Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction

Cattle Decapitation aim their fury at humanity's environmental wreckage on The Anthropocene Extinction, one of extreme metal's bleakest concept records.

Released in 2015 on Metal Blade, it followed Monolith of Inhumanity and widened that album's vision of a planet buckling under human excess, with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch among its grim inspirations. It became the San Diego band's first album to enter the Billboard 200, a rare feat for music this ferocious. Producer Dave Otero recorded, mixed and mastered it at Flatline Audio in Colorado.

The playing is technical and brutal, yet the songs still stick. Travis Ryan's vocals swing between guttural roars and a strangled, high-pitched rasp that gives tracks like "Manufactured Extinct" their unsettling hooks. "The Prophets of Loss" features narration from Phil Anselmo, "Plagueborne" opens with a contribution from Author & Punisher, and "Pacific Grim" closes the album with a sprawling, five-minute descent into the polluted deep, Dave McGraw's drumming in relentless overdrive throughout.

It is harsh listening by design, a record that wants you uncomfortable about the state of the world. For fans of death metal and grind with something to say, it remains one of the defining heavy albums of its decade. Crank it, then go and recycle something.