#belisario dimuzio

[gbhbl]

Album Review: Terrasite by Cattle Decapitation (Metal Blade Records)

Cattle Decapitation are back with their 8th studio album titled Terrasite, set for release on the 12th of May via Metal Blade Records. Cattle Decapitation are a band I have the utmost respect for and go into this album review massively excited but it wasn’t always that way for me. Early days of this band saw me more ambivalent, enjoying them but not adoring them. I really got on board fully…

[mysteriis-moon666]

CATTLE DECAPITATION – Terrasite

Cattle Decapitation est un groupe de deathgrind américain, originaire de San Diego, Californie. Composé de Travis Ryan (chant), Josh Elmore (guitare), Belisario Dimuzio (guitare), Dave McGraw (batterie), et Olivier Pinard (guitare basse), « Terrasite » est leur 8ème opus via Metal Blade Records.

Le groupe a de nouveau travaillé avec le producteur Dave Otero (Cephalic Carnage, Allegaeon), qui a fait appel à Tony Parker de Midnight Odyssey pour gérer le piano et les synthés. Formé en 1996, les chansons de Cattle Decapitation se manifestant contre l'abus et la maltraitance des animaux, les dévastations environnementales, et d'autres sujets comme la misanthropie et le génocide de la race humaine. Leurs musiques mettent en scène des humains dans des situations auxquelles les animaux font face (tests sur les animaux, abattage, etc.).

Cattle Decapitation décrypte du tréfond de l’âme humaine le charnier qui y repose et son rapport à la planète terre. Le titre est un mot inventé par Ryan qui réunit « Terra- » signifiant terre et « -site » dérivé du mot grec « -sitos » qui signifie « nourriture ». "La combinaison des deux signifie "mangeur de terre", comme métaphore du rôle de l'humanité dans la destruction de la planète, et est un jeu de mots sur le mot très approprié "parasite". Cela prend vie dans l'œuvre d'art du collaborateur de longue date Wes Benscoter. "Nous voyons le stade de nymphe de cet hybride humain / cafard qui est plus un être adulte qui vient de muer de son stade d'oothèque (Coque produite lors de la ponte, qui contient les œufs de certains insectes (blattes, mantes), surpris, confus, effrayé mais aussi énervé et prêt à rejoindre le reste de sa progéniture pour terminer l'humanité.

Terrasite pousse la sonorité et texture du groupe plus loin dans un territoire plus épique et varié, avec un surplus de brèche ambiant. L'intensité du groupe est marquée notamment sur la lourdeur menaçante, la présence chargée d'effets sonores qui occupe également une part beaucoup plus importante. Toutes les caractéristiques du groupe sont présentes, avec des blasts déchirants, des riffs de guitare/basse abrasifs et agressifs, avec l'approche vocale variée de Travis.

« Ce disque est juste différent. Je ne sais pas comment le dire autrement. Il y a une richesse profonde dans les sons de guitare et une présence de guitare basse plus importante, les parties de batterie sont agressives, la voix de Travis est aussi variée qu'elle ne l'a jamais été, mais avec une profondeur émotionnelle supplémentaire. L'ensemble du disque sonne comme une sombre attaque de panique ; comme pleurer la perte d'un être cher », explique Elmore.

Ryan déclare à propose des paroles, qu’elles venaient « d'un lieu de détresse. Colère, rage, ressentiment, dépression, anxiété, une mauvaise vision de notre espèce à la fois au jour le jour, à un niveau plus large et mondain ainsi qu'à un niveau philosophique. Par exemple, les paroles de "A Photic Doom" sont une métaphore pour découvrir la dépravation de notre espèce et éclairer les sujets plutôt que de les laisser reposer dans l'obscurité ». "Scourge Of The Offspring" constitue l'essentiel du concept de l'album que la première chanson" Terrasitic Adaptation "et la pochette ont en quelque sorte mis en mouvement. Dans la première chanson, nous découvrons ce qui se passe sur la couverture, et cette chanson traite davantage de ce que nos enfants finiront par être - des adultes laissés dans le mépris et qui devront donner un sens à ce monde et finir par faire partie du problème simplement en existant.

Ryan a reçu une nouvelle tragique, avec un ami et co-fondateur de Cattle Decapitation Gabe Serbian qui s'est suicidé. "Les nouvelles et toute la pression exercée sur l'album m'ont fait tourner la tête complètement et hors de contrôle. Bien que n'étant pas en mesure de pleurer correctement la perte de Gabe - un ami qui comptait tant pour nous et qui était attaché à un réseau d'amis incroyablement vaste qui commence localement et s'étend à travers le monde, mon esprit est allé dans un endroit incroyablement sombre, puis à l'intérieur quelques semaines après avoir été là-bas, nous avons appris que notre ami Trevor Strnad (The Black Dahlia Murder) s'était également suicidé. C'était comme si les choses s'effondraient pour tant de nos amis que nous considérons comme de la famille, ayant perdu quelques amis après deux ans où tout le monde a essayé de traverser la pandémie et de naviguer à travers cela pour sortir de l'autre côté avec tout encore ensemble. ” Tout cela a informé les paroles de l'épopée plus proche "Just Another Body", Ryan déclarant "tous ces mois plus tard, après de nombreuses écoutes, il y a toujours un linceul autour de lui qui ne disparaîtra jamais. Il a été écrit pendant certains des moments les plus difficiles de la carrière de ce groupe.

[the-garden-of-impurity]

Cattle Decapitation

[kenpiercemedia]

Cattle Decapitation Announce North American Headlining Tour

Cattle Decapitation Announce North American Headlining Tour

Wednesday is as good a day as any to announce a massive run by one of Metal Blade Records signature acts – Cattle Decapitation. The guys will be bringing along a healthy roster of support acts so you’re going to want to get to these shows early and stay late. Learn more via the full press release down below.

The Press Release: This November/December, CATTLE DECAPITATION will headline the…

[sinceileftyoublog]

Cattle Decapitation Radio Preview: 1/4, Gimme Metal

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Last time we caught San Diego environmentalist deathgrinders Cattle Decapitation, their latest full-length Death Atlas (Metal Blade) had just been released. Playing from that and their perhaps career best The Anthropocene Extinction, little did we know the next two years would bring about the type of environmental and human-spread grime, plagues, pandemics, or otherwise, that they sing about. At the time, we wrote, “Cattle Decapitation aren’t the type of band to fall prey to the touring cycle of a specific album, decided by a record label; instead, they tour on their ideas and belief systems.” While their upcoming headlining tour, stopping 2/2 at The Forge in Joliet, should give them the opportunity to play more of Death Atlas, something they were robbed of two years ago, I imagine their ideals are stronger than ever.

To preview their upcoming tour, the band is guest DJing on Gimme Metal, a free 24/7 online metal radio station. They’ll also be responding in the live chat. Check it out at 4 PM CST!

P.S. Nab Dave Otero’s remaster of the band’s sophomore album Homovore (Three One G).

Death Atlas by Cattle Decapitation

[happymetalgirl]

Cattle Decapitation - Death Atlas

No vocalist this decade has been more innovative for extreme metal as Travis Ryan has with his diversity of snarls, growls, and screams stretching into uncharted melodic territory on the past few Cattle Decapitation albums, and no other band has been more vital and consistently creative for deathgrind as Cattle Decapitation has been for a long time now. The band have always taken a particularly uncomfortably gnarly and confrontational approach to the dicey topics of human mistreatment of animals in the food industry and the many despicable facets of species exceptionalism that humankind has operated under since the advent of mass industrialization, and their gratuitously grotesque and brutal musical and lyrical approach to such disgusting topics honestly couldn’t be more fitting for each other. I just recently picked up a physical copy of the band’s third LP, Humanure, and, looking at the lyrics, holy shit do they fit all too disgustingly well with the now-iconic cover art.

As the band’s sound has become grander since then, more stylistically unique, more polished, yet no less brutal than the goregrind on which they built their foundations, Cattle Decapitation have shifted their lyrical focus to the grander scope of self-driven environmental catastrophe and the worst case scenario of human extinction as a result of humankind’s own ecological carelessness. The band took a tremendous leap forward from the already tight and deathly goregrind of The Harvest Floor on 2012’s Monolith of Inhumanity, with Travis Ryan’s expansion of his harsh melodic range being a huge factor in that growth. But the rest of the band grew tighter and more capable of dishing out extremely intricate and technical agression at frightening speeds, and both Monolith of Inhumanity and the band’s 2015 follow-up, The Anthropocene Extinction, showed just how unbelievably versatile Cattle Decapitation could be with this style of music. I don’t want to get too hung up on reminiscing on the quality of old work with more of that quality packed into the band’s longest album to date to discuss at hand, but I don’t want to simply brush over and understate how immense the band’s past two albums have been for them and for extreme metal in general.

With Monolith of Inhumanity, Cattle Decapitation put on an absolutely baffling exhibition of a wide array of compositional protocols and instrumental and vocal techniques that broadened not only their horizons, but the horizons of deathgrind as a genre, of melody without compromising on brutality, especially on the vocal front. The band took their sickening brand of goregrind to its classically brutal extreme on the increasingly slow churn of “Forced Gender Reassignment” and the nasty grinding of “Projectile Ovulation”, but the band really pushed the boundaries of melodic terror on the vocal front on songs like “A Living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat”, “Your Disposal”, and “Kingdom of Tyrants”. The song with which the band really shattered the genre’s ceiling on melody was the strangely, astonishingly beautiful “Lifestalker”, on which Travis Ryan harnesses his filthy blackened snarl into a melody so emotive it’s hard to believe a band so focused on powerfully merciless brutality penned it. The album was a huge progression for Cattle Decapitation and for deathgrind, undoubtedly my favorite of the genre.

The band sought to refine their frenzied and newly dynamic grind on The Anthropocene Extinction with generally longer and more grandiose compositions like the monumental “Manufactured Extinct” and the gloriously grinding “Plagueborne” and “Pacific Grim”, while staying true to their gory roots all throughout and making sure to deliver more directly deadly blackened grinders like “The Prophets of Loss” and “Mutual Assured Destruction”. And the band did indeed give their already impressive and elevated sound an even more magnificent and grandious edge that generally isn’t associated with Cattle Decapitation or grindcore. As its title suggests, The Anthropocene Extinction marked an increase in the band’s urgency about the consequences of humanity’s careless abuse of resources and destruction of crucial ecosystems through industrial overconsumption. The band on their most recent past album sounded at least panicked and eager to call for whatever possible to mitigate the disastrous effects of humankind’s mistakes. Four years later, however, Cattle Decapitation are far less optimistic about the outcome of mankind’s abuse of its planetary home and certainly not any more sympathetic towards our species’ continued heedlessness in the face of scientific consensus on the forthcoming destruction and collapse of civilization as we know it.

As grim and forthrightly convicting as Cattle Decapitation have been in the past about how much needs to change to avoid disaster, the band sound more pessimistic than ever on Death Atlas, forecasting more than forewarning of the impending deathly consequences of our species’ prolonged malignant negligence. They play with a distinguishable air of numbness to sorrow as though the long foreseen end has already begun and that humanity is too late. Travis Ryan dips into melodic harshness more on this album than he did on even Monolith of Inhumanity, offering up eulogy after merciless eulogy for a dying species and a slowly (but not so slowly) burning world.

Indeed, Travis Ryan meditates harshly on the inevitability of the universe’s snuffing out of life grown out of control on the blackened melodic doomsday prophetics of  “The Geocide” on which he ominously sings “The universe it always find a way to purge / the sustainably inappropriate numbers that once surged”, and he is even more hopeless on the following track, “Be Still Our Bleeding Hearts”, which he opens with the line, “Every new life is a tragedy in waiting” and on which he breaks out another nastily sung/snarled melodic chorus of apocalyptic embrace over blackened deathgrind that reaches for the upper echelons of the band’s widely encompassing sound. Ryan had stated before the album’s release in a promotional interview that he wasn’t going to focus so much on overpopulation as much on this album being that he has said his piece thoroughly on albums past and that the valid ecological problem is being misdirected by modern eugenicists, yet here he calls (probably in defeated exaggeration) for mass human death, stating “Every new death is a step toward preservation”. He once again concludes in dismal defeat that “Human life is simply not sustainable”.

Ryan continues on his frustrated raging over humanity’s exponentiating population on the following song, “Vulturous”, on which it becomes clearer that he is not taking the warped, racist approach to this topic and is rather eulogizing the willful and self-inflicted destruction of so-called advanced cultures by their short-sighted capitalist urges, as evidenced by the lines “A horrible ghastly proclamation / That profits dominate what’s right” and the painfully and intentionally ironic “Living for ourselves / Anything at any time / as of tomorrow we will die”. Clearly these lines are not pinning the blame for catastrophic climate change on the usual, lower-consuming scapegoats of fascist eugenics, but rather the capitalism that exploits them and those doing the scapegoating and those who keep it in place because they have something to gain from it. Musically, the track is one of the more demonically sinister cuts on the album, with Ryan giving a particularly eerie, menacing, death-summoning vocal performance.

Indeed, while I am talking a lot about Travis Ryan’s lyrical contributions and one-of-a-kind vocal performances, I would hate to overlook the solid and vibrant instrumental foundation the rest of the band continue to provide him and Cattle Decapitation. Longtime drummer David McGraw’s jaw-droppingly lightning-injected performances continue to shine as one of the band’s major instrumental attractions as he absolutely punishes his kit at ungodly speeds with awe-inspiring technicality. Similarly fast-paced and technical strong-work continues to flow like a gushing torrent of hail from storied lead guitarist Josh Elmore and newly arrived rhythm guitar supporter Belisario Dimuzio, who together drive the album’s (and the band’s) likely under-appreciated emotional dynamic through their interplay between colossal eruptions of infernal guitar distortion and ashen atmospheric dissonance with cleaner tones when the time is right. And new bassist Olivier Pinard provides the essential foundational accents to meticulously track and support the maddeningly technical rhythms above him in the mix, and even surging up to the forefront of the mix when the rest of the band is at a lower instance of acceleration to provide his own moments of spotlighted technical brilliance as well. Together the band have continued to hone the already highly perfected form of epic deathgrind that they and no one else can channel.

Backed by particularly vicious grinding instrumentation, Travis Ryan continues to count down to calamity on “One Day Closer to the End of the World”, at first seemingly welcoming with open arms “the end of all life of this fucking planet” in a storm of hardcore-influenced guitar work, but clearly lamenting, as the song progresses, mankind’s seeming “Lust for dying” and the terrible, suffering-filled end it has set up for itself, as he closes the thundering instrumental chaos by characterizing humanity as “Out of breath, out of time - a species out of its mind”. This bend toward self-destruction is further examined throughout the more direct, technical blackened death metal of “Absolute Destitute”, which is mostly spare of the previous tracks’ melodic niceties and summed up nicely and poetically by the lines “A life in love with despair / in a world beyond repair / A global consensus that the powers that be are against us”, and Ryan essentially calls time on humanity’s soured reign over planet Earth on the fittingly apocalyptic-sounding melodic vocal and guitar dissonance and rhythmic crashing of “Time’s Cruel Curtain”, whose tragically cathartic and enigmatically beautiful sonic hideousness as a result of is truly a tough thing to describe, probably best likened to a fire-scarred martyr desperately sacrificing themselves one last time to no avail.

Travis Ryan shifts his mournful tone to a more critical one on the ruthlessly rapid-fire “Finish Them” as he concludes that “Now we see that the true evil has a face / Now we know the devil is the human race” as David McGraw’s dynamic playing shines at the track’s particularly fast pace, and Ryan subsequently imparts, furthermore, a stern warning to the opulent elites that those whose world they’ve ruined will be coming for their hides on the similarly high-octane percussive hurricane and roller coaster riff-fest of “With All Disrespect”.

Ryan does return to his more usual classically colorful beckoning of death on the surprisingly infectiously hook-laced, old-school (for the band), and darkly comedic “Bring Back the Plague”, which is an exaggerated call at wits end for exactly what the title implies, but musically one of the band’s most unique songs and a certain standout on an album filled with impressive tracks.

The band also includes a few shorter interludes to break up the relentless deathgrind, “The Great Dying”, “The Great Dying II”, and “The Unerasable Past”, which are strung with excerpts detailing the sequences of events that have led to humanity’s current predicament, including “55 Languages of Planet Earth” from NASA’s Voyager Space Probe on the intro track, “Anthropogenic: End Transmission”.

On the titular closing track, Travis Ryan offers his last sorrowless dirge for humanity as he screams “We deserve everything that’s coming” across the epic nine-minute firestorm of crunchy guitar riffage, furiously firing double-bass, and biblically monolithic death howls that wrap the album up in cinematically grand fashion without sacrificing any of the brutality of the band’s grind. And while the song’s second half isn’t quite the dizzying crush the first half is, the gradual fade out into an operatic lamentation for a biosphere’s graceless end is a fitting one for the image of the Earth humanity’s last days careening away into the void of space in abject meaninglessness to the rest of the universe and whatever may fill humankind’s empty place at square one of rebuilding a new civilization.

Given how greatly I still admire Monolith of Inhumanity and the Anthropocene Extinction obviously my expectations for death Atlas were pretty high. Yet Cattle decapitation still managed to surprise and around me with melodicism greater than even that which characterized Monolith of Inhumanity, incredibly surprisingly infectious hooks, and gripping, terrifyingly bleak prophetic lyricism amid consistently thrilling instrumental performances that continue to prove what a tremendous force to be reckoned with and what an important band Cattle Decapitation is and has been. While Cattle Decapitation are far from the only band addressing the huge, overbearing impending doom of environmental Armageddon, and while the novelty of the melodicism of the band’s terrifying assault and nauseating goring has worn off since Monolith of Inhumanity, Cattle Decapitation has expanded it to further elevate the grandiosity they cultivated on The Anthropocene Extinction to produce a swan song for the planet unlike any other. Truly, there are few bands more important today for metal than Cattle Decapitation is, and there is no situation more dire than humanity’s arrogant and self-assured loitering on the brink of civilizational downfall. And while a deathgrind album probably isn’t the kind of art piece that will pull humankind back from the edge, the uncompromisingly ugly and truly hellish portrayal of the world’s collapse on it makes Death Atlas the album the world needs and humanity deserves for its compounded failures. And I also suppose it’s quite fitting that the band releases this album on America’s frustratingly ironically times national holiday of celebrating capitalist consumerism after a day of supposed giving thanks whose tradition is warped to hide its ugly genocidal historical origin. Undoubtedly one of the most crucial albums of its time, one of the year’s, one of the decade’s, and Cattle Decapitation’s best.

And I count the days ‘til we expire for always/10

[m3t4ln3rd]

Cattle Decapitation reveal new members

Photo by: Pablo Montano

Official press release:

Currently working on the follow-up to 2015’s The Anthropocene Extinction, Cattle Decapitation has officially welcomed guitarist Belisario Dimuzio (Eukaryst) and bassist Olivier Pinard (Cryptopsy) to their ranks. Comments the band:

“We’re pleased to announce the new lineup that will appear on our next album due out in fall 2019! Many of you who have…

[theheadbangers]

Cattle Decapitation launches video for “Bring Back The Plague”

After releasing their latest record, Death Atlas, last year to critical acclaim, Cattle Decapitation are now launching a video for one of the album tracks, “Bring Back The Plague”. Watch the clip at: Cattle Decapitation‘s Travis Ryan (vocals) comments: “With the cancellation of our ironically titled ‘Europandemic Tour’ and social distancing recommendations set in place, we found ourselves with not much to do. So we figured why not address the elephant in the room in the form of a music video for ‘Bring Back The Plague’ and just film it on our mobile phones instead of with an actual crew. Dave didn’t even have access to a drum kit and nobody is leaving their houses anyways so we decided to lighten the mood with a video. Everything from the band name to the lyrics to the merchandise to the imagery have always been heavily steeped in metaphors and irony always with tongue firmly in cheek, so this new video by David Hall at Uneasy Sleeper may just be our coup de gras…for better, or for worse. Just don’t take it too seriously, we obviously didn’t. After all it is April Fool’s Day so sit back, have a laugh if you can and stay the fuck home.” Produced once again by Dave Otero (flatlineaudio.com), Death Atlas was named one of the best records of 2019 by Decibel Magazine, Metal Sucks, Metal Injection, and many more, and it demands an emotional response. Cattle Decapitation have never shied away from confronting the awfulness wrought upon the natural world by the human race, and Death Atlas is their bleakest offering to date, featuring elements of death metal, grindcore, black metal, sludge, doom, drone – with Travis Ryan’s vocals broader and more fully realized than ever before. Stream and purchase Death Atlas now at: metalblade.com/cattledecapitation Cattle Decapitation line-up: Travis Ryan – vocals Josh Elmore – guitars Dave McGraw – drums Belisario Dimuzio – guitars Olivier Pinard – bass Cattle Decapitation online: https://www.facebook.com/cattledecapitation https://twitter.com/cattledecap https://www.youtube.com/officialcattledecap https://www.instagram.com/cattledecapitation https://www.indiemerch.com/cattledecap Buy iTunes Artist Page Artist News Source Read the full article

[ghostcultmagazine]

Cattle Decapitation Changes Lineup, New Album Due In 2019

In a post to social media, Cattle Decapitation has announced their new lineup. Belisario Dimuzio (Eukaryst) has joined as a full-time member on guitar and Olivier Pinard (Cryptopsy) has joined on bass. Both will appear on the new CD album, due out in the fall of 2019. The band will also announce a special new release ahead of the new album, to be revealed on September 20th. As one of the preeminent death metal bands today, this a big news and you can color us stoked! The band will next be seen on tour as a part of the “Farewell To Frank” tour from Suffocation. Cattle Decapitation announces new members! We’re pleased to announce the new lineup that will appear on our next album due out in FALL 2019! Many of you who have come to our shows in the past couple of years have seen that we have had a 2nd guitarist on stage with us for the first time in the band’s existence. We proudly welcome Belisario Dimuzio (San Diego’s Eukaryst) as a full time member and he will appear on the next album! We’re also happy to announce Olivier Pinard (Cryptopsy) as our new bassist who will be appearing on our next album as well! Oil has filled in on shows with us in the past, the chemistry we have with both him and Bel is unmistakable and we’re excited to have them with us. Be sure to keep an eye out for Cryptopsy’s next release entitled “The Book Of Suffering: Tome 2”! Also be on the lookout for a HUGE announcement coming Sept. 20th regarding a super cool Cattle Decapitation release that has been in the works for a decade now! Its an exciting time for the Decap! Stay tuned!!!   Read the full article

[gbhbl]

Album Review - Death Atlas by Cattle Decapitation (Metal Blade Records)

Album Review – Death Atlas by Cattle Decapitation (Metal Blade Records)

Cattle Decapitation have released their brand new album, and one of my most eagerly anticipated albums of the year. This is Death Atlas.

Hot on the heels of Cattle Decapitation being announced for Bloodstock Festival 2020, we get the extreme metallers 7th studio album. Released on the 29th of November via Metal Blade Records, Death Atlas follows Cattle Decapitation’s excellent 2015 album, The…

[wvlfepackmg]

Music Video: MASTICATOR - "THE KNIFE" (FT. BELISARIO DIMUZIO)

Music Video: MASTICATOR – “THE KNIFE” (FT. BELISARIO DIMUZIO)

[the-garden-of-impurity]

Cattle Decapitation

[wknc881]

Album Review: Cattle Decapitation - Death Altas

Released on November 29, 2019 (Metal Blade Records), Death Atlas is Cattle Decapitation’s eighth studio album. The band has been issuing beat-downs for two decades. Whether or not subgenres are important to you, they do help describe a band’s sound; originally categorized as Grindcore or Goregrind (Deathgrind), Cattle Decapitation’s sound and song structure made a huge leap forward with 2015’s The Anthropocene Extinction, where a more musically progressive band had evolved. Death Atlas, in one sense, is a continuation of that progression. On the other hand, those old “Core" roots are still evident in many songs on this new record, in conjunction with the atmospheric structures we heard in 2015.

Death Atlas is a beautiful beating (IMO)! In just under an hour, the listener is pulverized by the patented double-base, blastbeat ass-whoopin' one comes to expect from Cattle Decapitation, while being stretched to the point of being burst open by the harmonious Math Metal of the guitars and bass. All while experiencing the emotional agony of lyrical genius in screams, gutterals, and tortured (nearly clean) vocals. An experience is precisely what Death Atlas is! Thrown on the conveyer of slaughter, it is a fatal ride of horror through the mill of misery.

Travis Ryan masterfully delivers (as usual) the vocal onslaught, via no less than four different styles. Josh Elmore continues to amaze on lead guitar, with production and down-right power. Dave McGraw, one of the premier drummers of extreme metal, consistently beats your brains in with break-neck tempo changes, multi-count structures, and symbol combinations. Death Atlas sees the permanent addition of Belisario dimuzio (the band’s touring guitarist) as a solid rhythm guitarist with incredible talent that can’t be missed. And Olivier Pinard (Cryptopsy) is an excellent base player in his own right and is not unfamiliar with punishing the ear holes of the listener. This five-piece is a perfect storm to produce the masterpiece, Death Atlas.

The record is almost exclusively concerning the band’s perceived horrors of humanity on the environment. From the album cover, to the four “spoken word" interludes, to the lyrical content Death Atlas is an expression of this California band’s insistence that 1) humans should experience the evils that we unleash on animals and 2) Mother Nature is growing weary of the human race and will (sooner than later) eradicate its existence. And Cattle Decapitation issues images of these sentiments in vivid order. Whether or not one shares the band’s point-of-view, one definitely must respect the hell out of the way they communicate it! Even if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, you gotta love the way they say it!

Rating: 9.5/10!!

Favorite Songs: Be Still Our Bleeding Hearts; Bring Back the Plague; Death Atlas

Stay Metal, 

THE SAW 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Cattle Decapitation & Their Weird Peers

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Opening with a tape recording of “Anthropogenic: End Transmission” and their backs turned to the audience, San Diego extreme metal masters Cattle Decapitation gave a warning to the crowd before ultimate confrontation. Their new album Death Atlas and its predecessor The Anthropocene Extinction chide mankind for its adverse affect on the environment, and not just the carnivorousness that the band rejects with the lifestyles they live. They tackle everything from our consumer culture and the littering of the oceans to our self-important attitudes towards the nature that precedes us. Importantly, Thursday at Metro, the band played pretty much equally from their new and previous album. Cattle Decapitation aren’t the type of band to fall prey to the touring cycle of a specific album, decided by a record label; instead, they tour on their ideas and belief systems.

The performances themselves were, as expected, stunning, vocalist Travis Ryan able to transition from a guttural growl to a shrill trill at a moment’s notice on tracks like “The Geocide” and “Time’s Cruel Curtain”. And the new band members, guitarist Belisario Dimuzio and bassist Olivier Pinard, gave the songs mighty grooves as the band worked at a breakneck pace with minimal banter; they fit right along with guitarist Josh Elmore and drummer Dave McGraw. Overall, the pure energy they exuded provided levity to the songs’ grim subject matter but importantly didn’t belie or distract from the band’s ultimate goal. Cattle Decapitation want us to look in the mirror, not to promote blissful ignorance among the masses, and they held the ugly reflection right to our face at Metro.

The other bands to play the show were never going to be on the same ideological wavelength as Cattle Decapitation--at least as presented in their music, as there are only so many metal bands that explicitly sing about the environment--so the best bet was for something aesthetically fitting. Originally, Maryland grindcore greats Full of Hell and one-person doom project Author & Punisher were set to perform alongside Florida death metal legends Atheist and Portland extreme metal band Vitriol. Unfortunately, Full of Hell’s van was stolen earlier in the tour, and so they had to drop out. And on the day of the show, Author & Punisher’s transportation broke down. Local blackened death band Immortal Bird was set to replace FoH (I only caught the tail end of their set, but their new record Thrive on Neglect is very good and worth checking out), and at the last minute, local prog metal weirdos Gigan stepped up to replace A&P. 

It’s remarkable how much of a darker, different vibe the show would have had with the original lineup. Instead, especially Gigan, combined with Atheist's joyful thrash, the sky high side of Cattle Decapitation, and pit-inducing blasts of Vitriol, rendered the show more psychedelic, out there, and ultimately life affirming. Their songs are rife with complex time signatures and wah wah pedal wizardry; the vocals of Jerry Kavouriaris were low in the mix, perhaps unintentional but a welcome addition to the haze of the performance. Founding member Eric Hersemann is responsible for many different instruments on their recordings, and he brought even the theremin to the Metro. The structured noise of the compositions allowed the band to truly toy with your expectations, faking you out as to when they would finally end their last song. They walked off stage with the sound still going, because how would they end a set so unceasing in its ambition?

Atheist has released only four albums of their trademark technical death metal over their 30 years under the moniker. The most recent, 2010′s Jupiter, was their first in 17 years. Of the bands that played Thursday, they were the outlier in not only their longevity. For one, their tone was way less serious; vocalist Kelly Shaefer, clad in a headband and an Author & Punisher shirt, was a classic showman, holding the microphone to the crowd during choruses, miming guitar siren guitar solos, ruffling the hair of bassist Yoav Ruiz-Feingold while he played audible slaps. (Drummer Anthony Medaglia, it’s worth noting, was dressed more ridiculously, wearing a t-shirt with Nicolas Cage’s face on it and American flag shorts.) Their metal, too, was traditional, spurring of many a circle pit. “Metal don’t age; it just gets better,” Shaefer declared, introducing “Your Life’s Retribution” by saying, “Some old dogs might recognize this song.” The most rapturous audience reaction? That would be to “Mother Man”--I witnessed a fan leave the pit, out of breath, only to charge back in when he heard the song’s opening chords. As old school as they were, though, Atheist stay relevant because they live by Shaefer’s words: “Don’t be afraid to be weird.”

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Cattle Decapitation won't be releasing a new album until 2019 with new members, Belisario Dimuzio (Eukaryst) and bassist Olivier Pinard (Cryptopsy). However, you can catch them on tour this Fall in North America with Suffocation, Krisiun, and Soreption. Dates after the jump. via Scene Point Blank music news feed

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CATTLE DECAPITATION Announce New Band Members

CATTLE DECAPITATION Announce New Band Members

Photo by Pablo Montano

Currently working on the follow-up to 2015′s The Anthropocene Extinction, CATTLE DECAPITATION have officially welcomed Belisario Dimuzio (Eukaryst; guitar) and Olivier Pinard (Cryptopsy; bass) to their ranks! The band comments: “We’re pleased to announce the new lineup that will appear on our next album due out in fall 2019! Many of you who have come to our shows in the…