Cattle Decapitation, San Diego’s premiere death/grind dealers, just dropped their 10th album, Terrasite, through Metal Blade. Once again, the new album takes their sound into new directions offering another masterclass in the art of creating left-field deathmetal. The new album takes a complete 180 from previous album Death Atlas. Terrasite deals with rebirth, but it also deals with the horrors of the modern world, though this time, vocalist Travis Ryan, has switched up his lyrical attack. There are songs on the new album that deal with mental illness, while the album’s penultimate song, “Just Another Body,” has mournful lyrics that deal with the suicides of founding member and longtime friend Gabe Serbian and Trevor Strnad of the Black Dahlia Murder. It’s also one of their most adventurous tracks, clocking in just a shade over 10 minutes, and featuring piano, synth, and even clean vocals.
So, with all that to unpack, we sent Ryan some questions concerning their shifts in sound, that 10-minute song mentioned above, the secret to their longevity, among other topics. His candid answers follow below.
With each new album, you keep experimenting with new sounds. On this one the synth/electronic parts are more pronounced, plus you’ve continued down the path of using more melodic vocals. I love it, but do you ever wonder that you might have crossed a line and alienated some fans? Do you even care?
Great question. If this was a post online, I’d put the Tom Hardy as Mad Max “Nope, that’s bait” meme in the comments. But since it’s an interview, I suppose I should answer. Here’s the thing… I got bored. I got bored back in the late 2000s doing the same bear and snake call-and-response vocals and I had been slowly trying to switch it up for a while. Slowly, bit by bit, album by album, start to inject melodies into the highs and even the lows. We really took the plunge with it on Monolith Of Inhumanity. To be honest, I thought that record was gonna be our last at the time. I thought people were gonna hate the melodic vocals, hate the cover and think it’s all just too much of a pivot. But damn, was I wrong. It set us on a new course and an upward trajectory that’s still going over a decade later. We had been searching for our sound for years and it was finally realized on The Harvest Floor but came to fruition on Monolith of Inhumanity, The Anthropocene Extinction, and Death Atlas. But things change so quickly, people’s minds and tastes in this country change so quickly…Honestly, I ‘m not sure I know what people want anymore. Not sure they do either, actually. And it’s hard to care too much when I just feel so disconnected from them anyways. I am just being honest when I say I just don’t have much in common with people anymore. Not even the youth, just humans in general. I’m weird and I know what I’m doing in this sphere is weird. I get it. If people feel alienated then welcome to the club.
Speaking of that, “Just Another Body” is a 10-minute song that incorporates piano, synths, and even clean vocals into your deathgrind mix. It’s a complete sonic curveball. How did this song come about? Looking back, did you ever think you would get to a point in the band where you would write something like this?
That song is a tough one. The lyrics were written during a really dark point of last year when we were heading into the studio. I usually go into the studio with one or two songs worth of lyrics left to write but this time it was just the bulk of that song left to do. Happened right as we found out our friend and co-founder of the band, Gabe Serbian, had taken his life. That combined with some stuff that had happened recently along with the stress of going into the studio and a daunting 2+ month studio session ahead of us basically made me completely lose it. Soon after that we lost Trevor Strnad as well. The lyrics were finished right at this time. In hindsight I don’t know if I should have written them. It’s hard to even listen to the song. I wasn’t sure how I was going to even lay down the vocals to it. And then these are the moments where your final part of your question has weight…What is it I’m even doing here? Why am I even doing this? Why put these kinds of moments together with a form of music that usually, straight up refuses to have it? That doesn’t even want it? Death Atlas was full of moments like this and we avoided having them on this album on purpose because we didn’t want to just do Death Atlas part 2. It was such a down in the dumps, dark record we knew we had to make a turn and we did. But, what we talk about is a sad topic, man. Reality is fucking depressing. And the record, as more upbeat and whatever that it might be than Death Atlas, finished with a really heavy, heavy ending. I wanted this record to be some sort of escape, I mean look at the fuckin’ cover. But reality found its way back in at the last second and it hit this record HARD. It’s now definitely a record that needs to be listened to beginning to end.
On this one, the lyrics still address the messed-up state of the world, but you’ve also got a bit personal, in that some of the lyrics deal with mental illness. Why did you decide to do this? Was this just the right time to do it, since you are experimenting with new sounds on this album, you figured, why not take the lyrics in a different direction, too?
A lot has changed the last few years. For everyone, everywhere. Death Atlas had a lyric that was actually taken directly from a psychological assessment of me that took place when I was a child, maybe 6 or 7 yrs old. So I’ve struggled my whole life with mental anguish of some sort. Current times, I think, just make it easier to talk openly about this stuff. I’ve been doing it for years but I guess it was just never done boldly, or with much obviousness. The two covid pandemic years where life stopped, the country exploded in division… it’s been a rather reflective time. I’ve had that title “The Storm Upstairs” for years, just never pulled the trigger on it. That’s how I’ve always felt… like there’s a storm going on up there. And last year, around the time I was finishing these songs – half of which were all written within just a few months – the sequence of events I was referring to earlier just made everything spiral out of control and I’ve found myself still trying to get a grasp on it lately, almost a year later. It honestly wasn’t my intention to take the lyrics of the album in this direction. I had the idea for the title and cover back when we were in the studio for The Anthropocene Extinction, now around 8 yrs ago. I always envisioned it being this utter dissection of humanity – physically, mentally, etc. But, I didn’t think it would happen in the way that it did. I never saw myself getting to the point where I’d allow myself to get this personal in something that’s going to go worldwide. It’s always just been a very mean, shitty outlook because… its extreme “death” metal! This has always been my contribution to that realm, the angle I’ve chosen has been to shine a light on the shittiness of human nature. Honestly, it’s a departure I didn’t realize I was even taking. Especially the last track on the album.
Terrasite, once again, features a striking cover by Wes Benscoter. What message were you trying to put forth with this cover? How does it tie into the themes explored on the album?
That humans are fucking parasites and cockroaches. I came up with the word “terrasite” because while I’m not a dad and I’ll never have children, I’m still old and shit and so I like puns and enjoy play-on-words type titles and ideas. “Terra” means “earth” and “-site” means “to eat” or “food” and it gives people the impression that it’s a parasite. We truly are a world-devouring species and I wanted that to be ridiculously played out on the cover. I maintained that it needed to occur during the daytime and not that this played into the creation of the concept or anything, but, I had a feeling things would be fully opened up by now and everything pretty much back to normal so I also wanted it to resemble the springtime. To signify “new life”. Where else do you go after something like Death Atlas? I flipped my shit when I realized the release date was sliding right into home with Spring, 2023. It all just kind of worked out, somehow. Sometimes, for just a brief shining moment and then gone… things work out. Life…..”finds a way”. Sorry, I’ll stop now.
In a lot of interviews with you, I see you mentioning how some people don’t like the band, and, also, there are other bands that follow suit. Why do you think these people have this dislike for your band? (I don’t understand it.)
We always got shit for the vegetarian thing for sure. Our ridiculous band name and the subject matter kept many people at bay as I think they thought I was going to lecture them in the lyrics or something, not realizing that I’ve always acknowledged myself as also being part of the problem by just being alive and human. I honestly can’t blame em. Not sure exactly why I said that in the past but it would probably have something to do with that. I think the majority doesn’t ever crack the surface of things, yet seem to develop critical opinions somehow. I am no doubt [guilty] of this, I do it once in a while with things. Been working on trying to change that lately, actually.
Are you surprised with how long the band has lasted? When you were putting out your first recordings did you ever think it would go this long? Or that the music would evolve so much?
It’s very much been a topic of conversation lately. I absolutely am shocked we’re still doing it and moreso shocked that people are still into it considering how often and quickly people’s tastes change. We’ve done the opposite of most other bands where they peak on their first 3-4 albums – it’s been the complete opposite for us. This band– which keep in mind, is considered a “modern extreme metal band”–has seen entire subgenres come into existence and even some of them came and went and came back again.. Metalcore. Deathcore. Crunkcore. That stupid crabcore shit that I think people were trying to convince themselves was a thing but in reality, it wasn’t. “Djent”. The rise of technical death metal. Hell, even pop punk. We just kept going and going and going just doing this stuff. We’ve been touring cyclically for over 20 years and we were still a band for 6 or so years before our cyclical touring even started. I know that doesn’t sound like much and it isn’t really in the grand scheme of things considering how long other bands that are still doing it have been around. But, when you’re doing it at this level of intensity, at these speeds, with this much hostility… It’s just kinda brutal to think that we never took a break from it this whole time. Not even for a second. Somehow we have been the tortoise and the hare. What a weird fucking life this is.
Purchase Terrasite Here.
