Cattle Decapitation: Medium Rarities (2018)

One thing you can always count on from Cattle Decapitation is that their album covers are never boring.  Everyone's favorite vegetarian death/grind sickos have been going for quite some time now, mostly spreading their message of animal supremacy over human rights and capturing an interesting niche following.  It also helps that their music is generally fantastic.

As the title suggests, this is a compilation of some rare tracks from the group's history, several of which are actually previously unreleased.  There is stuff here from a split the band did with Caninus, unreleased demos, Japanese bonus tracks, a song they did for the Carcass tribute album, and one they did for the Decibel flexi series.  It is actually quite a lot of material, but Cattle Decapitation being who they are, still manage to get through all 23 tracks in under 40 minutes.

So what do we have here?  And is it worth it?  Well, it depends on what you are looking for.  I prefer some of the more death metal-oriented work the band has been churning out lately.  My favorite part of the Cattle Decapitation sound is the extreme vocal harmonizing that the band has worked out to perfection over the last few albums.  Some of that is present here, but by and large the primary material featured on this album shows the band in its infancy or generally very early.  Many of the songs, particularly in the first half, are very raw and chaotic, with little regard for anything other than making noise.  As the album progresses though, the songs become more recent and one can actually hear the band's sound take shape and the musicians refine their abilities.  So, at least from that perspective, the release is interesting.  Unfortunately, unless one is a Cattle Decapitation completist, this is not an essential release.