Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Cattle Decapitation

Now more than a decade into their career, Cattle Decapitation hopes to set a new standard for extreme music with their latest offering, The Harvest Floor. Although they play a gore-soaked, extreme fusion of death and grind, it's important to point out that the band is not all what they seem. It's not all blood and guts, at least not from animals. The band members are vegetarians who are against the mistreatment and consumption of animals. They even have a veggie-burger named after them at a cafe in their hometown of San Diego, Calif. Depicted through their lyrics of blood and gore, animals represent humans in all cases; the lyrics are anti-human. The chaotic nature and ferocity of the band's music are certainly not for everyone. But for fans of extreme music, it doesn't get more brutal than this.

Just days prior to the album's release, Live-Metal.Net's Jeff Maki spoke with lead vocalist Travis Ryan about the band's beliefs, their chaotic sound and The Harvest Floor.

Live-Metal.Net: Cattle Decapitation has been around for quite some time now, but have obviously remained very underground. For our readers, tell us about the band and specifically the band's beliefs.

Travis Ryan: When we started out, we wanted to emulate the whole Carcass vibe. We are all vegetarian and, to some degree, interested in animal rights and having that be the flagship message for the band. It was kind of like the same thing with Carcass. It had been years since they had been around and we wanted to carry on that torch. So we put out a couple of records, like our attempt at doing death metal, but they ended up being really short, grindcore records. And when we signed with Metal Blade, we had a big buzz going on. Before MySpace, at the time there was mp3.com, which was how we got noticed by some labels. And also the fact that the members that started the band were in the band The Locus. That helped propel us into any spotlight right off the bat. It's pretty much been downhill from there. We've gotten more into the death metal world as far as tours.

As far as beliefs go, if we do any preaching, it's just awareness. It's death metal, so it's going to have some sort of gory, disgusting and brutal content. And especially with us, I've always been a fan of the gore side of things. And what better way to do it than address animal rights. Animals don't have rights. They don't have a voice. The only rights we do give them are based on city ordinances. It' not really a thing that troubles many people. The thing that I liked about Carcass is that they took everyday things and put it out into the forefront and mixed it with gore.

I have always seen the name Cattle Decapitation, but I actually didn't even realize until doing some research a while back, that that's what the band stood for. I think it's a really unique take.

I don't want people to go, “They're just a bunch of big bleeding heart vegetarians, fuck that!” It's not how it is. It's more of advocating awareness. If you do eat meat, hopefully you're eating organically-produced meat, because the rest of the shit is built with god knows what. And it's not good for you. And the way Americans eat and consume, it's something they need to hear. We're also all musicians first and foremost. To us, what really does come first is music.

Taking this concept even further, the lyrics are said to be anti-human. I can't understand them myself; I don't know who can. Obviously, the lyrics aren't aimed at anyone non-vegetarian, so what other anti-human aspects are in the lyrics?

It's obviously apparent since the dawn of man that our nature is very destructive. We feel the need to destroy everything for some reason and have this whole juggernaut vibe going on all across the globe. We also maintain a pro-environmental standpoint, because if it wasn't for people, the concrete that we're surrounded by wouldn't be there. If you go out anywhere in nature and get a breath of fresh air, that's true living to me.

Tell us about the new album, The Harvest Floor.

Everybody always says the new one is the best one, but this is by far. We actually didn't even realize it until it was done because we were so immersed in it. We didn't realize the potential until people started getting reviews in and we started hearing it. We had this thing done literally over five months ago in August. So it's been sitting around for a while and I'm like, “Fuck, I really hope that it's just as valid when it comes out five months from now.” Especially the way things turn over, the flavors of the month and shit like that--who's-cool-on-MySpace-this-month kinda thing. I wondered if this would even hold up six months from now, but it has. The reviews we've been getting are
really good. I'm very pleased with that.

It took us five or six months to make. We work really fast. We work really well under pressure. And this time we used a hybrid of recording styles with Zach Ohren (All Shall Perish, Decrepit Birth), who does more precise, technical bands. And we had him do drums. We wanted the drums to be really precise and they are very technical. We wanted that to come across very well. We mixed that with Billy Anderon's (Mr. Bungle, Melvins, Swans) production style, which is very bombastic and low end. And way more organic than what's goin' on nowadays with very sterile, computerized sounding recordings. We wanted to keep up with the modern sound, but with more of an organic feel and that's where Billy comes in. And that's totally what we got. Nothing's ever perfect. There's always a lot of things I'd like to change, but this record has much less of those things. I almost can't wait until it leaks. I haven't checked today, but we're less than a week out now and it still hasn't leaked. I think that's probably a first. I can't wait for it to leak, though. I just want people to hear it so bad and hear how much we've come up and changed in the last year or so.

I've heard the album. It's not something I could listen to on a regular basis, but I definitely respect what you guys do. So the question is, how do you even begin to write songs like this?

It's hard to listen to. It's a little challenging, I guess. Not that it's coming from a challenging origin, where you just can't wrap your mind around it, but it's got a very grading nature to it. That's how we've always been. We come from a grindcore background. I really just want to do the most intense music, and of course, you can't listen to that all the time.

As far as writing, I'm just the singer. I just sit and wait for them. I don't even go to practice right until we leave for tour. But they basically write the stuff, put it together and they work quickly. There are one or two songs on the album that were written within a day. Some of the stuff changes drastically in the studio. I don't even know how they do it. I've never been around for an actual writing process; that'd be annoying to me. I tried to sit in a few times and I was like, “Hmm ... OK, I'm outta here. See ya, guys!” They just work hard on it and try to establish a flow. We used to share a studio with our friends The Locust and they'd be workin' on the same verse or 12 second part for months. They're more intricate about it. We've always relied a lot more on feeling.

So I guess the question for you is, how do you keep your voice intact? The vocals here sound inhuman.

I don't do a damn thing in the studio. On the road, I started using this slippery elm stuff for your throat. I drink a lot of water because dryness is the enemy. Honestly, I've just developed a technique that allows me to do it night after night. I'm not cheating. There's some techniques that work for me and I'm not sure I can even explain them to anyone. A lot of people just yell and that's the problem. They might have a cool yelling voice, but after a while it's going to go away and degrade over time. It's straining. I've never lost my voice on tour. I went one time for three days with strep throat and I didn't loose my voice. When you strain, you're gonna loose it.

You guys just shot a video for “Regret and the Grave.” That song seems the most accessible of the album. I hear a black metal influence in that song. Do you think that's accurate?

We never go into a song knowing we're going to do a black metal part. And we don't think in terms of genres at all. When we did start writing songs, it did have more of a blackened metal sound. It wasn't intentional, but we're all fans of it, different variations of black metal. And in the last six or seven years, a lot of people who don't even care about metal have latched onto black metal because of it's audacity and, at times, it's outward ridiculousness, just by the way the guys look. So we kind of stay away from those sort of labels or monikers. But there's definitely some black stuff in there; we just don't think in those terms.

We're actually going to be doing a full-on black metal tour with Mayhem and Marduk. We still have yet to announce any of it. It's gonna be in May and June, we just don't have any dates yet. So that'll be interesting. I don't think that many black metal fans like us at all. And it's not like we're tryin' to win anybody over at all. Honestly that's not the case or we wouldn't have called ourselves Cattle Decapitation with the vegetarian standpoint. That's one real good way to get laughed at. [laughs]

We have always had people say that we sound so much insane and better live and that we needed to find a way to put it on record. And they were right, but it's always been a different thing live. So what we found is that people approve more of our live sound than how we do it on record. So on this new one we tried to emulate this as much as possible. We even had a monitor set up in the studio to emulate the feeling of being on stage. From there, it's really hard to do the songs live because of their ferocity and speed. Also, I don't like watching old men. A lot of these bands are old guys now. They don't want to jump around. I'm 34 years old. I feel their pain, but I still want to put on a good show as much as possible. The songs definitely differ night to night. We try to keep that same level of intensity in every show. It's hard when there's less than 100 people there. I kind of tend to turn around or perform from the side. I'm not that much of a people person anyway. [laughs]

OK Travis, well the album comes out on the 20th. When will we see the video?

I'm not sure what the status is right now of Headbanger's Ball. I've heard all kinds of different shit. We're gonna try to see if they want to premiere it. And we'll throw it up online as quick as possible. We want people to see it. This is gonna be the first time that we had a video coming out the gate for a record. The videos we had done before were almost a year or two after he fact. It didn't help that much. But this time we're comin' out all guns blazin'. Come out and see the much updated form of our band, for sure.

Check out the record, it comes out the 20th. If you didn't like us before, give this a chance. And if you still don't like us, fuck you.