Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction

Title: The Anthropocene Extinction

Artist: Cattle Decapitation

Label: Metal Blade Records

Genre: Grind/Death Metal

Hometown: San Diego, California

Website: www.facebook.com/cattledecapitation

Author: Steven Jenkins

Monolith was a masterpiece. Cattle Decapitation fans will once again be satisfied with another solid death metal album.

San Diego based deathgrind legends Cattle Decapitation are due to unleash the follow up to 2012’s game changer ‘The Monolith Of Humanity” on August 7^th via Metal Blade Records.

Once upon a time, an all vegan line up of angry death metallers garnered a worldwide following for providing vicious and relentless music. Tackling issues such as cruelty, slaughter and the testing of products on the animal species. Replacing the animals with humans and adding lots of gore and torture to which the human race has long deserved for such intolerable acts. Now, with just two remaining vegos, Cattle Decap continue to bring attention to subjects such as birds and aquatic wildlife mistaking man-made plastic for items of food, leading to ingestion and death. The breakdown of our Earths ecosystems, due to human’s interaction, which will eventually lead to “The Anthropocene Extinction.” The album cover, which was illustrated by Wes Benscoter, sees a washed up corpse, which is ripped open with large amounts of waste and plastic overflowing from the disgorged abdomen.

Now… Onto the music.

This album is ferociously heavy and intense, which is no real surprise. Featuring the well known faced paced grind, accompanied by riffs and solos that would make any death metal fan garner an erection. There aren’t many bands out there that can mix grind and death metal so well together, none better than Cattle Decap anyway. Variety is another common occurrence here, with technical metal at its very best and haunting, almost clean sounding vocals mastered by Travis Ryan. The growls are still there in full force, with Travis showcasing his sickening yet mesmerising range of gutturals, highs, screams and cleans which has made him one the best vocalists in death metal today. Cattle Decap are also well known for the epic riff building, which creates some really memorable tracks on here. It seems they’ve continued where Monolith left off, adding little bits of melody, which creates a break from the constant aggression and onslaught of blasts and riffs. The bass guitar is also showed off on here, which is always nice as most of the time it’s pushed to the side away from the spotlight. What we have here is a catchy and tight extreme metal album that is only going to gather more of a following for these talented gore-grinders.

Whilst I strongly believe Monolith was the bands best work to date, I am very impressed that they could follow it up with such an impressive album. Cattle Decapitation continue to grow as a band and they’re now quickly becoming a favourite of mine. I’m sure many other death metal fans would agree. It won’t blow you away unless you’re a diehard fan, but it will deliver what you’re expecting plus more. Just coming up a bit short of its predecessor, but how are you supposed to equal or beat Monolith? Maybe one day they will, give it time. For now though, you should appreciate this album for all its worth which is an incredibly diverse and memorable listen.

8.5/10