Cattle Decapitation - Live in Hamburg

Jesus. I really meant to write this sooner. Like—a bloody year? Seriously? This has long since passed the realm of procrastination and wandered into full-blown psychological avoidance.

 

So yeah. I went to see Cattle Decapitation in Hamburg last year. 30 March 2024, to be exact. And it kind of traumatised me, I think.

 

So. Let’s get into this, shall we?

Let’s be clear: I didn’t wander into death metal like some lost lamb. I did the work. I went on the journey. I suffered accordingly.

 

I started historically correct, like a good little metal academic, with Possessed – Seven Churches. Raw chaos. Genre-adjacent thrash-hell. Possibly the proto-scream that cracked open the gates. I respected it. I wrote about it. I never listened to it again.

 

Then I time-travelled forward to Baest – Necro Sapiens, and hey—something clicked. Modern. Groovy. Still brutal, but with structure and presence. Actual riffs I remembered. Reviewed it here on the blog and everything. That album slapped me respectfully.

 

Then came Defleshed – Grind Over Matter, which was exactly what it said on the tin: 34 minutes of relentless, technically flawless riff carnage. No melody. No mercy. Just machine gun chugs and blastbeats until my personality dissociated.

 

And then—bless them (OR NOT)—I genuinely celebrated Deicide – In the Minds of Evil. Didn’t expect it. Didn’t want to like it. Absolutely did. Catchy. Groovy. Blasphemous in all the right ways. I still don’t trust myself about that one.

 

And then came Cannibal Corpse. The genre’s darlings. The big one. The death metal benchmark.

 

I tried.

I really, genuinely tried.

 

But I never made it through a full album.

The Wretched Spawn? That’s not an album cover, that’s a trauma response. Honestly, it’s so vile I can’t even pull it up now for academic purposes.

 

And the titles?

Stripped, Raped, And Strangled. 

Fucked With A Knife.

 

Why?

Seriously—why?

 

That was the moment. The breaking point. The quiet, defeated realisation:

Who the hell am I kidding? This is never going to work.

 

So I gave up.

And I walked away from death metal.

Here’s the thing: I am not averse to dark themes. Dark music.

I can lose myself in depressive shit. I can do suicidal lyrics. I live for misery and suffering. I enjoy lying face-down on my bathroom floor while people wail about the futility of life.

 

Satanism? Sure.

Nihilism? Obviously.

Bleeding wrists in the forest? Bring it on.

 

But gutting people? Entrails? Anal evisceration?

Absolutely not.

 

Even when it’s clearly over-the-top or satirical, the gore just doesn’t land for me. It repels me. I don’t want to visualise body horror in high definition while some dude in sweatpants screams about liquefying a torso. I want my misery poetic, not anatomical.

 

So yes, that presents an issue with death metal.

And then Terrasite dropped into my life.

Before Cattle even hit the stage, I had to survive three support acts: Signs of the Swarm, 200 Stab Wounds, and Vomit Forth. Three bands. Three variations on the same theme: men in jog pants screaming over guitar tone so compressed it might as well have been white noise.

 

It was torture.

The crowd, however, loved it.

They were feral. Fully unhinged from the very first breakdown.

People flew through the air. There was froth.

 

Somewhere during Vomit Forth, I found myself reminiscing about less traumatic metal crowds

• Blind Guardian fans? Teachers, IT guys, maybe a couple of LARPers. Lovely people. They know the Elvish lyrics. They clap between songs. They hydrate.
• Thrashers? Worn denim. Jackets held together by patches and beer. Aggressive but deeply principled. 
• Classic metal dads? Always in Saxon shirts. Most are called "Uwe". They drink a keg per song and scream "ROCK AND ROLL" like it’s both a threat and a religion.
• Black metallers? Measured. Reserved. You can stand next to one in silence.

But death metal crowds?

Just so many dudes. So much flesh. So much unwashed hair and those wispy, doomed beard attempts that whisper “I vape and live in a basement. They weren’t moshing—they were actively trying to rupture each other’s internal organs. It was like watching a swarm of angry potatoes having a panic attack.

By the time Cattle Decapitation came on, my ears were already bleeding and my patience had eroded into dust. The sound was awful. I’m not saying they played badly—I genuinely don’t know. I just couldn’t hear anything. Travis Ryan’s voice, the one I loved so much on Terrasite, just didn’t land. Dave McGraw still ruled. That much I could tell.

 

And then came the snot.

 

Travis coughed up something—some horrifying ball of mucus that landed on his arm—and then, without blinking, licked it off. 

 

The crowd went wild.

And I just mentally left the venue.

I later found out this is apparently his thing. He does this.

Doesn’t make it better.

 

We left early. I couldn’t finish the show. My ears, my brain, my aesthetic sensibilities—everything had been fried. Broken. Shattered like a cymbal hit in a wind tunnel.

So no, I never blogged about that night. Not until now.

Because what was I supposed to say? That I’d been sonically waterboarded by three support bands in jog pants? That I’d seen a man eat his own mucus while thirty sweaty dudes in grimy white shirts threw themselves into each other like hogs in heat? That the only thing I wanted afterwards was silence and maybe a long cry in the woods?

 

I tried to like death metal. God knows I tried. But it never stuck.

And now I know: it’s not just the sound. It’s the guts. The gore. The gloryhole of violence.

I just can’t do it.

 

So this is it. One year later. Consider this my therapy bill.

 

I’m out. I’m done.

Let the death metal lads keep their jog pants and their entrails.

I’ll be over here in the shadows with my sad Norwegians, whispering about frostbite and the void.