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Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction

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        This is an album review that I'm very surprised I am doing. When I do these reviews, I often cover extreme genres, such as black metal or experimental noise, but these are always genres I have a history of enjoying. However, Cattle Decapitation is grindcore, a genre that, in the past, had always eluded me. I went into this album fully expecting to hate it, but I was very surprised to find that not only did I not hate it, I loved it! I went on to listen to several other albums in their discography, and found that I liked pretty much all of them. I guess I'm a fan now. Anyways, now I'm here to share this album with you.
        As I said above, Cattle Decapitation is grindcore, or more specifically, goregrind a fusion of grindcore and death metal. If you aren't an avid metal fan, you may be asking yourself "What is grindcore?" and "Why should I listen to it?". To answer the second question, you shouldn't. Grindcore is one of the, if not the most extreme metal genre, and if you aren't an avid metal fan, you probably won't enjoy it. If you are an avid metal fan, you might enjoy it, as long as you go in knowing what to expect. It's definitely an acquired taste. The first question will require a bit more explanation.
        Grindcore is a fusion of extreme metal and hardcore punk, first created by the band Napalm Death. It is characterized by garbled, growled, and shrieked vocals which are frantically shouted, as if out of the mouth of a madman, and walls of sound created by high-speed blast beats, fuzz bass, and down-tuned guitars. Unlike the atmospheric walls of sound created in genres like black metal and shoegaze, the walls of sound in grindcore are chaotic and angry sounding, as if they are trying to forcefully beat their way into your skull.Grindcore lyrics are usually gory and political, sometimes with some dark humor added in. Goregrind distinguishes itself from vanilla grindcore with characteristic "watery" sounding vocals and overly campy, violent, gory (even more so than standard grindcore), and grotesque lyrics, which often have a humorous z-grade horror feel.
        Although goregrind generally drops the political themes of grindcore, Cattle Decap keeps them, and as a result is sometimes called "vegan goregrind". As this suggests, Cattle Decap's lyrics frequently deal with the moral problems of the meat industry, often replacing the animals in meat farms with humans in order to bring these issues to light in the most gruesome way possible. The band's lyrics also deal with other progressivist issues such as trans rights and environmentalism. The band further mixes up their music with some technical guitar playing and good vocals. In fact the vocals in most of Cattle Decap's songs are so good that the singer has a relatively large vocal range, and sometimes you can actually make out what he is saying, something rare for this genre!
        This album deals mostly with the human impact on the planet, and how we are killing ourselves with pollution. This is reflected in the title of the album, "The Anthropocene Extinction". This is in reference to the concept of "the anthropocene era", the point after which humans have irreversibly changed and damaged the Earth's environment. Cattle Decap's anthropocene extinction is the point at which humans have changed and damaged the Earth's environment to the point that it is no longer habitable by humans, and we all die as a result. You can see this referenced on the cover of the album, which features a rotted human corpse full of garbage.
        Out of all of Cattle Decap's albums so far, this one is probably my favorite. In fact, it seems like their albums just keep getting better and better as they make new ones. What makes this one so good, is the balance between the harsh grind core vocals, the screeching; almost metalcore vocals, and more mellow electronic vocals. This variation in the vocals does wonders for the songs, giving them high and low points, and sometimes drawing attention to lyrics. Speaking of lyrics, the lyrics on this album are very good, and paint a gruesome picture of how humans are destroying the ecosystem, and killing themselves in the process. These lyrics off of the song "Mammals in Babylon", I think, particularly illustrate this message: "We had it all/ The whole of Eden in our hands/ The privilege of existence/ The ubiquitous lay of the land/ We suffocate ourselves/ We defecate on the product line/ Fell under our own spell/ Carelessly crafted hell/ You can't escape your own rape when you're not the only rapist/ Too many people in this world to simply forgive, to only forget/ Obsessive procreators". The lyrics highlight the inevitability of this fate due to the sheer number of people, and the impossibility of convincing everyone to change.
        In addition to the great singing and lyricism on this album, it is also full of awesome, headbanging riffs. It has plenty of those intense blast beat heavy sections that are characteristic of this genre, but it also occasionally sows down a bit to deliver these slower, heavy riffs, which just make you want to mosh or headbang. These slower bits sometimes even deliver short catchy melodies in addition to these riffs, which makes the songs really memorable.
        Needless to say, I very much enjoyed this album, and it opened my mind a little to a genre of music I previously didn't like that much. I hear that Cattle Decap is coming out with a new album later this year, I just might try to get my hands on a copy.

Rating: 8.5/10

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