Six Feet Under
Maximum Violence

THE REVIEW

Steve Swanson is the saviour machine of Six Feet Under, a versatile guitarist who replaces Allen "I'm In Pain" West's noble Obituary riffs, and even his few distorted solos, refining them with more dynamic and less static compositions. It's a pity he succeeds in doing so for only half of the tracks. This third offspring of Six Feet Under (year 1999) benefits from a new smelly Death Metal pouring, characterized by the usual raw and muddy production of Brian Slagel (who forgets to raise the volume of the double bass drum) and embellished with a merciless technological gore cover and a handful of songs with a fast but twisted "rot'n'roll" rhythm, not uniform like the Old-Thrash of the '80s, similar to the jarring opener of "...For Victory" by Bolt Thrower.

Everything seems embalmed with care right from the ebony-colored cardboard packaging, reminiscent of the Nothing flown over by the unfortunate plane in the film "The Langoliers" by Stephen King, up to the photos in the inner booklet which are more or less...uhm...cool and full of celebration. Chris Barnes' look is enlivened by Bad Brains-style rasta braids, offering hope for a Death-Reggae-Punk fusion, perhaps with a cover of "Banned in D.C". A snapshot in the woods and Greg Gall, a Blues Brothers version without the suit, observes us proudly, defiantly. In the iconic shot at the end of the booklet, we find our heroes in single file with a disgruntled Butler, a wide-eyed Swanson, an increasingly cool Gall, and a shy bandleader Barnes. The drummer finally takes center stage, both as a "tough guy" and as a composer, along with Terry Butler. Swanson is no less; the puzzle appears complete but is instead only halfway there. The introduction "Feasting On The Blood Of The Insane" leads straight to the morgue, with the heavy burden of a fair approaching to tear our heads off, with a monstrous Chris Barnes, resembling the beast from the episode "The Crate" taken from "Creepshow" by the legendary Carpenter, a certainly brutal but not compelling track.

"Bonesaw" takes advantage of this new strange drum rhythm that turns it into a catchy and lively track, a hint of what awaits us later in the album. "Victim of The Paranoid" is a decidedly good track, the most famous of the album, with a great performance by Barnes (who returns to talk about marijuana) and the whole band that now seems to be cohesive, especially Gall who continues to skillfully grind out rolls. However, the masterpiece of the album is "Short Cut Of Hell", a sabbath slow as a brontosaurus' stride, that bursts in with a well-chosen riff, refreshed by a bass that sounds like a tank in action and drums with sharp and slowed beats, a doom fresco of great charm, but with the added value of Barnes growling deeply like a beast from other worlds: "This soul is black this soul is free/night everlasting, dwells within me". A change then occurs within the song itself, the growl leads us to obsession, with a crushing and suffocating rhythm, a kind of soul funeral that could accompany Baudelaire's poetry "Spleen". At this point comes the discontinuity of inspiration. Other episodes of the album propose a mix of speed and modulated growl like "Mass Murder Rampage", a manic and well-crafted track, and "No Warning Shot", with the famous shout "Die motherfucker die, die".

"Torture Killer" (the monicker of the Finnish group where Barnes will sing) is still a doom piece with a sticky sound, with a macabre and bleeding text. A limit that becomes evident in some less successful songs like "Brainwashed" which lower the judgment on the album, also containing a Kiss cover, "War Machine", certainly nice, which perfectly blends with the other tracks, almost a yardstick. Unfortunately, the comparison with Cannibal Corpse's "Bloodthirst", in terms of quality, we're clear, is lost on points precisely due to the group's difficulty in holding out for the long term, especially in guitar solos that cannot compete with the Owen - O'Brien tandem. The revisitation of Iron Maiden's "Wrathchild" and Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak" is of no use, welly done usual copy-pastes that only see a replacement of the original voice with Barnes' cavernous one.

"Stasera niente di nuovo" is the ironic title of a variety show by the Vianello-Mondaini couple, from the early '80s, a perfect slogan for these covers. Another wasted opportunity? Mah.... Exhilarating sales (just take a peek on Wikipedia or on Metal-Archives) and the image the group has created speak for themselves. Revenge Of The Zombies.