UMUR "Cattle Decapitation / Caninus" is a split release by US, California based deathgrind/death metal act Cattle Decapitation and US, New York based grindcore act Caninus. The split was released through War Torn Records in October 2005. Cattle Decapitation are known to most fans of extreme metal but Caninus are a bit more obscure...and rightly so, as their two lead singers are two pitbulls called Basil and Budgie (yes...their vocalists are two dogs...).

Cattle Decapitation takes us through six short and violent deathgrind tracks, which are pretty much in character with their other contemporary releases. So this is before they added more death metal elements to their music, the odd gnarly clean vocals, and became slighly more accessible. It´s good quality deathgrind, but that´s about it.

The Caninus tracks are downright bizarre. The instrumental part of the tracks are pretty standard grindcore, but it´s impossible not to crack a smile when the two dogs growl, snarl, and bark their way through the ten Caninus tracks featured on the split (they even perform a cover of Agnostic Front). A novelty act they may be, but this is damn funny and a crazy idea...I´m entertained.

This kind of split is a bit hard to rate as on one side you have some pretty standard quality material from Cattle Decapitation, and then you have this complete craziness from Caninus. I´ll go with a 3 star (60%) rating because of the entertainment level.