How Decapitated Lost It

Not all declines are created equal.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so here’s a dashed off post about wayward Polish death metal heavyweights Decapitated. I realize that, at this point, this blog is largely read by friends and family who are simply being kind and supportive but have little interest in bands that name themselves after getting one’s damn head cut off. To you I say, thank you and I am sorry.

Decapitated began their career on a nearly unparalleled run, peaking with 2006’s critically beloved Organic Hallucinosis. Then, they became a laughingstock. What happened?

First, let’s talk about what made them great.

For their initial run, it was their ability to combine an incredible sense of groove with nasty riffing rooted in the old ways. To my ears, few did it precisely like they did in their heyday. From 2000-2004, they seemed to be not only one of the best death metal bands around but also responsible for laying down a template for how to push death metal forward while respecting the roots of the genre. The early 2000s were an exciting but daunting time to be earning your stripes as a metalhead; young fans like me were trying to learn as much as possible as fast as possible in order to gain admittance to baroque arguments with knowledgeable veterans about the most important bands of all time. Decapitated bridged a divide, a contemporary band that appealed to both the n00bs and the vets who were constantly reminding us we didn’t know shit. They had a video in regular rotation on the relaunched Headbangers Ball, but they were also frequently NP’d by people who had seen Raven open for Metallica. They were our guys.

Then, a few things happened.

First, they put out Organic Hallucinosis, which is… something different. It’s almost entirely unmoored from death metal, meaning that special fusion of groove and roots from the early albums is almost entirely gone. But, it has its own magic. These days “churning” and “rhythmically intense” are watchwords for nu-metal adjacent commercial slop, but back in ’06 it felt like Decapitated were pushing the ball forward by stripping away the superficially pleasing old-school elements of their sound and focusing on pure punishment. Anyway, it’s their most critically revered album. In fact, I did a fair amount of revering myself at a time when I was too young and ignorant to be allowed to be publicly critiquing anything, let alone commercial album releases, and so perhaps I am partially responsible for contributing to the ambient sense that Decapitated could be a great band while focusing on rhythmically complex, sonically intense but riff-lite music.

But in reality, another more important thing happened shortly after the release of Organic Hallucinosis; drummer Witold Kiełtyka died in a bus accident. It’s hard to know how much this influenced the next decade-plus of Decapitated, which was marked by constant band turnover and further shifts away from traditional death metal, since both of these trends predate his death. Bottom line is this: Decapitated’s drummer died, and then they started making a series of groove-oriented extreme metal albums that cannot help but be at least pretty good because of the collective talents of the respective players enlisted by Vogg, the band’s sole mainstay from the early days.

But they were our guys no longer.

There’s nothing about the band’s last four albums that sucks except for the key fact that they don’t sound anything like the first four albums, and that sucks exceptionally hard. Ah yes, the album titles, song titles, and general aesthetic of the band. Also suck.

All of this, combined with a real sense of loss rooted in a real sense of longing for the band’s early days, cohered my mind to convince me that Decapitated had become something of an embarrassment. That’s not quite the case. As I see it, around 2010 they reached a fork in the road where they could do as many fine death metal bands do, which is to keep remaking albums in the style of their imperial era, an approach that yields something between indifference and grudging respect from critics and fans. The other path, the one the band ultimately took, was to modernize. Everything about the band is modern now; the music is in conversation with djent and deathcore, and the lyrics fixate on nowadays culture war blah blah bullshit (likely the result of the band members never quite washing away the stigma of being charged with rape before charges were dropped with prejudice). Because there’s prodigy-level talent here, it’s hard for the band to make albums that eat shit… but given the respective ingredients, there is a persistent sense of shit-eating about the whole proceedings.

Most bands ending up being not so good.¹ Most anyone who makes stuff for public consumption is riding a bell-curve. Decapitated didn’t even start the trip down particularly early. Four very good to great albums? That’s so many! But, they did it a time when their career seemed packed with promise. And they did it in a way that felt cynically motivated by a desire to associate with aesthetic trends their core fanbase deemed utterly repulsive. There are respectable, recoverable ways to fall off. But, when you made your bones as death metal prodigies? No, there’s no coming back from this …

There’s really no good reason for me to encourage anyone to explore the band’s latter era, as all it would prove is that they’re not as bad as you may have assumed. I am a pedantic nuance whore to a frustrating degree, but even I recognize when I’m pushing it too far. I guess against my better instincts I will however note that on their most recent releases (Anticult, Cancer Culture) the band has been gradually reintroducing a more traditional sense of metal songwriting and riffing in place of the generalized djenty churn found on Blood Mantra, Carnival is Forever, and even Organic Hallucinosis. So if you ever get the urge, start there.

The final thing I’ll say in favor of this band’s entire discography: they write blessedly short albums. Rarely do the run times exceed 45 minutes. In the good old days, this simply meant you could spin that shit again. And now? At least you can get the disappointment over with quickly.

The Rankings:

Organic Hallucinosis

Nihility

Winds of Creation

The Negation

Cancer Culture

Blood Mantra

Anticult

Carnival is Forever

1. There are exceptions (Voivod, Manilla Road)