Live Review: Cattle Decapitation at House of Blues, Anaheim (2026)

I was genuinely bummed to miss the No Fear For Tomorrow Tour last year. Death Atlas is one of my favorite albums of the past decade, and watching them play it front to back was exactly the kind of show I should have been at. So when the 30th anniversary tour was announced — and it was pulling from the full catalog — I wasn’t making the same mistake twice. House of Blues Anaheim, first date of “30 Years of Inhumanity.” I was there.

The set had some absolute monster songs in it. The Terrasite cuts hit early — “Solastalgia,” “We Eat Our Young,” “The Storm Upstairs” — and if you’ve been sleeping on that record as a live album, stop. Then they dropped into the Monolith of Inhumanity block and the room went to pieces. “Forced Gender Reassignment” is still a weapon. “A Living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat” has no business going as hard as it does twelve years later. The Death Atlas cuts — “Bring Back the Plague,” “Vulturous,” “Finish Them” — had exactly the kind of weight you expect from that record live. And Travis Ryan — nobody gets that goblin sound out like he does. The shriek, the low, the weird melodic thing he does in between, all in the same phrase. Watching him pull it off live, with a mix that actually let you hear him, is something else. They really are one of the best touring bands around.

Brujeria was a pleasant surprise, and the crowd absolutely loved it. Throwing a paper mache ICE officer into the pit could read as pandering from another band — but not here. Not in Southern California, not after the bullshit that’s happened in Los Angeles over the past year. The room didn’t just go for it. They needed it.

Truly an awesome show. I went in hoping for a worthy substitute for the Death Atlas run I missed and I got something better: a band thirty years in, playing like they still have something to prove, across a set that reminded you how much catalog is worth digging into. Worth every bit of it.

Score: 8.5/10

Setlist

1. Terrasitic Adaptation
2. Your Disposal
3. Solastalgia
4. We Eat Our Young
5. Bring Back the Plague
6. Finish Them
7. The Storm Upstairs
8. A Photic Doom
9. Vulturous
10. A Living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat
11. Forced Gender Reassignment
12. Kingdom of Tyrants