### Cattle Decapitation: Humanure

#### 10/03/09 || theProphet

I once saw some real cattle decapitation in a documentary shot in a slaughterhouse in Iran, and that was some seriously fucked up shit for real. Now, I’m not exactly keeping away from the steaks, but I respect those who do, as long as they don’t get all holier than thou on me. Anyways, I think that Cattle Decapitation has successfully established a cool and pretty original image as misanthropic, vegetarian gore-grinders, and I’ve had a soft spot for these guys ever since I first heard of them.

What we have here is their second release on Metal Blade, namely the exquisitely titled “Humanure”, an album featuring, amongst other things, one of the most banned album covers in the world. On this record, Cattle Decapitation, had completely abandoned the below-one-minute grind tracks, which were pretty much gone on “To Serve Man” as well, but then the songs were still pretty short, rarely above three minutes. The longer format suits the band well, since CD always had a bit of a penchant for unusual arrangements and riffs that I really don’t see working that well in 30 second blastfests. What we get here are some standard, groovy death metal riffs, some proggier, groovy death metal riffs, as well as some black metallish melodies strewn here and there, with everything then being topped by fast to very fast drumming.

The vocals are competent as well, Travis Ryan handles both low grunts and more high pitched screams well, though a bit more power could be desired in the lower register. Cattle Decapitation’s lyrical themes revolve much around humans being subjected to the same treatment as cattle in slaughterhouses and the band’s general disgust of the meat industry, for example lacking hygiene and shit like that. Also, CD appears to have quite the fascination of the rectal area since a great deal of the lyrics feature some sort of coprophilia.

Production-wise “Humanure” is above decent, though it’s definitely not the clearest production around. The bass could of course be more audible and it wouldn’t have hurt with a somewhat sharper guitar sound. In any case, it does not leave me wanting, and I guess that’s what important. However, the band gets a big minus for the final “outro” song “Men Before Swine”, since this 11 minute track is just noise coupled with screaming pigs. Having actual pigs doing the screaming is at least better than having some fucking idiot trying to emulate the sound of swine, but seriously, if I’d want to listen to shit like this, I’d listen to some Gnaw Their Tongues while visiting an abattoir.

“Humanure” gets 6,5 or 7 lips and assholes out of 10. A good death metal album by all means.

- Information
- Released: 2004
- Label: Metal Blade
- Website: www.cattledecapitation.com
- Band
- Travis Ryan: vocals
- Josh Elmore: guitar
- Troy Oftedal: bass
- Michael Laughlin: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Scatology Domine (intro)
- 02. Humanure
- 03. Reduced to Paste
- 04. Bukkake Tsunami
- 05. Cloacula: The Anthropophagic Copromantik
- 06. Chummified
- 07. Applied Human Defragmentation
- 08. The Earthling
- 09. Polyps
- 10. Lips & Assholes
- 11. Men Before Swine (outro)