Originally written by Jeremy Garner
Is that a friggin six-armed cow brandishing various culinary tools? Why yes, I do believe it is, and I do believe it’s pissed. Well, all in all I guess it’s a step above a cow shitting out the remains of a devoured human, but it’s still pretty damn amusing when you get right down to it. In fact, I’d much rather read about the quirky vegan ranting of a band who has something meaningful to say over the slew of monotonous and ridiculous lyrics of most splatter death bands. Whether it be the lyrical or conceptual content of their music, Cattle Decapitation is undeniably a polarizing force within the extreme metal community with few left on the outskirts without a strong opinion regarding their merits.
Anyways, Karma.Bloody.Karma is the followup to this year’s split with vegan, pitbull grindcore act Caninus (and yes, that is meant literally, not figuratively…they have two pitbulls handling vocal duties) and the first full-length release since 2004’s Humanure. It should probably be mentioned that I’m barely an occasional listener to Cattle Decapitation, nor am I exactly what you’d call an avid fan, but I did find them in the very least worth a listen. Honestly, I found the real “beauty” and only truly enjoyable aspect of Cattle Decapitation to be their live act, which undeniably interjects a well-needed boost of intensity that seems to be so severely lacking in all of their recordings.
The opening salvos of the sinister “Unintelligent Design” and the churning rhythmic upheaval of “Success is…(hanging by the neck)” rely mainly on frantic Cannibal Corpse style death metal with small, but very noticeable doses of goregrind. “The New Dawn” and “Of Human Pride and Flatulence” take an interesting, almost black metal departure from the churning splatter death of the earlier material, relying on dark melodies and brooding atmospheres to convey their message, pulling back and using contrasting dynamics and variety to their advantage though a noticeably less complex product. Yet many of these moments where Cattle Decapitation give themselves room to breathe and focus their onslaught as they do with “Alone at the Landfill” and “Karma.Bloody.Karma” are the most compelling of all the material, and where the true talent of Cattle Decapitation lies. Yet despite the admitted technical savagery displayed by much of the material but especially “The Carcass Derrick”, the more brutal proficiency of “Suspended in Coprolite” and excellent, off the wall soloing displayed on “Total Force”, too many directionless moments of pointless blasting and brutality for its own sake remain.
The overall sound is gritty and stylistically fitting, but noticeably sloppy and ill-fitted, exacerbating the problem of their material sounding disjoined, unfocused, and many times extremely directionless in a slap dash procedure that will appeal to many, but alienate just as many listeners. By now, as a goregrind band, Cattle Decapitation hardly fit the bill considering their extreme reliance on their death metal aspects rather than surgical, Carcass inspired gore. The only problem with this is that neither do they fit the bill of being a great death metal band either; Cattle Decapitation are unsurely sitting on a stylistic fence offering a mildly unfocused transition album.
Is this a bad album? Not particularly, I think there aren’t that many real faults to expound on and there are more than a few moments of redeeming material, but I find it extremely difficult to become excited or even remotely moved at all from Karma.Bloody.Karma. The real problem is though the band obviously knows how to handle themselves, I seriously doubt I’ll ever find the need to listen to this again; I found the whole affair to be rather boring, and more of an exercise in accomplishment rather than anything truly inspiring or interesting in any meaningful way.
