Cattle Decapitation 'Death Atlas' review

Cattle Decapitation 'Death Atlas' Album review Reviewed by Seth Metoyer I can't get enough of this band or album. Cattle Decapitation always bring the pain and brutality with every release, but Death Atlas is their magnum opus. A well orchestrated mixture of heavy hitting guitars, crushing beats and crazy sporadic vocalizations forged with melodically written song structures. The band just created their masterpiece.

The first couple of listens through Death Atlas I was not particularly excited about the narrative speaking parts of the album. Including the song right out of the gate, Anthropogenic: End Transmission. I mean yes it fits with the scientifically theosophic theme of the album but I'm just personally not a fan of the "broadcast" type of spoken word parts separating songs. It tends to jolt me out of the musical listening experience. These vocal speaking parts also occur on The Great Dying, Pt. 1, Pt. 2 and The Unerasable Past (although there's an eerie beautiful piano and clean vocal part in the song). However, after a few listens I've become used to that aspect and am not as bothered by them as I was initially.

Travis Ryan's vocal style continues to evolve and get more fine tuned after each release. Everything from the gutterals to "demon screeching" vocals I always refer to as sort-of-kind-of "Kind Diamond-esq". Ryan's vocals are layered harmoniously well when performing the different styles, overlay perfectly on top of one another by the producer.

Cattle Decapitation guitar tones are probably my favorite in the death metal genre, possibly next to Aborted's tones. The signature guitar tones here are once again blazing throughout the entire album. In fact the guitar tones have been one of my favorite tones in the genre for years now. They just work and make you want to rip faces off while pummeling through the mosh pit. The drums are set at a blistering pace through most of the album. It's a double bass bukkake fest. There's immense song structure here and even more melodic musical direction than previous albums. Also, did you get a look at the killer cover artwork by Wes Benscoter? Insanely creative and really ties the whole project up in nice little death metal bow. I'd point out some top tracks but I think at this point it might be a disservice to the whole album. All the tracks are tight and the album needs to be ingested in its entirety in order to digest the full expanse of what we're dealing with here.

The production on Death Atlas is top notch. In fact Producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio hit this one out of the park. The production is spacious, crisp, booming and full bodied up and down every track. It's a magnificent audio mix across the board. You don't want to miss this massive release from Metal Blade Records. Get it here or find it on streaming services.

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Seth Metoyer is the owner and audio engineer at AAMM (Affordable Audio Mixing and Mastering). Find Seth on Twitter or Facebook or email metoyermedia@gmail.com.