Band:	Cattle Decapitation
Album:	To Serve Man
Style:	Deathgrind, Goregrind, Death metal, Grindcore
Release date:	2002
Guest review by:	WayTooManyCDs

01. Testicular Manslaughter
02. I Eat Your Skin
03. Writhe In Putressence
04. Land Of The Severed Meatus
05. Regurgitation Of Corpses
06. Everyone Deserves To Die
07. To Serve Man
08. Colonic Villus Biopsy Performed On The Gastro-Intestinally Incapable
09. Pedeadstrians
10. Long-Pig Chef And The Hairless Goat
11. Hypogastric Combustion By C-4 Plastique
12. Deadmeal
13. Chunk Blower

I first heard of Cattle Decapitation thanks to Uncorrupted Steel 2, a various artists release by Metal Blade. The demo for "Cloacula: The Anthropophagic Copromantic" sounded absolutely crazy, raw, and like nothing else I had ever heard before. I quickly went out and bought their newest album. I then, just as quickly, wished that I hadn't. This album makes me literally sick to my stomach when I listen to it, a feat that the band may no doubt be proud of, but one that makes To Serve Man the worst album I have ever heard in my life.

If I had to describe what To Serve Man feels like to listen to, it would be sliding down sewage pipes filled with feces, rancid milk, and mucus while vomiting uncontrollably. The raw vocals I found so intriguing on the demo sound absolutely awful after all of the post-production done on them. I have never felt my stomach churn from music before but Cattle Decapitation isn't your typical band. It might be surprising to hear that I gave their newer material (The Anthropocene Extinction) a listen and was actually quite impressed. Cattle Decapitation, oddly enough, is one of the few bands still churning out material in the field of death metal that is worth checking out. Unfortunately, this particular effort was plagued by questionable writing and the worst production job ever. To Serve Man would have sounded better without any production at all, honestly, and that probably would have bumped it up a few points in score.

= In Short = I don't want to be unfair to the band itself, who has improved considerably in recent years, but To Serve Man is abysmal. I'm not sure the band is even 100% to blame, as it seems the efforts to clean up their sound in post-production actually changed it from something fairly interesting to something completely unlistenable. Perhaps there is a reason so many metal bands do very little production on their music, they're afraid something like this will happen. Check out Monolith Of Inhumanity and The Anthropocene Extinction if you want to know what Cattle Decapitation is really capable of; try to forget this even exists.