Cattle Decapitation "Humanure" CD
[Metal Blade]
Damn, these songs are longer, tighter, more technical, and certainly more death metal oriented than anything this band has done in the past. Sadly what I imagine would be some fucking nice tunes are really harmed by what I feel is a rather lifeless recording and a very flawed mix. The tones themselves are okay, but sort of flat and lacking roundness, and I can't really deal with the mix because the vocals are often way too fucking loud, and there's a lot of messy midrange hovering around. These guys have never really nailed the perfect sound for what they're doing, but I'm definitely more bothered by this than I was by the minor issues with "To Serve Man" - not only because this does sound a bit more annoying, but because the playing and writing here is so strong that it's a crying shame it gets lost in large part on the production. Vocally the tracks are still crammed with insane layering and changeups between sick growls and screams all over the place, and for the first time I'm noticing a major (but more textured) Deicide comparison, possibly because the music here is so much faster and flurried with technical runs (think "Legion"). I like the writing here better though because the riffing is more diverse from straight death metal tremolo picking and blazing lead styled runs to dissonant chords and thrashier rhythms as well as a better variance of tempo changes as compared to the last record. Just check out the fucked up chords and quick changes in "Cloacula: The Anthropophagic Copromantik" for evidence of that. And "Chummified" is one of the most memorable and energetic tracks full of blazing speed that I've heard in quite some time! I'm also a big proponent of the (almost out of place they're so surprising) raging thrash rhythms in "Applied Human Defragmentation", so... there are some golden moments here. Visually, I'm honestly not that into the layout either. The concept of a cow shitting out human remains is pretty funny, and it does look nasty, but it's still mildly goofy and just not too interesting visually, as a whole. Part of that is due to the color scheme and typefaces, as well as the odd quality of some of the band photos, but it's not so bad... it's just not as solid as their debut LP, which still looks amazing compared to everything else they've done. As expected the lyrics get into extreme detail with lots of creative words, even breaking out one of my personal favorite pieces of urination terminology: Micturate. Of course the content deals with the inferiority of man and his gluttonous nature, in no uncertain terms, "Prey that mankind comes to a stop, Bottom feeder worked its way to the top, The primordial waste which we're from, Look at it and what we have done..." I'm torn here. Musically I think this is the band's most promising work to date in some ways, but the recording, while not awful, honestly does put a huge damper on this work. In my mind it's essential for these guys to put more emphasis on the instrumentation than the vocals, and work on a clear, forceful mix... especially considering that now they've really grown into some ripping players. I don't know... a potentially killer record restrained to the "merely good" category here. Hopefully they'll totally nail it on the next shot. (6/10)
Running time - 47:27, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: Chummified, Applied Human Defragmentation]
Metal Blade Records - http://www.metalblade.com

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