Review Summary: Monolith Of Maturity
Walking the streets in the poorly maintained college town I live in often leaves me feeling uneasy, from waste scattered streets, to fluid stained sidewalks; everything around me tells a disgusting story. People pass each other by, head down, as if guilty of something they don't even understand. They go about their day, just looking to get in and out of the place they were headed to return to their dwellings, only to have their being sucked into a technology vortex. Doom creeps around the corner, briefly showing it's face before being shunned away by another distraction. But it's an inevitability that everything comes to an end. We will all seemingly go out in the same way we live now: In a blaze of ignorance and denial.
"The Anthropocene Extinction" by Cattle Decapitation culminates these reflections into something grim and grisly. It explodes furiously off the bat with "Manufactured Extinct", showing it's teeth in a wide and sharp toothed grin, going straight for the throat in the most upfront and brutal track on the album. What follows is fortunately worthy of this attention grab, showing maturation and poise. It's brutal and straightforward when it wants to be, and melodic and ominous when it needs to be. The bass boils thickly like syrup underneath the guitar, often exposing itself among the wall of blazing riffs. The drums blast with an intensive rage, though always knowing when to lay back and stab gently. And the vocals. Sweet Satan, the vocals. Travis Ryan's impeccable delivery and range really seals the deal with some chilling shrieks, cleans and gurgles.
This newest release by Cattle is something familiar yet unique. Returning from
"Monolith of Inhumanity" are many of the elements that made it such a strong record. On
"Monolith" we saw a band wanting to do something different, incorporating melodic but sandpaper-like cleans into a visceral death-grind package tinged with atmosphere. What let it down a bit was that the band was holding on to too many of the gimmicks that made them so popular in the first place. Songs like "Gristle Licker", "Forced Gender Reassignment" and "Projectile Ovulation", while great songs in their own right, tended to take listeners out of the continuity of the album with their straightforward delivery and shocking lyrics. On
"Anthropocene Extinction", we see these elements incorporated more fluidly, setting the theme of the album at an appropriate pace.
"We had it all
The whole of Eden in our hands
The privilege of existence
The ubiquitous lay of the land" -"Mammals in Babylon"
There are a few detours along the way to track 12, taking a break from the metallic assault of the biting, fierce guitar and blast beats to deliver some brooding atmosphere. Cuts like the instrumentally murky "The Burden Of Seven Billion" and completely clean sung and acoustic "Ave Exitium" serve as a much needed reflection from the onslaught of the rest of the tracks. Spoken word finds its way on here with "Prophets of Loss" ft. Phillip Anselmo and on "Pacific Grim" with Jurgen Bartsch of
Bethlehem. Unlike the self aware and obvious guest vocals we see on a lot of Death Metal records, they compliment each tracks' feeling well, aiding them like a Satanic priest reciting a ritual. Another anticipated collab, with
Author and Punisher's Tristan Shone, is unfortunately short lived though ultimately welcomed. His uniquely distorted industrial sound only serves as the intro on the evil and catchy "Plagueborn". Though the song is still strong without much influence from Tristan, I can't help but imagine how great more elements of his sound would have worked here to great effect. And on this note, this is ultimately the drawback here.
Though a cohesive and titanic outing from the San Diego based deathgrind band, there's still a little bit of lost potential on this album. Tracks 8-10 are suffering from the lack of diversity shown between the rest of the songs. To be clear, they aren't weak tracks by any means ("Apex Blasphemy" is actually a standout track flexing some black metal muscles) but are just relatively straightforward. Since we're allowed so many passages between the sonic fury early on, they feel a little more tedious without the proper room to breathe. Fortunately the excellent closing of "Ave Exitium" and "Pacific Grim" are well worth the wait, closing the album in a haunting way akin to "Monolith" and "Kingdom of Tyrants" from
"Monolith of Inhumanity". Overall, The
"Anthropocene Extinction" feels like a more polished and focused
"Monolith", living up to expectations but not quite exceeding them. It does however capture the dark nature of the theme with cutthroat brutality, malicious vibes and sharp complexity, adding up to what would most certainly be the most engaging if not best death metal album of the year.
4.25/5
