Cattle Decapitation @ Think Tank, Newcastle, June 21 st 2016

It’s a Tuesday night and while walking to think tank I can already see the mass of people on the balcony enjoying a few cigs and beers as they wait for the bands to start. On tonight we have Cattle Decapitation stopping of in Newcastle on their UK tour and local support comes from Osiah.

Osiah describe themselves as brutal deathcore and the description fits perfectly, the band starts up and this is where shit kicks off. The band plays songs that are full of lows, sweeps and breakdowns. Possibly the only thing letting the gig down so far is the morons in the crowd.

The crowd aren’t “moshing”, or having a good time it’s basically fighting, hardcore dancing came somewhat to the mainstream about ten years ago but this looked ten times more ridiculous. At one point one guy hits another in the face and within seconds is dropped to the ground by another moron.

These are the people who at a gig can be charley big potatoes or a Billy big bollocks but immediately you can tell if they got into any problems outside of a gig they would drop their arses in seconds. Forget thought I’m meant to be reviewing a show.

Songs such as ‘Humanimals’ makes Osiah worthy support and these guys are definitely ones to watch and with gigs up an down the country for the rest of 2016 I urge you to check them out.

Up next in their twentieth year is Cattle Decapitation all the way from San Diego, California and despite being from the west coast of America these guys are still pissed off.

From only hearing snippets of Cattle Decapitation before this show I was excited to check them out, and by no way did they disappoint. As soon as they kicked in you could feel the energy in the room.

Playing songs from last years release The Anthropocene Extinction as well as the rest of their back catalogue the band have the crowd in the palm of their hand from beginning to end. Bringing their unique form of grind/death/slam to Tyne and Wear is completely refreshing from the sea of either indie or cliché rock bands we get in week in, week out

By all means both bands owned it this evening. The crowd on the other hand… well the less said about that the better.

Christopher Storey