Cattle Decapitation couldn’t have released a better tenth album than this, the band has continually set benchmark after benchmark in death metal whether it has been their protogrind beginnings right to the obsidian darkness of the more progressive ‘Death Atlas’ which I can’t believe is already four years old. Conceptually the band has always been at the forefront of wielding plenty of messages both on the visual cover arts but also lyrically and let’s face it in today’s world there is no shortage of things to write about as the band has changed tack slightly by adopting a concept of how us human beings are utterly destroying this world. The album’s title is a play on the word parasite with terra meaning earth and site being derived from the Greek sitos which means food, hence ‘Terrasite’.
The album radiates ingenuity like all their previous albums but here we get something a little lighter in tone yet saturated in their incomparable sense of violence as ‘Terrasitic Adaptation’ kicks things off where a short intro piece feeds into the song’s savagely intense blast that follows. At times terrorizing courtesy of Travis’s unique vocal styling the opener even boasts a slight blackened feathering to the riffing.
Looking at the cover art makes you stare at it fixedly, the malformed insectoid/humanoid creature looks incredibly sad, even anxious or scared as once again Wes Benscoter produces something as disturbing as it is alluring and for me the cover art links to ‘We Eat Our Young’ where that ridiculous intensity is tuneful, but battering, yet embedded with an atmospheric touch. That atmospheric aura is something that manifest on ‘Death Atlas’ and has been uplifted slightly to ensure the songs are different yet the trademark Cattle Decapitation rampage we expect. Like all recent albums by the band Travis’s vocals add so much to how the songs feel, the tonal gradations are unique as he veers from the gut churning bellows to clean shouts usually within the songs, texturizing everything above and beyond other death metal bands.
Pulverising the living daylights out of you is ‘Scourge Of The Offspring’ where an opaque density ensues even though the song is slower than the first couple and links with the outright demolition of ‘The Insignifcants’. Again, the vocal tones add some theatre to the brutalising approach as here Travis seems to shift his laryngeal abilities towards a more gothic tone, unless it is a guest I’m hearing, though I doubt it. The unrestrained ferocity of ‘The Storm Upstairs’ is packed with groove, something the album has in droves as I particularly liked ‘A Photic Doom’ where the songs avalanche of double bass is hooked into an almost cinematic intensity and prowess. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t some sort of symphonic outburst the band has adopted, it is more to do with atmosphere as the song links brilliantly with ‘Dead End Residents’ where a change in pace is felt plus the tune has a far eerier toning that reminded me of Nile.
‘Solastalgia’ is the penultimate track here and continues the unrelenting nature but ingrains plenty of atmospherics with their own brand of catchiness. However the talking point of the album is going to be the closer, the ten minute plus colossal epic titled ‘Just Another Body’, a song dedicated to loss as the band lost two close friends namely Gabe Serbian and Trevor Srnad, with the former being a founding member of the band and the latter, of course, being the vocalist of The Black Dahlia Murder. The song is steeped in dolefulness as the piano opening leads the song down avenues atmospheric sombreness yet possessing an air of powerful animosity. The song builds up wonderfully, layering on intensity with each passing minutes and even seconds as that Nile touch rears up again periodically. The song is breath-taking, drenched in emotive suffering but chained to how this band utilises gradations in intensity and climaxes the album superbly.
Once again Cattle Decapitation have written and recorded an album that will be the envy of their peers not just for this year but for years to come. The release comes as a sort of renovation and rejuvenation and the results are staggering from start to finish. An essential death metal album for 2023 and this decade.
(9.5/10 Martin Harris)
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