CATTLE DECAPITATION Guitarist Says New Album Is 'More Realized And Developed' Than 'Harvest'

Mark Holmes of Metal Discovery conducted an interview with guitarist Josh Elmore of San Diego extreme metallers CATTLE DECAPITATION before the band's March 15 concert in Liverpool, England. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Discovery: It's been three years since "The Harvest Floor" was released but I gather you've just finished recording a new album?

Josh: Yeah, we finished mid-February and it should be out… don't quote me on this… but we're kind of thinking May 8th. But then we're told May 22nd maybe…so a Tuesday in May shall we say! [laughs] I'm thinking the 8th though which is actually a month before we thought it was gonna come out so it's all good.

Metal Discovery: So what themes are being dealt with this time, lyrically?

Josh: Erm… if you can believe this, more hating on people…

Metal Discovery: [Sarcastically] Really?! [laughs]

Josh: I know, it comes as a shock! I think Travis [Ryan] has kind of taken this whole… like on a couple of the other albums, he touched on the Earth is like this giant landfill sort of thing and humans are not caretakers but exacerbating that condition. He's kind of taking that to… I don't want to say conclusion because I'm sure he can pull more things out of that but the album is seemingly more themed towards that whereas in the past there were a couple of songs that had elements of that, lyrically. This time, especially the cover art, which you'll see soon, ties everything together, all the lyrical concepts. It's very much like earth is like a big… dump! [laughs]

Metal Discovery: You did an interview with another Metal Discovery journo actually, a couple of years ago, and if I can quote you: "I think everyone has this ideal in our heads as to what we want to do and we keep trying to chip away to get closer to it. I don't think we're there yet but we're getting closer." Is the new material another step closer towards that, would you say?

Josh: Oh yeah, definitely, I would say so. I don't think anyone can ever reach their ideal but as long as you can get one step closer each time, I think you can be happy with that. With this record I definitely feel, and I'm sure the rest of 'em would agree, we're all really happy with it. And it comes as close, with where our heads are at now, as close as what we'd ideally like it to be as possible. So we're happy with it. . . It just seems more realized and developed. I mean, I liked "The Harvest Floor", too, and I like "Humanure", which a lot of people didn't really care for that one but, you know, it's all…

Metal Discovery: …it's all subjective.

Josh: Yeah.

Metal Discovery: You worked with Billy Anderson as producer on the last couple of albums but you opted for Dave Otero this time around…

Josh: Correct.

Metal Discovery: Why did you decide it was time for a change?

Josh: I think it was more that than anything, that it was time for a change. There's nothing wrong with Billy. We love Billy; Billy's fantastic… a great producer, engineer and he has a very good vision for what he wants out of recordings and stuff like that. But we were discussing things and there are certain elements that we wanted… we talked to Billy, too, about this so it wasn't just like leaving him in the dark, but we talked about things we wanted out of this recording and then talked amongst ourselves. We were then thinking, no offense to Billy but… [laughs]… just to try something different.

Metal Discovery: Yeah, yeah, as a lot of bands do.

Josh: Not degrading Billy's work, or efforts, or anything he's done with us, you know, he's obviously a fantastic talent but we decided to try something different.

Read the entire interview at Metal Discovery.