As I have said in my Humanure review, I stayed away from Cattle Decapitation’s debut Metal Blade effort To Serve Man namely because how unimpressed I was with their earlier material. Humanure may have shown considerable growth and improvement by the band, but being better than bad does not necessitate being good. As a result, I had no interest to examine the midpoint that was To Serve Man.

My initial gut reaction was right. Like Humanure, To Serve Man shows Cattle Decapitation’s tighter, more technical style of goregrind. However, exemplary it is not. The song writing is incredibly generic, the drumming is boring and unoriginal, and the solos, while quick and furious, lack any umph to steal the show. You can definitely see the band’s growth since this album on Humanure, but that makes this album even more forgettable an exercise.

Interestingly, though, I find the vocal performance here to be much better than Humanure’s. On that album, Travis Ryan comes off as a slightly retarded clone of Glenn "Strawberry Cupcake" Benton wearing a muumuu. Why is Benton in a muumuu? Good question: I don’t know. But I swear to God, if he ever were to wear one, it would be when Travis Ryan imitates him on Humanure. And it’s only some of the time that Ryan pulls that off to a certain degree; the rest of the time it sounds like he’s gobbling cock (or a zucchini), probably the one under Strawberry Cupcake’s muumuu. On To Serve Man, however, Ryan delivers a much better vocal performance. Rather than try to go spelunking up Strawberry Cupcake’s muumuu, Ryan opts for a handicapped rendition of early Carcass-styled vocals. While the final product is mediocre vocally, you’d be surprised how superior it feels to Ryan’s Benton impersonation on Humanure.

Again, Cattle Decapitation has been steadily getting better, be it on this older effort or the more recent Humanure, but that doesn’t entail that they’re good. Unfortunately, they’re not. The song writing needs a gigantic kick in the ass and the drumming needs to get varied up. The band admittedly shows a lot of promise and I sincerely want these guys to release something above decent, but they seem to be perpetually cursed with ultimately mediocre writing and shitty releases.

Written By: Necro-tron