Finally, a band brave enough to congratulate Covid-19 on its valiant effort to eradicate mankind. "There's so many of us that need to die like a swarm of flies," Trevor Ryan wheedles on "Scourge of the Offspring" in one of his four main voices (high, bark, groan and Shakespearean narrator). Who can argue?
With the San Diego vegetarian death-metal outfit Cattle Decapitation, Ryan has been urging humanity's destruction for a quarter of a century, and it looks as if he's making progress, even if the new "Terrasite" is a bit of a retrenchment. Many wondered where the Captoids could go after the epic ambitions of "The Athropocene Extinction" (2015) and "Death Atlas (2019). The answer apparently was . . . back to the drumbeat.
Listeners who want their skulls crushed by the fastest, cleanest kick drums in metal will rejoice in the up-front presentation of the great David McGraw, who hammers all over ya from the starting gun and throws in plenty of intriguing changes, such as the sudden splice of "Photic Doom" and the two flavorspeeds of triple meter on "The Insignificants." This is a damn loud album, yet listenable thanks to veteran producer Dave Otero's balanced knobbing.
Guitarist Josh Elmore's best riffs arrive on the slashing "The Storm Upstairs" and the naggy "Dead End Residents," and maybe it's okay to smile when he headbangs old-skool on "We Eat Our Young." Guest keyboardist Tony Parker spreads welcome depth and variety.
The album's 10-minute stretch-out is the concluding "Just Another Body," completed after the band had learned that founding member Gabe Serbian and Black Dahlia Murder vocalist and friend Trevor Strnad had recently committed suicide. Bookended by doomy grandeur, it nevertheless sticks to the same rattling attack and the same dark message as the rest of the record, only (for a second) more personal: "I'm just a body, alive but rotting."
Why do people of experience enjoy this music? Ask Sophocles.
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Cattle Decapitation play the Regent on June 6.
Read MetalJazz's review of Cattle Decapitation's 2019 "Death Atlas" here.