Trollheart takes on "1001 Metal Albums You Must Hear Before You Die"

Trollheart · 08-20-2015, 05:57 PM

The Album in Depth

Well it starts off encouragingly enough, with a big dark keyboard and then punching guitar but quite slower than I had expected. It speeds up then of course, with the vocal unsurprisingly being barely discernible as words, and if Travis Ryan wanted to sound like the animals whose cause he champions then he couldn't have made a better attempt. I'll never make out any lyrics so I've got the sheet here, and to be honest they're pretty damn well thought out. Lines like ”Pale horse on the horizons/ The blood of billions staining the scythe” give an nice apocalyptic view of things, while ”Predators of the self” is I feel a very clever line. Even those who stand by and don't get involved fail to escape, as he bellows ”Damn the embracers of neutrality/ Fellow future fossils!”

This, then, is “The carbon stampede”, and while it hurtles along it's certainly not as chaotic as some grindcore I've heard. There are moments where it almost slows down to a sort of march, and there's definite melody of a sort in there. The whole thing smoulders with rage and accusation, with the Four Horsemen making an appearance at the end, as things turn a little slower and almost kind of anthemic. Blasting back to full power with “Dead set on suicide”, where Ryan sneers ”Turning the other cheek never worked in the wild/ You'd be a meal in seconds!” and goes on to rag on the tired old target of Christianity --- ”Now see this Jesus Christ/ A thorn in the side of right” eventually making the connection ”Jesus Christ is suicide!” Ah, poor old J-man! He gets such a tough ride from heavy metal, doesn't he? It's an interesting fact that, though I could not make out any words Ryan was singing, when I looked at the lyrics and then listened, I could; I could hear him singing the words. So it's a case not of being able to work out what he's singing but of knowing what he's singing and then straining to hear the words, which does work, after a fashion.

The music? Oh that's all loud, fast, frenetic and kind of blurs together, though the guy on guitar really knows how to play. Interestingly, Ryan's voice goes higher here (unless someone else is also joining in on the vocals) and the music does sort of slow down with a kind of death roar from what is perhaps the chorus, as Ryan's voice gets more sibilant and evil. Let's just say these guys won't be likely to be meeting Slayer at the church on Sunday any time soon, unless they're also hooking up with Varg and are carrying petrol cans... I do like the clever lyricism, almost poetry, like ”Blood into wine/ But all is fair in blood and gore”. Can't say the same about “A living, breathing piece of defecating meat” --- the lyric doesn't impress me and there's just so much self-hatred there that it's hard to read. The music hammers along but also slows down at certain points and there's even a guitar solo of sorts.

One of the single most annoying and self-satisfied creatures on the Earth: A Vegan

I confess I don't understand the idea behind “Forced gender reassignment”. Seems to be more a song about sexual torture, whereas I thought it might be about the idea of being born into the body of one gender while feeling you belong to another. I guess sympathy for such a condition was a little too much to expect. Some of the lyrics here make Slayer's seem mild by comparison! I feel they're too graphic and don't intend to write any (yeah I know: pussy) and so on to “Gristle licker”, which does at least paraphrase Oppenheimer when Ryan snarls ”I am become death, destroyer of humans” Possibly very appropriate, as the “father of the atom bomb” was quoting the Hindu god Shiva when he said that. The guitars get so fast here they actually squeal while Ryan growls and roars and slavers, then it slows down on a sort of marching punching beat, and again we get something very like a guitar solo, almost neo-classical at times, before it takes off again. There's actually quite a catchy melody in the final moments of this song, something which totally took me by surprise.

I do apologise for the lack of musical description here, but you guys know how I loathe grindcore and to be fair it's very hard to describe, as there's little real variation in it at all. So I'm doing the best I can and again this is why I need Batty to help me here. Women get it next in “Projectile Ovulation”, where they're blamed --- but in fairness, only partially --- for the birth of man, with lines like ”The uterus as weapon” and ”One half of the reason for overpopulation”. It does seem odd however to make a statement as they do at the end which says ”All genders, all humans are disgusting wretched pigs for the slaughter” --- firstly, I thought they loved all animals so why are pigs “disgusting”? And secondly, don't they realise they are humans too? So they're advocating their own destruction? Lot of self-hate here it would seem.

Probably nobody who listens to Cattle Decapitation bothers to take too much notice of the lyrics, but they're pretty self-defeating really. You can't curse your own race: what happens to you? You're a part of that race. Sure, this is no perfect world and there are horrors being perpetrated across it every single minute of every single day, and some of that needs to be addressed, but this is about as dark and pessimistic as it gets. It's not that it's necessarily upsetting me, but it certainly does make the sun shine just a little more weakly and less friendly as I write. Still, as they say, it's only rock'n'roll, innit?

The guy knows what he's talking about though, even if his argument is what I suppose Frownland would call a strawman, and he knows how to use some good references, as when he speaks of the snake Ouroboros in “Lifestalker”, and declares "We're all undertakers, rapists, future failures”. Really gives you the incentive to go on, doesn't it? What ever happened to songs about fluffy bunnies? Or at least, beer and women's legs? But then we get lines like ”Life is a nightmare/ I'm living a lifemare” in “Do not resuscitate” and later in “Your disposal” we hear the title of the album when he sneers ”There stands the monolith of inhumanity/An indestructible testimony to a technological society.” Interestingly, “Lifestalker” changes for a short minute or so into almost a traditional metal song, ie I can hear the melody, make out the lyric. Doesn't last of course, but it's a nice change and shows there's certainly some versatility within the band. We get this during “Your disposal” too, when it's almost like Noddy Holder has gone metal! Oh, and the song fucking FADES!!!

Above: How to seriously piss off Travis Ryan!

“The Monolith”, then, is a short song, in terms of lyrics, with only eight lines in all, and very slow and atmopsheric for once. Quite a shock to be honest: I hadn't expected anything at all like this. Ryan's vocal is quite excellent, now that for once I can make it out, and the pain and anguish in it leaks into every word. He recreates the myth of human religion with his characteristic snarling twist as he grits ”Here in the garden we know not what to do/ Made to lie in pastures green/Left to die unclean/ If we were promised Heaven then why put them through Hell?/ If we were promised Heaven then why are we in Hell?” I'm not entirely sure if he's referring to humans here or animals (“Lying in pastures of green”) but he revisits this theme even more darkly when he reaches the final track, where everything goes back to normal, ie lightspeed guitar with screaming and growling, and in “Kingdom of tyrants” he puts yet another twist on the lyric: ”Here in the garden we know not what to do/ Made to lie in pastures of filth/Left to die, guilty of nothing/ If we were promised Heaven then why are we in Hell?” Why indeed? After hearing this album I kind of feel like I've visited that dark place.

As I can't really talk too much about the music and much of the lyrics are too visceral for me, I'd like to fill up more space by challenging Travis Ryan's ideology, his vision of a perfect world where nobody eats meat. I'm going to assume the “humans must die” thing is not all that serious: after all, if he or one of his bandmembers were to have a child, do I really believe they would look on it as a thing of disgust? Or if their friends have children, do they turn their stomachs when they see them? I think it's fair to assume that that part of the message is for shock value mostly; I can't believe they actually feel that way. If they do, why go on living? So let's put that to one side and look at the possibilities in a non-meat-eating world.

I see three major problems with this: one, I doubt everyone can subsist on vegetables, roots and berries. Some people are weaker or sicker than others and need meat in their diet. Two, if we were to stop slaughtering animals for food, and assuming they kept breeding naturally, would we not soon be fighting them for living space and natural resources? Don't cows release methane into the atmosphere, and couldn't a herd of sheep, horses or cows eat far more than we could, eating all the grain and drinking all the water? I've nothing again vegetarians, but I think it's impractical to think everyone could live that way. Finally, what about the consequences to the economy? If everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow, burger chains like MacDonalds would close (hooray) with the resultant loss of millions if not billions of jobs, a massive downturn in the economy as farmers found they could not earn a living, and the whole industry built on consumerism and food would collapse, plunging us into some terrible dark age. Is this what Cattle Decapitation want?

Full tracklistlng and ratings (all lyrics by Travis Ryan, all music by Cattle Decapitation)

1. The carbon stampede (3:39)
2. Dead set on suicide (3:18)
3. A living, breathing piece of defecating meat (2:58)
4. Forced gender reassignment (3:54)
5. Gristle licker (4:54)
6. Projectile ovulation (3:31)
7. Lifestalker (4:15)
8. Do not resuscitate (3:18)
9. Your disposal (4:47)
10. The Monolith (3:39)
11. Kingdom of tyrants (4:50)

Album total running time: 43:03

Bonus track on Japanese edition

1. An exposition of insides (3:36)

Final word: There are no doubt going to be many albums like this, that simply do not speak to me either musically or lyrically. This one has nothing for me: while I agree that Ryan is a clever and accomplished wordsmith I do not share his point of view in any way, and his lyrics make me feel disgusted, ashamed and guilty. At the same time, I am not about to give up meat and eat (shudder) vegetables for the rest of my life. So in terms of his and Cattle Decapitation's message, which can certainly be seen to be arrogant and pushy, all I have to say is fuck you guys, I'll eat what I like.

And remember, if it had half a chance a cow would kill you and everyone you care about!

Oh, and I hated the music too. Mostly.

Final rating (mostly for the lyrics):

Note: The ratings here are a personal thing. They're based not only on how well known the album is and how well it's played and written, but how much, if at all, I enjoyed it. There is no need to take my ratings as gospel, and if you want to hear from actual fans of albums I rate low, then check the list and read what the people who put them on that list have to say about them. Now go away and let me eat my burger!

Wpnfire · 08-20-2015, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trollheart

As I can't really talk too much about the music and much of the lyrics are too visceral for me, I'd like to fill up more space by challenging Travis Ryan's ideology

you just can't ever stop making more work for yourself can you?

Trollheart · 08-21-2015, 05:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wpnfire

you just can't ever stop making more work for yourself can you?

It's not that (but yes): I couldn't see myself discussing the music like I did with the Maiden one so I wanted to make sure there was some sort of informed review. Also, yes, I felt like challenging the whole idea of "people eat meat bad, people no eat meat good." It's not as black and white as they make it out to be. Finally, I needed something to distract me from the terrible music and nasty lyrics...

08-20-2015, 05:57 PM	#1 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,996	The Album in Depth Well it starts off encouragingly enough, with a big dark keyboard and then punching guitar but quite slower than I had expected. It speeds up then of course, with the vocal unsurprisingly being barely discernible as words, and if Travis Ryan wanted to sound like the animals whose cause he champions then he couldn't have made a better attempt. I'll never make out any lyrics so I've got the sheet here, and to be honest they're pretty damn well thought out. Lines like ”Pale horse on the horizons/ The blood of billions staining the scythe” give an nice apocalyptic view of things, while ”Predators of the self” is I feel a very clever line. Even those who stand by and don't get involved fail to escape, as he bellows ”Damn the embracers of neutrality/ Fellow future fossils!” This, then, is “The carbon stampede”, and while it hurtles along it's certainly not as chaotic as some grindcore I've heard. There are moments where it almost slows down to a sort of march, and there's definite melody of a sort in there. The whole thing smoulders with rage and accusation, with the Four Horsemen making an appearance at the end, as things turn a little slower and almost kind of anthemic. Blasting back to full power with “Dead set on suicide”, where Ryan sneers ”Turning the other cheek never worked in the wild/ You'd be a meal in seconds!” and goes on to rag on the tired old target of Christianity --- ”Now see this Jesus Christ/ A thorn in the side of right” eventually making the connection ”Jesus Christ is suicide!” Ah, poor old J-man! He gets such a tough ride from heavy metal, doesn't he? It's an interesting fact that, though I could not make out any words Ryan was singing, when I looked at the lyrics and then listened, I could; I could hear him singing the words. So it's a case not of being able to work out what he's singing but of knowing what he's singing and then straining to hear the words, which does work, after a fashion. The music? Oh that's all loud, fast, frenetic and kind of blurs together, though the guy on guitar really knows how to play. Interestingly, Ryan's voice goes higher here (unless someone else is also joining in on the vocals) and the music does sort of slow down with a kind of death roar from what is perhaps the chorus, as Ryan's voice gets more sibilant and evil. Let's just say these guys won't be likely to be meeting Slayer at the church on Sunday any time soon, unless they're also hooking up with Varg and are carrying petrol cans... I do like the clever lyricism, almost poetry, like ”Blood into wine/ But all is fair in blood and gore”. Can't say the same about “A living, breathing piece of defecating meat” --- the lyric doesn't impress me and there's just so much self-hatred there that it's hard to read. The music hammers along but also slows down at certain points and there's even a guitar solo of sorts. *One of the single most annoying and self-satisfied creatures on the Earth: A Vegan* I confess I don't understand the idea behind “Forced gender reassignment”. Seems to be more a song about sexual torture, whereas I thought it might be about the idea of being born into the body of one gender while feeling you belong to another. I guess sympathy for such a condition was a little too much to expect. Some of the lyrics here make Slayer's seem mild by comparison! I feel they're too graphic and don't intend to write any (yeah I know: pussy) and so on to “Gristle licker”, which does at least paraphrase Oppenheimer when Ryan snarls ”I am become death, destroyer of humans” Possibly very appropriate, as the “father of the atom bomb” was quoting the Hindu god Shiva when he said that. The guitars get so fast here they actually squeal while Ryan growls and roars and slavers, then it slows down on a sort of marching punching beat, and again we get something very like a guitar solo, almost neo-classical at times, before it takes off again. There's actually quite a catchy melody in the final moments of this song, something which totally took me by surprise. I do apologise for the lack of musical description here, but you guys know how I loathe grindcore and to be fair it's very hard to describe, as there's little real variation in it at all. So I'm doing the best I can and again this is why I need Batty to help me here. Women get it next in “Projectile Ovulation”, where they're blamed --- but in fairness, only partially --- for the birth of man, with lines like ”The uterus as weapon” and ”One half of the reason for overpopulation”. It does seem odd however to make a statement as they do at the end which says ”All genders, all humans are disgusting wretched pigs for the slaughter” --- firstly, I thought they loved all animals so why are pigs “disgusting”? And secondly, don't they realise they are humans too? So they're advocating their own destruction? Lot of self-hate here it would seem. Probably nobody who listens to Cattle Decapitation bothers to take too much notice of the lyrics, but they're pretty self-defeating really. You can't curse your own race: what happens to you? You're a part of that race. Sure, this is no perfect world and there are horrors being perpetrated across it every single minute of every single day, and some of that needs to be addressed, but this is about as dark and pessimistic as it gets. It's not that it's necessarily upsetting me, but it certainly does make the sun shine just a little more weakly and less friendly as I write. Still, as they say, it's only rock'n'roll, innit? The guy knows what he's talking about though, even if his argument is what I suppose Frownland would call a strawman, and he knows how to use some good references, as when he speaks of the snake Ouroboros in “Lifestalker”, and declares "We're all undertakers, rapists, future failures”. Really gives you the incentive to go on, doesn't it? What ever happened to songs about fluffy bunnies? Or at least, beer and women's legs? But then we get lines like ”Life is a nightmare/ I'm living a lifemare” in “Do not resuscitate” and later in “Your disposal” we hear the title of the album when he sneers ”There stands the monolith of inhumanity/An indestructible testimony to a technological society.” Interestingly, “Lifestalker” changes for a short minute or so into almost a traditional metal song, ie I can hear the melody, make out the lyric. Doesn't last of course, but it's a nice change and shows there's certainly some versatility within the band. We get this during “Your disposal” too, when it's almost like Noddy Holder has gone metal! Oh, and the song fucking FADES!!! Above: How to seriously piss off Travis Ryan! “The Monolith”, then, is a short song, in terms of lyrics, with only eight lines in all, and very slow and atmopsheric for once. Quite a shock to be honest: I hadn't expected anything at all like this. Ryan's vocal is quite excellent, now that for once I can make it out, and the pain and anguish in it leaks into every word. He recreates the myth of human religion with his characteristic snarling twist as he grits ”Here in the garden we know not what to do/ Made to lie in pastures green/Left to die unclean/ If we were promised Heaven then why put them through Hell?/ If we were promised Heaven then why are we in Hell?” I'm not entirely sure if he's referring to humans here or animals (“Lying in pastures of green”) but he revisits this theme even more darkly when he reaches the final track, where everything goes back to normal, ie lightspeed guitar with screaming and growling, and in “Kingdom of tyrants” he puts yet another twist on the lyric: ”Here in the garden we know not what to do/ Made to lie in pastures of filth/Left to die, guilty of nothing/ If we were promised Heaven then why are we in Hell?” Why indeed? After hearing this album I kind of feel like I've visited that dark place. As I can't really talk too much about the music and much of the lyrics are too visceral for me, I'd like to fill up more space by challenging Travis Ryan's ideology, his vision of a perfect world where nobody eats meat. I'm going to assume the “humans must die” thing is not all that serious: after all, if he or one of his bandmembers were to have a child, do I really believe they would look on it as a thing of disgust? Or if their friends have children, do they turn their stomachs when they see them? I think it's fair to assume that that part of the message is for shock value mostly; I can't believe they actually feel that way. If they do, why go on living? So let's put that to one side and look at the possibilities in a non-meat-eating world. I see three major problems with this: one, I doubt everyone can subsist on vegetables, roots and berries. Some people are weaker or sicker than others and need meat in their diet. Two, if we were to stop slaughtering animals for food, and assuming they kept breeding naturally, would we not soon be fighting them for living space and natural resources? Don't cows release methane into the atmosphere, and couldn't a herd of sheep, horses or cows eat far more than we could, eating all the grain and drinking all the water? I've nothing again vegetarians, but I think it's impractical to think everyone could live that way. Finally, what about the consequences to the economy? If everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow, burger chains like MacDonalds would close (hooray) with the resultant loss of millions if not billions of jobs, a massive downturn in the economy as farmers found they could not earn a living, and the whole industry built on consumerism and food would collapse, plunging us into some terrible dark age. Is this what Cattle Decapitation want? Full tracklistlng and ratings (all lyrics by Travis Ryan, all music by Cattle Decapitation) 1. The carbon stampede (3:39) 2. Dead set on suicide (3:18) 3. A living, breathing piece of defecating meat (2:58) 4. Forced gender reassignment (3:54) 5. Gristle licker (4:54) 6. Projectile ovulation (3:31) 7. Lifestalker (4:15) 8. Do not resuscitate (3:18) 9. Your disposal (4:47) 10. The Monolith (3:39) 11. Kingdom of tyrants (4:50) Album total running time: 43:03 Bonus track on Japanese edition 1. An exposition of insides (3:36) Final word: There are no doubt going to be many albums like this, that simply do not speak to me either musically or lyrically. This one has nothing for me: while I agree that Ryan is a clever and accomplished wordsmith I do not share his point of view in any way, and his lyrics make me feel disgusted, ashamed and guilty. At the same time, I am not about to give up meat and eat (shudder) vegetables for the rest of my life. So in terms of his and Cattle Decapitation's message, which can certainly be seen to be arrogant and pushy, all I have to say is fuck you guys, I'll eat what I like. And remember, if it had half a chance a cow would kill you and everyone you care about! Oh, and I hated the music too. Mostly. Final rating (mostly for the lyrics): Note: The ratings here are a personal thing. They're based not only on how well known the album is and how well it's played and written, but how much, if at all, I enjoyed it. There is no need to take my ratings as gospel, and if you want to hear from actual fans of albums I rate low, then check the list and read what the people who put them on that list have to say about them. Now go away and let me eat my burger! __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018