A small, but disturbing sight of what the world could end up becoming because of us humans.
Given that Cattle Decapitation deals with a lot of gruesomely misanthropic themes, this isn't too surprising. Seriously, their music (and videos) are so terrifying that listing every last example would be truly exhausting to fit outside its own page. Even their non-gory songs are still likely to trigger your eco-anxiety
.
In general:
- Most of their album covers easily qualify. Special mention should go to the first four major releases (from Human Jerky to Humanure), with Humanure's cover being so revolting that a censored version had to be made in order for it to be sold at the time of its initial release.
- As with all deathgrind bands, their lyrics can be potentially vomit-inducing at times with the over-the-top gore, but the song "Regret and the Grave" is the most unsettling. Adding to that is the sound of the piercing shriek of the guitars that will keep you awake for hours, and that's not even counting the especially inhuman-sounding vocals.
- While Travis Ryan is a very mellow, down-to-earth person offstage, he can be pretty unnerving onstage.
To Serve Man:
- The intro of "Testicular Manslaughter" is an audio snippet of an actual decapitation (specifically, from a video of a Russian soldier being beheaded with a knife). It's just as bad as it sounds. The song's lyrics can be considered Nightmare Fuel too, though the fact that they're about castrating a rapist may take the edge off for some.
Humanure:
- "Men Before Swine" closes the album out with an incredibly unnerving sound collage of noises from an actual slaughterhouse. The worst thing is, this goes on for nine minutes.
The Harvest Floor:
- "The Harvest Floor/Regret & the Grave". The former serves as an intro of sorts and is an ominous ambient piece with Jarboe chanting wordlessly over it, while the latter starts with a hypnotic bassline and tribal-esque drum pattern before a very eerie cello line starts over it. Then the guitars kick in, along with Travis' roar, and you know that something's coming. It does... in the form of a ear-piercingly screechy lead riff. The whole thing borders on trauma that will keep you awake for hours.
Monolith of Inhumanity:
- This album kicks it a notch further. First off, there's the downright traumatizing video for "Kingdom of Tyrants". It's not just that, though; pretty much every single song on the album has some sort of deeply unsettling moment.
- The chorus of "Your Disposal", as catchy as it is, likely takes the cake out of all the moments in the album. Let's face it, Travis' "clean" vocals are rather uncanny in general.
- While "Forced Gender Reassignment" isn't particularly unsettling as a song (it's a pretty straightforward deathgrind song, even though the lyrics will qualify as this anyways to uninitiated or sensitive people), the video is, well... let's put it this way: it's a fairly faithful reproduction of the lyrics. Sans Gory Discretion Shots. Let that sink in for a moment. The fact that the victims in the video are Westboro Baptist Church expies only barely makes things better due to how disproportionate the suffering they receive is.
- "Dead Set on Suicide"'s high shrieks sound like a gathering of demons having their tongues ripped out. It's magnificent.
The Anthropocene Extinction:
- "Pacific Grim" is, in a word, apocalyptic. It's structured like the final chapter of humanity as it slides from desperation to resignation, and the song feels like a twisted funeral hymn....And when there's nowhere to hide
Death comes with the tide...
Death Atlas:
- Death Atlas is a Concept Album about how humanity has irreversibly damaged the environment, and how an apocalyptic scenario is now inevitable. Despite not having any gore-themed songs, it can still leave you feeling thoroughly disturbed, due to how it suggests that all of mankind could be wiped out in the near future, that there's nothing we'll be able do about it, and that we deserve this fate for our awful treatment of the environment. And unlike any fictional serial killer or psycho that the band could have written about, the threat described in these lyrics is very, very real.We deserve everything that's coming
We deserve everything that's coming
We deserve everything that's coming
We took this world to our graves
Terrasite:
- "A Photic Doom". Never has a song about the sun been so bleak and grim, what with the lyrics describing the horrors of solar radiation beating down on a planet without an ozone layer to protect it and the nocturnal, troglodytic existence the Terrasites live thanks to humanity's wastefulness.
