Terrasite

Cattle Decapitation find a mutant strain of the deathgrind formula

METAL BLADE

A higher level of dystopian deathgrind

TWENTY YEARS AGO, Cattle Decapitation were a face-ripping deathgrind band with a clear lyrical focus on animal rights and the destruction of the Earth at humanity’s hands. What few people realised at the time was that frontman Travis Ryan had creative ambitions far beyond the underground’s hostile clattering. In recent times, his band have risen majestically from the abattoir wheelie bin and become one of extreme metal’s most admired acts. Although still rooted in ferocious death metal, albums such as 2019’s monstrous Death Atlas have been almost cinematic in scope, with twisted melodies, progressive detours and Travis’s increasingly versatile vocal range giving Cattle Decapitation rare depth and substance. The band’s 10th full-length, Terrasite, has a lot to live up to.

Cheerily, Death Atlas documented the demise of mankind through nuclear annihilation, and so Terrasite does the decent thing of continuing the story, and shines a brutal light on the mutant horrors that apparently emerge from humanity’s terminal fallout (albeit still in Travis Ryan’s imagination at this point). In a sense, this is typical death metal fare, but this is no typical death metal band. It’s obvious from the scattershot battery of opener Terrasitic Adaptation that they’ve grown into their role as standard-bearers and demanded more from their music as a result. This is still vicious, skullclubbing brutality, but with atmosphere and intelligence in abundance. After the twin beatings of We Eat Our Young and Scourge Of The Offspring, The Insignificants veers purposefully into haunting, blackened doom. Meanwhile, Dead End Residents is a masterclass in mid-paced menace, with Travis’s eerie clean vocals spiralling up from the melee. The closing Just Another Body tops the lot, however. A wildly dramatic, 10-minute torrent of razor-sharp ideas, it encapsulates this band’s fierce ambition and growing prowess in the most thrilling way possible.