Admittedly Cattle Decapitation is my first real Grindcore band. Like many folks I know, I initially wrote the genre off as virutally unlistable, however I'm starting to come around on this opinion on a number of ways. First, as I find myself going deeper and deeper into metal to find new artists I like, I find myself growing more accustomed to vocals that are virtually nothing but vocal distortion, pig squeals, and other forms of just extreme vocals. I find that I like them way more than I originally anticipated. Secondly, I find myself growing very curious about "inaccessible" music like Grindcore where the sound is considered a massive turn off for majority of folks where they don't want to subject themselves to harsh noise and heavily distorted vocals. There is something amazing about it and it feels like it pushes the boundaries of what IS music. What's curious to is that this "inaccessible" music is growing more and more popular as bands like Knocked Loose is allowing heavy screaming to be more mainstream, not to mention more noise based electronic music is pushing into mainstream as well thanks to the efforts of Hyperpop artists like Sophie, 100 gecs, and Charli XCX. Weird to mention these folks next to more extreme metal artists, but point still stands.
The album Death Atlas is the seventh studio album by Cattle Decapitation. The album, like most of Cattle Decapitations works, tends to focus on the currently state of our world in regareds to it's ecology. Cattle Decaptiation continues to rail against the path humanity is on as we're met with ecological disaster after disaster after disaster, all accelerated by global warming fueled by the actions of humanity. The album takes a more misanthropic view of the issue with lyrics such as "Unfortunately, we require disease, mass fatalities, and extinguishing" (Be Still Our Bleeding Hearts), "Now we see that the true evil has a face/Now we know the devil is the human race" (Finish Them)... It does toe the line with a lot of ecofacist rhetoric, which is unfortunate due to the fact that they are often one of the more left leaning metal bands out there at this moment.
Common defenses for the band state that it is a frustration of the band and is not to be taken at face value, however it is no small secret that metal has a fash problem and thus these problems should be spoken of directly. While I enjoyed their sound, their latest album shows no improvement when it comes to their views. Politics aside, let's get to the review...
The track list is as follows:
Heavy guitars, slamming vocals, an insane BPM - what's not to love? When I first heard this album I ended up having it on repeat for several days because I couldn't get over how much I liked it at first. Growing up I always thought I was one of those metal fans - you know, the ones who like heavy music but you don't like it when the lead singer sounds like the world's angriest cookie monster. Turns out I absolutely am. Grindcore and brutal slam is something I've started to come around on as I got older and my taste started to evolve. Something about the extreme performance is always incredibly interesting to me! So when One Day Closer to the End of the World showed up on my recommended page, I fell in love.
Something I also love about this album that I don't normally talk too much about here is the album art. It's no secret that I live for edgy and cool things, so a skeleton holding up a burning Earth had to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen when it came to their works. It's also very different from most of Cattle Decapitations work as there is significantly less gore than usual. Before I started to really think on this album and the lyrics I was actually pretty damn close to buying a shirt with Death Atlas on it because the design was just appealing to me. To be frank, if I ever see the shirt in the wild, I still just might. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a good design just like any other metalhead. Now that all said, I do find that there is a kind of same-yness on this track that does make some of them just bleed together so I have a harder time telling which track is which unless I'm keeping tabs on my player for when a track switches. It's kind of a problem with the subgenre in general as this is not excluse to Cattle Decapitation. The dramatic orchestral moments do not alieviate this problem as they could make for dramatic interludes as much as grand openings for tracks. Greater variation in sound would have likely helped the album and showcased some skill over other bands within the same subgenre.Very enjoyable, I would not complain if this was on!