NSFW: Cattle Decapitation Singer Travis Ryan Picks 5 Sickest Album Covers | Page 3 | Revolver

NSFW: Cattle Decapitation Singer Travis Ryan Picks 5 Sickest Album Covers

Warning: contains graphic images of nudity, gore, violence
cattle-decapitation-by-vince-edwards-2-web-crop.jpg, Vince Edwards
Travis Ryan performing with Cattle Decapitation, 2019
photograph by Vince Edwards

Revolver has teamed with Cattle Decapitation on a limited-edition vinyl variant of their 2000 sophomore album Homovore on "opaque red, pink and bone white splatter" wax. Only 300 were made — get yours before they're gone!

San Diego extremists Cattle Decapitation have come a long way since they first emerged in 1996. Initially forming as a Carcass-channeling gore-grind side project of experimental, grindcore-infused punks the Locust, the band went on to cultivate their own distinct death-grind sound and cult following.

Cattle Decapitation's journey started with San Diego independent label Three One G, who issued their first two records, Human Jerky (1999) and Homovore (2000), which featured the lineup of drummer David Astor and guitarist Gabe Serbian (both of the Locust) and singer Travis Ryan. Cattle Decapitation leveled-up in 2002, when they signed to Metal Blade Records and dropped their third LP To Serve Man. The band has been releasing albums with Metal Blade ever since, the most recent of which was the 2019 crusher Death Atlas.

Over the years, Cattle Decapitation's band members have come and gone, and their sonic approach has evolved into its current ferocious blend of technical death-grind. But one thing has remained true since the early days: Ryan and company fully embrace extremity as the vehicle to deliver their commentary on animal rights, environmental protection and more.

Their shocking expressions extend well beyond their apocalyptic music; they're also integral elements in their nauseating album art (see: Humanure), scary-as-shit music videos (see: "Forced Gender Reassignment") and more.

For bandleader Ryan, this fascination with gore doesn't begin and end with Cattle Decapitation. In fact, he's something of a connoisseur when it comes to gruesome aesthetics.

"I totally grew up a Traces of Death kid," says Ryan. "Not Faces of Death because that was just staged bullshit, but the other one... the one with the actual death scenes from morgues, violence in the streets and gnarly surgeries. Hell, it's where I got the imagery burned in my brain to construct some of the lyrics to our song 'Forced Gender Reassignment.' I've always had a penchant for realism and real-life documentary stuff. To me, reality is far more bizarre and entertaining than something someone can just construct."

Considering his pedigree, we asked Ryan to compile the five sickest album covers of all time. He jumped at the opportunity — and delivered an appropriately stomach-turning list.

"When Revolver asked me to come up with my 'five sickest album covers' I knew it'd be something they'd probably regret," he says. "Because it's not gonna be some cartoony shit like you see on Grim Reaper's album covers or a Cattle Decap shirt... It's gonna be gritty realism and actual death. There's such a vast difference between the two with the audience reaction to the latter usually resulting in personal shock and a multitude of emotions that surge through the viewer."

"We live in a world where people actually put the faces and body parts of someone's loved ones on the cover of the music they recorded," Ryan continues. "There used to be much more of this than nowadays it seems — but those albums are all historical documents in their own right, whose cover images will never be forgotten by those who bore witness. Here's five that are burned into my brain … Maybe move onto some article about Halsey or what MGK has to say about Corey Taylor for the fifth go around cuz this is not gonna be fun. I promise."

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5. Pungent Stench - Been Caught Buttering

The cover is a photograph named "Le Baiser" — French for "The Kiss" — taken in 1983 by American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin. I remember getting the picture disc based on the name and the cover — back when we still didn't have MP3s and had to figure out what to check out based on if the album cover spoke to you or if the liner notes of bands' albums had other cool-sounding band names in the thanks lists. I remember being kinda bummed that the carpet didn't match the drapes. I thought it was gonna be just over-the-top gore-metal, but got some weird death-and-roll kinda shit instead. I still ended up liking that album though — but in my opinion it's one of those albums where the cover destroys its contents.

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4. Stoma - Scat Aficionados

I remember this image as being one of the first images that was sent to me on the internet from a twisted buddy of mine. I believe it was around 1997 and the internet was still a little new to me. This was one of the images he sent me to show me just how depraved the internet could get as he had become somewhat of an "aficionado" on depraved shit on the internet. I think at that time this had been just about the most disgusting thing I had ever seen as far as poop goes. I clearly remembering staring at this image over and over wondering what the fuck was going on in that woman's head. Just absolutely disgusting.

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3. Torsofuck / Lymphatic Phlegm split - Disgusting Gore and Pathology / Polymorphisms to Severe Sepsis in Trauma

I'm picking this because it's horrendous and also I can't remember the name of that one band that used that old BestGore/Rotten.com image of the woman who had acid poured on her face and a broom inserted in her privates and up into her body. A ghastly image, I don't know anything about it but seriously... What the fuck. 

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2. Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness

The crown jewel of album covers that spark the ol' "imagine-if-that-was-one-of-your-loved-ones-though" discussion. I can't count how many times I've looked at that cover and noticed little fucked up things and thought about their families, what their names must have been, what date the images were taken, etc. But lo, this was the album that almost had me attending school in mortuary science. This is the album that made me want to become a pathologist, if it just wasn't for all that pesky schooling. Ugh. Word on the streets of Liverpool, United Kingdom is that the vocalist/bassist Jeff Walker's sister worked in medicine and he would go through her gnarly textbooks and find the disgusting pictures and lump them in with images of animal meat. Something that went on to directly inspire my band from the get-go. I will always cherish this album, it's near and dear to my heart... work. 

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1. Disgorge - Forensick

I feel a deep responsibility in making this my Number One pick of "sickest album covers" fundamentally because I've always considered this to be one of the gnarliest album covers ever — if you know the story. What we see on the cover is the result of a car accident which caused the victim to basically projectile abort their fetus due to the violent nature of the crash. The image was captured at the morgue in which this body ended up by conceptual artist and photographer Teresa Margolles, who I believe was a friend of the band. All of this was explained to me by my friend Antimo Buonanno, who was the vocalist at the time that this album was released, which was when I saw them live in concert at a small bar in Tijuana, Mexico. Up until that point I had no idea what the rest of the image even was, I just knew I was looking at a dead fetus. I actually have this T-shirt. That image is on a fuckin T-shirt. How fucked is that.