Random Records With Steve O

Cattle Decapitation - Death Atlas

Okay, so I guess I’m doing this. I’m gonna tell you why you should listen to a record that has a song on it called “Bring Back the Plague.” During a pandemic. Maybe not the best idea? But still smarter than Karen wanting a haircut or demanding Baskin Robbins open. First off, Cattle Decapitation clearly has their tongue planted firmly in cheek; just watch the video for the aforementioned song. Karen does not. Secondly, Cattle Decapitation has a long history of pointing out the fallacies of a modern human culture built off destroying our environment and exploiting our ecosystems, including other living animals. Unsurprisingly, Karen does not. And that haircut is the least of your worries.

So why should you sink the hour into experiencing the extremes brought forth on Cattle Decapitation’s eighth full length Death Atlas (man, we’re leaning into that apocalypse hard, aren’t we)? Well for one, Cattle Decapitation has been on an insane run lately. I raved about The Anthropocene Extinction on here five years ago, and 2012’s Monolith of Inhumanity is equally awesome. So, they’ve got their sound nailed down and the refinements are impressive. But as with both of those records, the introspective (though blunt) nature of the lyrics really hits home, especially as the planet is dealing with a catastrophe that they fictionalize in their lyrics. And while I’m sure Travis Ryan and crew would much rather us have taken heed through the imagery portrayed alongside a grind-refined death metal (just as they would when all the impacts of climate change really start hitting us), there are lessons to be gleaned from this auditory blunt force trauma and the absolute shitshow humanity finds itself in right now.

After a foreboding electronic intro, we are welcomed to Death Atlas with a fantastic, screeching roar courtesy of Ryan’s phenomenal range. He’s an incredible vocalist, and once again shows off a range from the deepest, harshest of growls and grunts up to this creepy, raspy, totally one-of-a-kind version of singing and everything in between. Seriously, I cannot find a good comparable for this in the death metal pantheon (but please drop recommendations if you do). And if you thought “Bring Back the Plague” was blunt, well opener “The Geocide” let’s fly like a line brawl in the movie Slapshot. I could drop any line from the song in here, but let’s go with this one: “Life exists to infuriate, berate, and subjugate / The hapless mortals shit-birthed on a human-altered planet Earth.” Yeah, we’re talking about you, Karen. And in-between, please note the sweet soloing by longtime member Josh Elmore. It’s not all doom and gloom.

The brilliantly titled “Be Still Our Bleeding Hearts” recounts humanity’s self-inflicted demise (“The soil is rotten / The oceans forgotten / The glaciers now molten / In our tracks we are frozen”), with a number of more intense lines about death. The equally brilliantly titled “With All Disrespect” almost seems like it is calling out certain individuals, with lines like “Narcissistic, self-flatulent inhaler / A laughable charade of confidence, optimism, and opulence / The unknowing host now falls prey to your sociopathy / Your predatory bullshit and your disgusting parasitoidism,” sure sounds like it is aimed at a certain heads of state/business, no? As unpleasant as it may be, this is one of those records you definitely need to read the lyrics for to get the whole story. And it’s not pleasant, trust me (and I’m used to this). When Ryan barks lines like “One day closer to the end of all life on this fucking planet,” in “One Day Closer to the End of the World” it’s not in glee (though I can totally picture the apocalyptic smirk on his face). It’s to make lines that come later, such as “What have we done to this world?” hit you so much harder. Never mind that it’s absolutely pummeled through a precision tight aggression and violently blasting drumbeats. It fucking hits you hard and Ryan’s clean vocal singing later is just mournful: “We would never have asked for any of this.”

Between all of the grinding death metal, we get peaceful interludes like “The Great Dying” and “The Great Dying II” and “The Unerasable Past” that talk about how we’ve been fucking up the planet and yeah, there’s nothing peaceful about any of this. “Bring Back the Plague” is prime example No. 1 of being not fucking peaceful at all. But damn if it isn’t prescient or a rollicking good time with some sick riffage (pun intended?) and one of Ryan’s trademark yell/screech/roar/shout/whatever vocalizations. “Finish Them” is, unsurprisingly, one of the most apocalyptic tracks here, but points the blame back at us, with the lyrical poetry of lines like “We skull fuck futures for our profits.” Beautiful. Album closer, the nine-minute “Death Atlas,” is a masterclass in how to craft epic, grandiose death metal. Full of blast beats, annihilating riffs, and embracing atmosphere instead of tech-death tinkering/showboating, the song also shows off Ryan’s full vocal range, while hammering your emotions with lines such as: “We deserve everything that's coming / We took this world to our graves / We made its creatures our slaves.”

Alright, look, I get it. The last thing you want during a fucking pandemic is to have someone growl and roar and scream in your face about how fucking horrible humanity is. I could go for flowers and rainbows and unicorns and puppies and kittens and all that adorable shit right now too. But, one, please tell me you didn’t expect that from a band called Cattle Decapitation. And two, that’s not where we are as a species right now. And it wasn’t where we were as a species back in November when Death Atlas was released. Yeah, November, as in before COVID-19 was even known to science. In “Time’s Cruel Curtain,” Ryan hauntingly sings: “We know that we're wrong / We know what we've done / Yet we still carry on.” Death Atlas can be heard as the clarion call, not the eulogy. The third ghost in The Muppet Christmas Carol, showing us a future yet to come. Let’s not carry on with what we’ve done wrong. This is the moment where we can wake the fuck up, acknowledge how awful we’ve been, and start taking the steps to fix the messes we’ve made.

Indulge yourself in Death Atlas here.