Cattle Decapitation

Easily one of the sickest album covers I’ve ever seen (although it looks too computerised) adorns Cattle Decapitation’s anticipated second Metal Blade album (fourth overall). These CA sickos have honed their gore-grind skills down to perfection now; harnessing the early Carcass sound and adding in modern death metal ingredients, CD are one of the best doing this sound today. Songs like the horrific "Cloacula: The Anthropophagic Copromantik” and "Lips & Assholes” are wonderfully constructed burbles of grindcore, beats blasting away, the dual vocal attack relentless. New drummer Michael Laughlin fits in the fold just fine, using the skills he learned in Creation Is Crucifixion to skilfully blast his way through the album’s nine songs. The riffs are usually wonderfully simplistic and catchy, the band not concerned with technical flair, instead sticking with the tried and true. Even better than their last album, Humanure has a good production sound behind the songs, which, to be fair, all blend into each other after a while. But it’s a wonderful blend, done to perfection, all the while subtly serving as a vehicle for the band’s vegetarian-oriented message, which is the icing on the cake. All this and brains too, Cattle Decapitation are carrying the original idea of Carcass better than anyone else ever has.