Hall on drums, Phil Hall on bass/vocals and Ray Suhy on guitars bring the noise at the expert level.

“Left Hand Pass” is the new record from marijuana loving death metal band Cannabis Corpse. (Courtesy photo)

The vocal delivery method of death metal can make the lyrics hard to decipher. Don’t give up without trying though, that’s where the glory is. “The Fiends That Come to Steal the Weed of the Deceased” narrative comes from the voice of a grave robber that has come across the bodies of recently dead stoners:

Searching through their pockets I hit the jackpot
I pull out a small bag of herb I stare at all the crystal covered buds
A maddening craving begins to take over I must taste for myself
The lethal cheeba that brought these young stoners demise
I roll a small joint the moment the smoke enters my lungs
I lose all sense of reality Have I now gone crazy?

Whether you are a metalhead, a pothead or neither, Cannabis Corpse is worth checking out. If you are a metalhead and a pothead, you MUST check them out. The band’s tour with Soulfly is in San Diego at Brick By Brick Oct. 6, Los Angeles at the Whiskey A Go-Go Oct. 7 and the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on Oct. 8.