At the beginning of autumn where the world around us dies, it was only fitting on an early October night to see Cattle Decapitation headline at Brighton Music Hall in Allston, MA. Personally, I had never seen the four piece play a headlining gig so I knew this was a show I could not afford to miss. There was some worry early on as their tour van did have some issues earlier in the day which delayed their arrival a bit. Fortunately, there were other bands to start off the night.
Dark Sermon hit the stage to get the Boston’s crowd attention on the music and not the missing headliner. The crowd was only warming up at this point so most were by the bar or merch tables. I thought the overall sound of the band was interesting with a nice mix of doom and black metal.
Easily the biggest surprise to me on this night was Australia’s own King Parrot. The energy that was created by both the band and the fans was truly electric. The odd, self-deprecating humor brought on in between songs gave almost a relaxed feeling knowing this band does not take itself, or metal, too seriously. Lead singer Matt Young had the crowd in stitches with his moments during songs where he would decide to moon the crowd. After the set, I quickly made my way to the merch table to purchase a patch and a copy of their latest record, Dead Set (Housecore Records), before preparing myself for the headlining act.
It was finally time to witness the San Diego natives close out the night with some of their best material off of their latest album, The Anthropocene Extinction (Metal Blade Records). In fact, the majority of the set list was off of said album including: ‘Manufactured Extinct’, ‘The Prophets of Loss’, and ‘Pacific Grim’. There was also a small selection of Monolith of Inhumanity tracks such as ‘Your Disposal’ and closer, ‘Kingdom of Tyrants’. The Allston crowd also got some classic tunes from Cattle Decapitation in ‘Total Gore?’ as well as ‘Testicular Manslaughter’. The crowd was fully behind each song as the crowd surfers were a plenty and the pits remained busy throughout the set. This band is arguably at their very best with the core that is vocalist, Travis Ryan, and guitarist, Josh Elmore. These guys were so good this time around that I may go and catch them again on their tour with Cannibal Corpse just to experience this band live again.
WORDS BY TIM LEDIN