Musical style and songwriting Tomb of the Mutilated has been described as a "balls-out
gore metal record" that "adheres [...] stringently to the genre's formula". It has been said to have a "grinding atmosphere." The music on
Tomb has been described as "jarring, alien and nearly incomprehensible", and is considered to be markedly faster and more complex than its predecessors. Alex Webster said he became interested in the "technical side of music" after being exposed to the music of
Atheist and
Cynic while hanging out with Greg St. John of
Solstice.
Pestilence and
Gorguts, who the band had toured with prior, are also said to be influences present on the album. Webster said the band's increasingly technical approach to songwriting made the album's sessions the most challenging they had endured at that point, saying: "I think when you listen to the album, and compare it with the first two, you can hear the progression. [...] It was this technical push and the challenging music it created that made [the album] a fan favorite." Paul Mazurkiewicz stated that although the infamous bassline in "Hammer Smashed Face" was in his view "a little primitive", it was considered technical by the genre's standards in 1992. The album has been noted for its
hooks. Webster stated that the album's tracks are more "song-like" in comparison to the tracks on
Butchered at Birth, which guitarist
Jack Owen described as "just riff after riff." According to Webster: "When you look at some of the records that really inspired us, like
Reign in Blood, they're heavy records, but they're conventionally arranged. That was how we approached
Tomb. [...] There's still some weird stuff [on the album], like on 'Post-Mortal Ejaculation'. That's pretty far from being a mainstream arrangement."
Decibel referred to "
Hammer Smashed Face" as the "death metal equivalent" of "
Stayin' Alive" by the
Bee Gees. Scott Burns' production is considered to be one of the album's hallmarks, and has been described as a "
wall of sound" – Webster has stated that many fans have told him that
Tomb is their favorite release by the band based on the mix alone. It was the first release by the band to use the overdubbing production technique, as they did not have the budget to do so prior.
Instrumentation and vocals Invisible Oranges stated that "there's a deep guttural rhythmic quality to the album not unlike a tribal drum or an excited heartbeat". They said the album's
guitar work "ranges from writhing
Tesla coil leads to pulpy chugs." According to Chris Dick of
Decibel: "On
Tomb, [Webster] made the following statement: 'Hey, I'm not a guitarist! I'm a bass player! Drummer
Paul Mazurkiewicz said: "When you listen to it, he stands out. [...]
Tomb of the Mutilated was his stepping-stone. He wanted to be heard." According to Owen, the bass "pokes out" in the album's mix. Mazurkiewicz also said: "We always knew that it was important to us to have the bass shine through. Alex is that kind of a bass player; we always loved the
Iron Maiden approach in that way, and that's what we wanted. We always wanted the bass to be heard, more so on
Tomb Of The Mutilated than any of the previous records." Former guitarist Bob Rusay described Webster's basslines on the album as "goofy". The album has been noted for the "belching" vocal performance of
Chris Barnes, which consists of largely incoherent
death growls.
Lyrical themes The album's lyrical content explores themes such as
sexual violence,
sadism,
mutilation,
disembowelment,
castration,
necrophilia,
coprophagia,
corpse decomposition,
blunt trauma,
child murder,
pedophilia,
cannibalism,
insanity,
exhumation,
serial killing,
suicide and the
undead. According to
Invisible Oranges, "Where before the band had wallowed in a more simplistic [...] sense of excessive violence, Cannibal Corpse came out of 1992 with something darker and scarier, a beast with a unified vision of horror from which it was impossible to look away."
Metal Hammer wrote that the album is "bulging with moments of stomach-churning horror" and called its lyrical content "provocatively over-the-top". Chris Dick of
Decibel recalled that the album's lyrics made him "feel ill" while reading them as a teenager, saying: "I thought if I was caught with the sleeve I'd be expelled or placed in some type of
protective custody." The album's song titles have been called "despicable". Vocalist Chris Barnes singlehandedly penned the album's lyrics, and composed them to compliment the increasing extremities of the band's instrumentation; Bassist Alex Webster recounted that they "placed no limits" on him throughout the process. He said: "He'd come to us with the most vile, repugnant stuff and we'd be like, ‘Sure! Why not?' We were trying to make the most extreme and aggressive music we could, so why not have the most antagonistic lyrics too?" Sociologist Natalie J. Purcell assessed the album's fifth track, "Necropedophile", as "[offering] Barnes' speculation on the inner workings of the deranged mind driven to murder children and
rape their dead bodies". She added: "Lyrics such as these not only touch on the physical effects of depravity, but contemplate the
psychological state of a person suffering from this derangement." The album's seventh track, "Entrails Ripped From a Virgin's Cunt", which has been called "arguably the most offensive song in the Cannibal Corpse canon", is based on a story that a former prison employee had recounted to Barnes about two inmates who were serving life sentences for kidnapping a young girl and raping and disemboweling her with a coat hanger, which Barnes was deeply disturbed by.
Metal Hammer called the line "mutilated with a
machete" one of the track's "more upbeat [and] uplifting" lines. Guitarist
Jack Owen opined that the track was objectively mediocre, and stated that "people were [just] so floored by the song title" when the album was released. Barnes himself was quoted saying: "For me, it's hard to lyrically or vocally decide if
Butchered or
Tomb is the most intense. Both are lyrically obscene." == Artwork ==