The Monolith of Inhumanity is an album by the California based Deathgrind band Cattle Decapitation. Throughout their discography, Cattle Decapitation frequently engages with environmental activism. This is especially apparent on the album in question. Though there is no overarching narrative throughout the album, it does have consistent themes. They frame the current ecological crisis as something inevitable and present the listener with a possible, post-apocalyptic future in which humanity has collapsed. This is very apparent on the song Lifestalker, on which they critique our modern society: “Look! How we’ve locked ourselves in a self-made hell from which there is no redemption. Through the rise of technology, we lost our ‘humanity.’ (…) The advent of technology – beginning the disease. There is no survival when we are liable for everything that is wrong in this world.”
The current academic perspective on music as a form of environmental activism is a sceptical one. It is believed that music is not able to engage with green topics in a meaningful way, because the music industry is strongly engrained in consumer capitalism (Parham, 2016). However, academic writing has been largely limited to mainstream pop and rock music. This perspective seems to disregard a large portion of contemporary music which sits outside of the mainstream. This is exemplified by The Monolith of Inhumanity: Cattle Decapitation’s music is clearly not meant to be enjoyed by as broad an audience as possible and, on The Monolith of Inhumanity, they are not shy about addressing the larger systemic issues which are the root cause for climate change.