Review Summary: Long live the stench
“Long live the stench” declares Cattle Decapitation on their second full length album Homovore. At less then 22 minutes Homovore has all of the essential ingredients of a typical grindcore album released in the year 2000. It features disgusting lyrics, brutal riffage, and fast drumming.
The highlight of the album is, or course, the lyrics. A look at the tracklist reveals such charming song titles as “Joined At The Ass” and “Carnal Fecophelia Due To Prolonged Exposure To Methane.” The song titles are backed up by mouthwatering lyrics such as the following.
Rotting meat-a tasty midnight snack
Freshly decomposed
Slurping the slop that's still in the ass
This is not the album to listen to before eating (especially meat). The purpose of the lyrics seems to be to gross out and horrify the listener, and at that Cattle Decapitation is successful. Unfortunately, that is all that the band is successful at on this album.
Travis Ryan’s vocals on Homovore are subpar. He does nothing to distinguish himself from the rest of the grindcore scene here. Ryan uses standard grindcore style growls and screams for the entirety of the album. There is little to no variation in his vocals. The lyrics are mostly incomprehensible. Ryan is present on the album, but nothing more. This is disappointing as it is clear on Cattle Decapitation’s later albums that he is capable of much more.
Similarly to the vocals, the instrumental components of Homovore are pretty forgettable. The band has made no progress since their previous album Human Jerky. In fact, they have regressed. The guitar playing is bland, with no memorable riffs. The album also has poor production. The songs all sound identical. Thankfully they are short. Homovore is overshadowed in every way by Pig Destroyer’s 38 Counts of Battery released that same year.
On Homovore, Cattle Decapitation essentially deliver a poor imitation of Carcass albums such as Symphonies of Sickness and Reek of Putrefaction. The only redeemable quality of Homovore is the shock value of the lyrics. However, in the year 2000 this style of gross lyrics had already been done better by bands such as Carcass and Pig Destroyer. There are few hints here of the greatness the band would later go on to achieve with fantastic future releases such as Death Atlas. Homovore is an interesting item in Cattle Decapitation’s history, but there is nothing here worth returning to.
