Best of 2023

 8) Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

I first got into Cattle Decapitation with To Serve Man, and really only because the album art was fucking brutal. This was the same year I picked up Impaled's Mondo Medicale which had a cover so obscene the record company needed to make a "mall record store acceptable version." I was picking albums simply by looking at the cover. If it made me wretch a little, I'd drop allowance money on some new brutality. Very mature I know.

Cattle Decapitation has come a long way since 2002. I dusted off To Serve Man and while I still really enjoy the riffs and those gurgly brutal death metal vocals, it is a largely unpolished album, very much a garage rock approach to death-grind.

Terrasite is grown up big boy death-grind. The musicianship, composition, production, are all polished chrome and razor sharp. Upon saying that I can see someone walking away from that description with a negative perception toward this album. Death-grind is largely about gut slop and sewage, and it's natural to expect some rough around the edges qualities to the resulting product. I just think I'm so enamored by the journey these men have been on for the past 20 years. Their catalog is a natural evolution of getting better and better at something not even their mothers could love. They will not be remembered for this journey by anyone save a microscopic slice of death metal aficionados. Why did they keep going? Why did they try so hard? What does it feel like to succeed so completely at making perfect death-grind? Likely their answer would be "The fans." I hope we damaged few are enough to keep them going for the foreseeable future.