The Harvest Floor

This album is the perfect end of what can be considered the first chapter of Cattle Decapitation's musical career. The previous albums have been building up to Monolith of Inhumanity, and this album is the penultimate release before breaking through into greatness.

Starting off with audio of pigs for the slaughter, The Gardeners of Eden immediately sets the tone for the rest of the album, before a gnarly bass solo kicks off the album. This small bass part was what made me immediately love this album when I first heard it. It sounds and feels like blood gushing out of the slit throats of cattle in the abattoir. The chorus of the song is also a great representation of how Cattle manages to incorporate melody into otherwise crushing death metal, and is the first glimpse on this album into what their future may hold.

These more melodic sections are not utilized that much throughout the album, but when they are, it is to great effect. The Ripe Beneath the Rind is one of the tracks that uses it quite well. The song starts with its very chaotic chorus, where the guitar sounds uncontrolled, utilizing pick slides and pinch harmonics which makes it feel like it’s attacking you. After the second chorus, the song slows down into this melodic section filled with hopeless screams with an almost melancholic feel to it, before delving right into the chorus again.

This album is crushingly technical throughout, filled with super fast blast beats and riffing, all pulled together by Travis Ryan’s brutal vocals. The guitars feel rusty and sharp, as if the teeth of a saw are cutting through your bones. The bass is mostly in the background, providing a great foundation for the guitars. Though when it shines through in specific sections throughout the album, notably the intros to The Gardeners of Eden, We Are Horrible People and Regret & The Grave, it helps create some of the best passages in the entire album. The drums are constantly pummeling you with one vicious blast beat after the other, ripping through you with every hit of the snare.

The cherry on top of all this is of course Travis Ryan. He is without a doubt my favorite vocalist in all of metal, his inhuman growls and animalistic snarls are the pinnacle of extreme metal vocals. His most iconic feature will always be his melodic growls, though they aren’t found on this album in the way he uses them in their newer releases. Instead we get a glimpse into what is to come with the sections on the opening track and the closing track.

And when it comes to the closing track, Regret & The Grave, nothing on this album even comes close to it. The track before it, the title track, is a slow, very quiet song with soft female vocals throughout it. The band has said in interviews that this slow track before the closer makes the final song stand out and feel greater, and I can only agree with that. This is the first album where they employ this strategy, and it works wonders. As The Harvest Floor fades out, suddenly we’re met with an almost somber bass section, before Travis’ scream tears through everything. The song is the most hateful and melodic out of all the tracks, and is the song most akin to their modern work.

This album is filled with misanthropy and a strong hatred for mankind, and you can really feel this in the music. It makes it feel like it’s attacking you directly, as if it is blaming you for all the things the album discusses, and in a way it does. It is clear that Cattle has a hate for all things humanity, and they are not afraid to show it.

Cattle Decapitation seeps a role from being the most notable death metal band within the modern standards of extreme metal music. Death metal was the most popular subgenre of heavy metal besides black metal circa the end-90's and mid-00's, but when brand-new genres rose up from their wombs, death metal became just a pin of the universe. But Cattle Decapitation and, of course, Cannibal Corpse carried death metal on their backs during these periods within extreme metal. In the early 00's, Cattle Decap was also changing their way of music from a raw, rapacious Carcass-esque grindcore to a more melodic and progressive technical deathgrind. By the way, the use of shredding on this full-length is quite interesting, since there's it on every song, and with the fact that I love techniques and shredding, it just blows my head up, literally. There's also the use of some melodic chords, which they use too much in their modern releases. Cattle Decapitation is now "known" for its uses.

Firstly, regardless of any pitch-shifter or overdub, Travis Ryan's vocals just spew a birth of rusty, harsh gargles to deep and low gutturals. I need to cite the vocals first before the other instruments and elements because the soul of Cattle Decapitation is the harsh and brutal sound of the throat-used oeuvre oozing from Travis' mouth. Along with this paragraph, I'll comment on the lyrics: they use the common brutal death metal logic; the song uses advanced words that have no sense but have a meaning. In some cases, like... Cryptopsy?, they don't have sense and don't have meaning. But later, Cattle Decapitation would use a bit of improvement in their lyrics, since they changed from gore to Cryptopsy-esque lyrics, and then, finally, gore... Crytopsy-esque lyrics... and don't forget the friggin' cattles!

A technical quandary reveals the background of the stringed instruments, mainly the guitars, because the bass is inaudible—oh, too funky! because some random guy named Alan Douches deserves this full-length. So, every note from the guitars can be tagged as ultra-technical; the full-length almost doesn't have at least a minute of riffs and non-solo sections. Speaking about that, this album is a mixture between Exhumed and Opeth, as I said in the review title, but I would count Necrophagist too. Look at the solo for "The Ripe Beneath the Rind", It's simply inhuman. I get insane every time I hear it. Forget it. I get insane every time I listen to this full-length.

I think that a paragraph about the bass will get rid of this review, sorry. But for some reason, some dickhead muted the bass, as I said before. But these drums—ah, the sweet drums—they're brutal as well as the guitars (I don't count the bass, for some reason that I don't know). The blast-beats are sick and rapid. There's a specific section of In Axestasy that I consider the highlight of every percussion instrument in all of C.D.'s discography, the section where there's a fill, a blast beat, and a hit-hat groove within the same compass. I wasn't lying; this full-length was crazy about the use of technique and musical insanity. I wonder how Josh Elmore can play these songs live without re-arraging some of them.

Oh yes, Cattle Decapitation would have the right to dub the genre on "The Harvest Floor" as melodic progressive technical brutal avant-garde experimental slam death metal, and yes, all the genres I mentioned are included on this album.

I remember that the first time I heard this work by Cattle Decapitation I constantly asked myself why it had never crossed my mind to listen to it before. Although I was still very much into Monolith of Inhumanity, this work by the band deserved an urgent visit from me. Then I felt some regret because if I had heard this work before, it is very likely that my views on the band would have changed radically to the point of having them still valid today.

My thing with The Harvest Floor is that it's an album that left me very intrigued. The technique and composition on this album are something special. Not only for the simple fact that it is a "hinge album" of the band, but also because the music in its essence touches simple levels and without becoming too ambitious and I think that is the strong point of this work. . The well-articulated balance between brutality, excellent riffs and a crazy voice that at times makes use of melodic arrangements but without going overboard. This formula would disappear completely in future albums, unfortunately.

As soon as the album starts I feel trapped, "The Gardeners of Eden" is a good song, with an overwhelming and destructive rhythm. However, the first gem of this album is without a doubt "A Body Farm" where the general structure of the song is not simple, but has several changes and that is not a long song, but still motivates the riffs a lot, the drums and the catchy rhythms it has. The same thing happens with "We Are Horrible People" but with a lower level, although this is where Travis' voice begins to show more versatility. Although the most complex point comes in "Into the Public Bath" where the guitar is huge and the voice stands out a lot. In general it is a song with a strong instrumentation, not to mention the hilarious lyrics and the unpleasant closing that gives it that even more dirty and wild touch.

And at the end of the album we have two songs, "The Harvest Floor" and "Regret & the Grave" where the first offers a prelude to the closing of this wonderful album with a soft tune accompanied by a soft female voice. It does not draw an apocalyptic ending but rather depressing, sad and bleak, showing that something is wrong. And what I can say about the last track is that from the first time I heard it I was amazed, another gem of the album without hesitation. The intro with bass and guitar is absolute genius, the melancholic melodies are perfect and the voice really works very well as a complement. The riffs and the musical explosion is brutal in the best possible way, the chorus stands out with a good rhythm section, those riffs are very precise. And the song ends as it began, closing with a flourish.

Summing up, the band in this work formed a perfect balance musically and was already hinting at what was to come in years to come. But what really makes this record stand out is that these elements are used with intelligence, care and a lot of concentration. The melodic shrieks that characterize Travis on the group's most recent albums are found here, but they are not used ad nauseam, the same goes for the fast riffs that don't sound too melodic either but rather aggressive and when there should be a sound most bleak, it is executed at the perfect time.

Cattle Decapitation reached its peak with Monolith of Inhumanity, but with The Harvest Floor they offered the best they've done in their entire career and I'm not going to regret saying it. The current direction of the band is very disheartening, it really makes me reflect on how they fall further and further into an abyss of mediocrity.

Over the years, this record ages like the most expensive wine you've ever bought. It is impossible for me to stop liking it and it is likely that in the future I will end up liking it even more.

Technical deathgrinders, Cattle Decapitation have returned with their 5th full length; “The Harvest Floor. As with many successful bands, we’ve seen a steady pace of growth, development and refinement to Cattle Decapitation’s overall sound, songwriting and execution since their early workings on “Homovore”. The years of hard work and practice have paid off in dividends as, “The Harvest Floor” is an amazing piece of deathgrind that displays how far the band come and how much they have matured over the years.

To my ear, the most noticeable improvement over the band’s career, has to be the guitar playing. Josh Elmore has created some real magic over the years, but what he displays on “The Harvest Floor” truly shows off his brilliance. First, the riffs on this album are truly astounding. They seem to combine elements of grindcore, death metal, black metal and even a punk vibe can be heard as well. One moment your caught up in a chugging death metal riff, then suddenly, the insane speed and high pitch sounds of grindcore enter the fray and throw you for a loop. Another time, you’ll be listening to a simple, but catchy bassline riff, which will then transform into a thick and heavy breakdown, followed by an unusual time shift that grabs hold of your attention before changing things up once more and churning out another blistering riff. There are even elements of a down-tuned progressive presence to be heard at times as well, that only deepen the well of combined sounds. This style of eclectic tempo and genre mashup is present throughout the album and although on paper it sounds like something more fitted for a mathcore band to practice, it works perfectly in creating the sounds of insanity Cattle Decapitation sought for this album. The solos are another aspect on this album that are a thing of beauty. As if the eccentric riffing and bouts of insane melodies weren’t enough, we hear the same eccentricities bleed into the solos. They range from powerfully distorted sounding chords, to thrash metal shredding, to a melodic sound with progressive touches incorporated. Their execution in and of themselves are fantastic, but their timing within the song really allows the solos to be much more than simply a display of musicianship, but rather serve as a binder, bringing the amalgam of sounds together to create a harmonious atmosphere.

The bass is very prominent on this album as well. Its crunchy grooves can be heard strumming along with the guitar, adding to the overall complexity and technicality of the string department. One thing that is partiality noticeable is how often the bass keeps up with the ferocity and speed of the riffs, which creates an interesting a speedy vibrating overtone. Another string element that I didn’t even realize was on the album until reading the liner notes, was the use of an electric cello. At first, I thought the peculiar sound was either the byproduct of synths or some unique bass technique, but I was wrong. The sound adds an interesting and (now that I know what it is) fun aspect to the songs it has been added to, which only furthers the band’s varied style and nature.

David McGraw’s drumming is a splendid display of technicality and fury as he creates a harsh and energetic layer of sound. His pace can match that of the guitars, which create an excellent flow of harmony, while his tempos and beats add to the complex layer of rhythms created on the album. Of course, this is deathgrind, so you’ll get a heavy dose of powerful cymbal crashes, blast beats and bass kicks, but they are used in conjunction with a variety of fills and timing, which gives them their own identity however, never steps out of tune with the rest of the instruments.

Travis Ryan’s vocals are once again monstrous. He utilizes his ability to sing with deep growls, intense shrieks, harrowing yells and putrid gurgles that make for a truly disgusting listen. His level of brutality has really grown since the band’s early days and the expansion of sound the band has incorporated is clearly heard in his voice. The most impressive aspect of Ryan’s vocals is the level of consistency through the album. From start to finish, his voice is a battering ram pure brutality and never seems to fade in intensity.

The production on “The Harvest Floor” has done a very good job of creating that, ‘trapped in a slaughterhouse vibe’, with just enough distortion and touch of hollowness to create a horrific atmosphere. All of the instruments and vocals seem to come together nicely, ensuring each gets their fair share of attention, but remain as a cohesive sound throughout the album. The additional use of keyboards, electronics and samples add the cherry on top, as their presence add another subtle layer to the overall sound.

“The Harvest Floor” is a wonderful display of technicality, ferocity and brutality, that any fan of death metal or grindcore should be able to enjoy. I was most impressed with hearing the level of growth and maturation of sound Cattle Decapitation have put into their sound throughout the years, which in my opinion, has reached its pinnacle on this album. If the band continues to embrace their current sound and zeal for improvement and creativity, I can only salivate at what’s to come for the band’s future.

Highlights: “Regret and the Grave” “The Gardeners of Eden” “The Product Alive”


Into the Abyss of Oblivion

These guys are awesome, and their polished brand of progressive death/grind reaches its peak on this, their 4th studio effort “The Harvest Floor”. The unpredictable character of the music, bedizened by a storm of frantic riffs mixed between another breed of cold melodies and more memorable sections to keep the attention, and a constant intriguing and dense atmosphere that never let you go even if the pace of the songs changes a lot; makes this one of the best modern death metal records. Innovative, creative, yet merciless and brutal; with glimpses of melody and a wide sense of progression and perspective in their compositions, this album is set to kill. It follows the same formula from “Karma. Bloody. Karma.” but somehow the songs featured in this record are better, more intense… the memorable parts are more meaningful and heavier, with a monolithic presence. If you play this album in your speakers while chatting with a mate, the music will eventually drag your attention every now and then, keeping you off the conversation. It is that good, so dynamic it sounds alive and raises its hand.

Cattle Decapitation is a raging machine that combines the splatter gore sound soaked grind with elegant percussive beats from genres that aren't even close to rock and roll sometimes, without compromising the sickening death metal ambient. The compromise with the classic, hard to swallow death metal atmosphere combined with progressive elements give this album a place over the rest, it’s unique. Travis Ryan’s vocals, versatile and demented; raging from deep gutturals to frantic shrieks resembling desperate mentally ill patients are delivered with the same hatred that lyrics reflect towards humanity and our world of shit. The guy added even some actually sung choruses, still with a very raspy voice though.

Strings are simply amazing; riffing is so innovative, it mixes grind core minimalist riffs with some heavier and darker death metal influences mainly, cold black metal melodies, hardcore riffs are often included too, there’s a very modern edge in the band’s music in general. The distortion Josh Elmore used on the record is near perfect, it has a lot of gain; it’s acid and sharp but still pretty solid and heavy, the slow brutal death breakdowns that feature palm muted power chords can tell. The bass guitar works proficiently, it follows the guitar even in the hardest riffs to play and it adds arrangements here and there; it features also a pretty solid tone, very organic for a bassist that plays with a pick but still with the metallic edge that characterizes that style of playing. The volume is OK, but it could have been louder and more present. They also used an electric cello on 3 songs, sick shit it sounds weird… very high pitched, distorted and strident.

The drumming is superb, fills are played with an amazing precision and combine sounds that aren't familiar in the metal scene, and some weird beats here and there too. The cymbal work is incredible, I can’t imagine how expensive McGraw’s cymbal kit is but I bet it has a lot of bells; it’s incredibly rich and influenced by lots of other genres that had to do little or nothing with metal, adding a whole new dimension of beats to CD’s sound. The progressive part of percussion is not the only outstanding department in the drumming section, there are gravity blasts and stupidly fast double bass drums, everything brutal as fuck. The production is perfect, it lets you hear every instrument crystal clear 100% of the time; the sound engineer is a genius, it's not easy to give shape to music so noisy and intense in the studio. This album is one of my favorites of all time, undoubtedly. Make yourself a favor and listed to this!

Some bands in our modern metal scene have that natural ability to bring something new to the table likes bands such as Between the Buried and Me, and obviously Cattle Decapitation. The band is one of the most talented of our scene that its hard not to admire the work they craft out in records such as this one. Sure, they may have had their ups and downs with their first few records which were a mediocre attempt if you ask me, but in this one they've matured tremendously as they flesh out a lot more variety and taste that overall would please a listener such as myself. With that said, this is on my list of my favorite records of all time.

The production here is a bit muddy, but it fits well when you hear this band play. The tempo here is insanely fast that it's hard to catch up with on most songs. The drums would be a good example. Dave McGraw is just flying through the toms, accentuating every single second of the snare with those crazy ass gravity blasts and his style sometimes on this record is unorthodox its awesome!

Usually when I'm listening to an album, I always try to look for a lot of bass in a song, and in almost every song on this album, it's very prominent. Not to mention, its groovy and catchy as hell as it fits the overall sound of Cattle Decapitation, and their overall death grind style. One example that conveys this is the first few seconds of the intro from the song entitled, "Regret and the Grave". I really have nothing to say about the guitar work other than awesome and fantastic skill playing.

So much to be said about the vocals that I can't have enough of an eargasm listening to those shrieking, growling vocals of Travis Ryan. He's so consistent at what he does that in almost every song he sings in, nothing sounds boring. Every high and low vocal range is memorable on the album which for most vocalists I don't praise for and for that very reason, this guy is one of my favorite vocalists in modern metal

Overall this album is amazing. Yeah production may be muddy compared to their follow-up Monolith of Inhumanity, but this really foreshadows and hints at what this band is capable of doing. I can't really say which is my favorite track because I love all the songs on here as none sound like any fillers, but if I were to pick one that stands out above the rest it'd be the said mentioned, "Regret and the Grave". I can foresee this band's future as one that will be memorable for years to come.

I'm pretty sure that "progressive deathgrind" is an unusual combination of terms, and for a good reason. The scene is dominated by imitators, splashing around in the same puddles of gore and brutality their idols did before them. And that's where Cattle Decapitation steps in, shining like a stallion among hordes of muddy cattle. The band got lots of praise for their 2012 release Monolith of Inhumanity and even though I love the album, it's The Harvest Floor that deserves to be called their opus magnum.

The Harvest Floor is the first proper concept album by Cattle Decapitation and you can hear it already on the first listen. Every track is like a jigsaw puzzle piece, making up a consistent sequence of technical deathgrind songs. And what a deathgrind it is! When you hear that a band is technical, you expect the music to be calculated and cold, impressive yet with the human element being of secondary importance at best. The Harvest Floor is a brilliant exception to the rule though. It combines proper aggression of deathgrind with purely artistic approach to composition. Twisted parts of technical death metal are interspersed with clever and emotionally charged riffs and build-ups. Vocal parts by Travis Ryan are just like the music - brutal yet clever, complex yet passionate, varied yet consistent and most of all, completely inhuman...

It's an evocative and brave masterpiece of technical death metal, hands down. Fans of Cryptopsy's None So Vile and Once Was Not, Cephalic Carnage and Suffocation should love this, but this album actually can appeal to every fan of metal, no doubt about it. I haven't been mesmerized by a deathgrind album for a very long time but Cattle Decapitation have brought twisted riffs, frantic shrieks and blast beats back to my life. Thank you guys, thank you for the passion and conviction that what you believe in is right. Thank you for putting it all into this intriguing music. Listen to death metal - stay veggie!

TRACKS BY RATINGS: 10/10[masterpiece!!!]: We are Horrible People; The Product Alive; The Gardeners of Eden; The Ripe Beneath the Rind; Regret & the Grave || 9/10[fantastic!]: Tooth Enamel & Concrete; A Body Farm; Into the Public Bath || 8/10[great]: In Axetasy || OVERALL = 95/100

-- Originally written for Metal Music Archives [www.metalmusicarchives.com] --

I jumped into Cattle Decapitation's 2009 release The Harvest Floor without any background knowledge on the band or their releases - going off of what I know now based on the whopping three releases I've heard, the band started as a group that churned out some pretty cool deathgrind, turned into banal shit around the time Travis Ryan joined, and then turned into this somewhere between then and now. This is some pretty original stuff - could use polish in a few places, but I can see something nice resulting from this formula.

If you had to put a genre tag on the majority of the material on The Harvest Floor, you'd probably end up with something like melodic tech-death - the riffs are ever-so-slightly influenced by deathgrind in that the band get pretty grindy when they're on the lower strings, but Cattle Decapitation certainly aren't afraid to dabble in melodic, progressive death metal once in a while, particularly in the solos, as well as a couple slamming sections that hearken back to brutal death metal. Really, though, at its base, practically everything here could be described with "technical": the riffs have a weird sense of rhythm more often than not, pinch harmonics and Brain Drill melodies abound, and the end product, while relatively mid-paced as far as tech-death goes, feels like a churning, catalytic, almost self-propelled beast - the album has its flaws, but an organic feel to the riffs is not one of them.

I never thought I'd say this about any band, but the solos are one of my favorite parts of this album. They're pretty expertly constructed, having a sense of flow just like the rest of the song, and expand upon the basic melodies of the song without sounding like disorganized meandering sessions shoved into the middles of the songs for the sake of metal tradition. They also feature the band's signature flair of demented, dissonance that pops up pretty often in the riffs as well - they give off an atmosphere that fits with the band's imagery: a crude slaughterhouse full of rotting animal carcasses, viewed with a sort of pathetic tone...a grotesque lamentation. Suffice to say, as someone who thinks most solos in metal are a bunch of hogwash, I can say that the ones exhibited on this album are really impressive.

Travis Ryan's vocals all-in-all aren't the kind that I personally think would suit this sort of music, but they're pretty damn unique. Death growls are mostly scrapped in favor of a low, gravelly and anthemic yell, and they're usually layered with another beast - the screams. The raspy, wet, distinctly mammalian shrieks on this album are certainly impressive in terms of their execution, and when they're given a moment to shine by themselves, like on the bridge of "Regret & the Grave" or the chorus of "The Product Alive", they carry the band's metaphorical flag valiantly. The vocalist is also, miraculously, able to inject melody (or a vague sense of it, anyways) into these shrieks: both of the aforementioned musical passages, during which the higher vocals take the front seat, demonstrate this, and it gives them a very eerie, distant feeling which sends shivers up my spine on the right day. There are also a couple of brutal death-influenced gurgles that pop up in various places, and to be honest I think the album could have been quite a bit better if had Travis scrapped his shouts in place of these sorts of vocals, or, generally speaking, a consistently low, Matti Way-esque approach. The shouts are well-done considering what they are, don't get me wrong, but they hardly sound like proper vocals for a death metal band of any sort.

With the rest of my musical tastes in mind it's really no surprise that my favorite songs off of The Harvest Floor are the ones that adhere closer to the standards of modern technical/brutal death metal, from the slower, more complex and grotesque "The Ripe Beneath the Rind" to the much faster, more straightforward (yet still relatively technical and dissonant) songs "Into the Public Bath" and "Tooth Enamel and Concrete". The rest of the material is pretty consistently good, but it fails to grab me by the balls like those three songs do. Furthermore, the drumming isn't as experimental and progressive as it could be - everything's predictable, from the gravity blasts during the spastic changes in tempo to the fills during the musical transitions, and considering how spastic and technical the riffs are, it's a bit disappointing to see the album's drumming adhering to the genre's standards that the songwriters try so hard to break. Last but certainly not least, the guitar tone needs a pretty drastic overhaul - its clean, mostly play-it-safe presence works perfectly during the solos and melodic passages, but when the band decides to play a deathgrind riff, or even worse, a slam, it's about as threatening as a legless, retarded kitten. I'm not saying that bands should either go with Torsofuck's guitar tone or not play anything brutal death ever, but come on, this is pretty ridiculous.

All in all, this is a decent piece of work, and songwriting-wise I don't have many complaints, so this is actually only a few snippets here and there from being a timeless classic. It's worth a listen if you want some decent tech-death that doesn't try to appeal to you via mindlessly pummeling you into oblivion... though, really, I kind of wish this album had.

Attempting to play a progressive form of a genre known for simplicity is very brave, and it can either be an absolute disaster or one of the best things ever recorded. Thankfully, this is the latter. Cattle Decapitation have managed to do something that most bands would fail at immediately. Take progressive death metal, take goregrind, and combine them to make a fantastic album.

Travis Ryan is still a fantastic vocalist, combining guttural brutal death metal growls and grunts with high pitched grindcore shrieks. He sounds truly ferocious, angry and very violent. The lyrics deal with typical Cattle Decapitation subject matter, and that is the mistreatment of animals and how humans would feel in their place. While i'm an avid meat-eater, I can't help but agree with the points they raise, however, some might see this as typical vegetarian bullshit in a musical form.

The complex guitar riffs combined with the ambient parts provide a dark and quite haunting atmosphere on the release. For one track, which the album is named after, the band actually a play a whole track of ambient with guest vocals from the singer from Swans. There are no lyrics, and one just imagines a scene similar to the one on the album cover. The humans being led into the slaughterhouse to be killed like swine, which fades into the closer, Regret and the Grave, perfectly. The drums are reasonably technical, while still ultra-fast and possibly triggered. However, they have a very clicky tone, which a lot of Metal Blade albums suffer from. Still, despite being very clicky, they're very well played and should please the grindcore fanatics that look for pure speed on the drums.

Perhaps the best performer on the album is bassist Troy Oftedal. He is truly a very skilled bassist and could rank with the likes of Alex Webster and Steve DiGiorgio. He provides some complex basslines and fills that really sound amazing. He also provides intros to some of the tracks, such as opener The Gardeners of Eden and closer Regret and the Grave.

This is a very solid release, with enough progressive complexity to please the prog fanboys looking for something more extreme than Opeth and enough grind and gore to please the Exhumed/Carcass fanboys.

Highlights: A Body Farm, Regret and the Grave, The Product Alive

Cattle Decapitation has come a long way from their first album 'Ten Torments of the Damned' which was a collection of minute long power violence blast beats and short guitar riffs behind shrieked vocals. Then onto their stripped down goregrind approach, to more of a technical death/grind sound, and finally, to this pure masterpiece. Whether you like them for their pro-animal rights and environment message, or you just love the sound, everybody has something to go for on this record. I am the kind of guy that when I get a new CD, I love to read the lyrics with them and I was really glad to see that Travis kept writing the same angry, misanthropic, hate filled songs that I saw on Humanure and Karma.Bloody.Karma. There was not much I could do other than just listen.

Travis Ryan is one of the vocalists that I strive to sound like, and damn is it tough. The band layered his high grindcore-esque vocals on his guttural goregrind growl and both are hard to match. Together though, you get the violent gore obsessed sound that they go for and do oh so well. I can tell through the lyrics that Ryan has evolved a lot as a person through his words, and he focuses more on his misanthropy and ideologies than just the mutilation of mankind (such as the songs 'Regret and the Grave' and 'We Are Horrible People'). Although the killing is still present, it is there in more of a... shall I say mature way? It is like comparing Morbid Angel to Belphegor. Morbid Angel is on a higher, more classic plane of satanism whereas Belphegor is on an inferior "inflict pain, sodomize women" level. If that makes sense. Ryan's lyrics have taken a deeper, more ideological approach on 'The Harvest Floor' and I just cannot get enough of it. With so much on his vocals being presented, I must also acknowledge the title track 'The Harvest Floor' which has guest vocals by the singer for Swans. It creates a dark, haunting instrumental melody (no lyrics) that sets up the last track quite nicely. And it also brings a new sound to the album instead of pure blastbeats and complex guitar riffs.

I never realized just how amazing the drums are on this album until I listened to it through extremely clear headphones and I can hear every beat. The drummer is in my top 5 all time favorites. The guitarist didn't reach his maximum potential because I feel like something was missing (hence a score of 95) although I'm not sure what. I think the guitars just got dare I say, old? after 9 tracks of it. Don't get me wrong, they are still damn good and better than most of the crappy new death metal bands coming out now, but they should have been another dimension to it like there was with everything else.

The Good: The lyrics are deep and well thought out with the general aesthetic and sound of the band, and everything goes well together.
The Bad: Not much to say, just a step away from their maximum potential.
The Bottom Line: If you do not own this album, you need to. I don't care if you pirate your music, this is a must have for any grindcore / death metal enthusiasts collection.

Review originally posted at http://www.teethofthedivine.com by Erik Thomas

With 2006s Karma. Bloody. Karma, San Diego’s Vegetarian grinders added a sickly pallor to their chaotic deathgrind, and while that element seem to have been reigned in and the cleaner tones of Humanure and To Serve Man making a return, the resulting balance between sludgy oozing throes and deft caustic grindcore makes for an album that sees Cattle Decapitation further elevate their actual musical status.

When I say The Harvest Floor is cleaner than KBK, I should clarify its in production only as Billy Anderson’s production seems less earthy and dirty, perhaps aided by Zach Ohren drum recording? However, musically, The Harvest Floor is, like KBK, a volatile and disturbing musical assault that melds the expected blasting, squealing trappings of deathgrind, the band’s sociopolitical, Vegan diatribes and Travis Ryan’s snot spewing, truly other worldly vocals.

The band’s development from PETA’s death metal mouthpiece to a truly evolved act has been impressive, and The Harvest Floor, while less experimental than KBK, still oozes with a truly sickening atmosphere and presence that matches the band’s fervent idealogy. Throw in guest appearances from Jarboe (Swans), Jackie Perez Gratz (Grayceon) and Ross Sewage (Impaled) and the resultant album finally fulfills the potential and growth that the band has hinted at for a little over a decade.

Bookending the album are two more varied, moody standouts featuring the guest performers in various, more prominent capacities: opener “The Gardeners of Eden” and closer “Regret & the Grave” are perfect tempo setters in the albums overall guise with Jarboe’s haunting shrieks and Gratz’s solemn cello accenting the discerning melodies, scrawling fervor, brittle blast beats and psychotic vegetarian atmospherics. In between, there plenty of more direct grinding, death metal slice and dice with ample stuttering, lurching and heaving throes as heard on “A Body Farm”, “Tooth Enamel” (as a dento-phobe, that opening sample makes my skin crawl) “In Axetasy”, “The Ripe Beneath the Rind” and “Into the Public Bath” that seem to be the missing link between Cephalic Carnage, Naplam Death, Autopsy, a PETA infomercial and the infamous ‘cow in a meat grinder’ footage.

Another quality release from a band that was once considered somewhat of a gimmick, but now the band’s political intensity is matched by their musical offerings.

Want a pretty tasty slab of pseudo-progressive grindcore from a band who's been around long enough to know what they're doing? Look no further than Cattle Decapitation's blistering release “The Harvest Floor”. It's not their best album, but close to it. Better than the album before it, “The Harvest Floor” will have you banging your head one minute and then trying to figure out how the band members keep the insane technicality in check while maintaining the ridiculous speed. And there are a few surprises that we haven't heard from Cattle before.

The first thing I thought of upon hearing this album was about how much more progressive this album is compared to their other releases. No longer just straight-forwad goregrind/death metal, Cattle uses several time-signature changes and interesting use of their instruments to create a mind-numblingly complex tornado of musical ability. This is most apparent on the song “The Ripe Beneath The Rind” with it's killswitched guitars sounding off behind Travis Ryan's inhuman vocals or the almost prog-quality solo included about halfway through the song, although you can find it in just about every song. Think of this album's incarnation of Cattle Decapitation as metal's version of The Dillinger Escape Plan but can also hold it's own against death metal stalwarts as well.

It should be stated and re-stated that this band has some serious musicians in it. First and foremost, Travis Ryan's performance all but solidifies his place in extreme metal as one of the best current vocalists out there. He about hits the lower and upper boundaries of his vocal range in almost every song and comes off as a deranged madman throughout it all. Absolutely splended. The drummer, David McGraw, makes use of the hyperblast on several songs (see the beginning of The Gardeners Of Eden) and pulls it off quite well. Not up to par with John Lengstreth, but close. The bass player and guitar player are fantastic as well, but they pretty much have always been solid.

There's really only one flaw to this album: If you're not paying too much attention, it's really easy to miss the transition to another song and still think you're on the previous. It's not that the songs themselves aren't memorable, but some of them segue into eachother without a huge change in style. However, the lyrics themselves are above Cattle Decapitation's standards and are a delight to read through. “Into The Public Baths” might be the sickest song ever written.

This album will satisfy long-term fans of the band and is a great starting point for new fans. Things are looking very bright for the future of these misanthropes.

Highlights: A Body Farm, The Ripe Beneath The Rind, Tooth Enamel And Concrete, Into The Public Bath

We live in a strange day and age when full-on underground goregrind gains some popularity. Perhaps some of you are familiar with some of the most underground of goregrind - essentially death/grind with gory lyrics and usually ultra-low death burps. Ah, but there was always something different about Cattle Decapitation, most notably their vegetarian views, but there were a few odds and ends they kept adding to their formula as they grew.

Beyond the standard death metal standards, such as tremolo picked riffs, double-bass beats, blasting, huge tempo shifts, the death growls, and even a few nods to old-school death grind with some power-chord running, the band does attempt experimentation within every song, from strange arpeggios to dissonant oddities, even a space effect here and there. However, there are problems abound in the recording, as the flat production prevents the instruments and delivery from sounding either powerful or raw. Vocalist Travis Ryan doesn’t seem to have a powerful low growl which he uses it as his mainstay voice, though he does veer off often. Again, perhaps its the recording that prevents the power from flowing, although I can say the way he experiments with his wide range of screams all the way down to death burps often meshed together with vocal layering is interesting.

The delivery of the music itself seems to be lacking some conviction and catchiness, as it seems the band went with the riffs they started off with when first writing the songs, and didn’t take the time to work them through. Its almost as the emotion coming through from the writing suggests the band was bored when creating “The Harvest Floor”.

The experimentation within every song is actually quite commendable, so that certainly doesn’t hinder the action. Travis Ryans vocals could also be a valuable asset with the wide range, if it were not for the weakness in the actual vocal tone. All that’s really required is more passion behind the sonic delivery and a proper production style to fit the music, be it a powerful slick job, or underground and raw.

Originally posted at www.waytooloud.com