YouTube comments turned off lol

Soo... the vocals are still terrible, unsurprisingly, except unlike the last album they aren't terrible to the point of utter hilarity. That's honestly even worse lol.

How am I hearing this now? Nightmares of the Decomposed remains one of the worst death metal records I've heard, as well as being a tragic display of how downhill Chris Barnes's vocals have been since leaving CC. I'll probably check it out when it releases, but I'm worried that it'll somehow be even worse than the last record.

vocals sound hella compressed, probably processed in some other way as well. song is not good, but not comically or interestingly so.

I kind of liked it. Honestly have not bought a SFU album since Unborn and doubt that will change, but who knows?

I'm not listening to that new song or the new album when it releases. Or any Six Feet Under this year. My ears are not getting raped today. Fuck this band.

Decent musically, shit vocals (even with all the obvious dolling up), dumb boomery lyrics that are pretty obviously a shot at new death metal vocalists. Bar's set extremely low, but I've heard much worse from SFU.

The lyrics are even more petty than that, the song's supposed to be about twitter trolls, and Barnes didn't even write them, Jack Owen did. The band is pressed about people making fun of them I guess.

I was just about to post similar, where they said Jack wrote 90% of the lyrics. The irony lol.

Nah, this sucks.

That riff is garage band level stuff. If this is a highlight then the filler tracks must be abominable.

How is it possible that Corpsegrinder (or really insert any old school death metal band that's still around. Ross Dolan perhaps?) managed to maintain his voice over the decades...but Chris Barnes' voice has degraded to an almost absurd degree?

It can't just be the weed...ain't no way

Good technique and probably took care when needed

It's doesn't take that much to do permanent damage to ones vocal chords. Others evidently have taken more care to not to do so. Although some of them still have damaged their voice somewhat, they are still capable of doing good enough growls (Corpsegrinder, Benton).

Because Barnes doesn't take care of his vocals, nor does he seem to have a particularly have a healthy lifestyle in general - it all adds up.

Chris Barnes sounds like an actual hobo on bath salts these days which is kind of cool in a way. And nobody else sounds like his current "style."
One day the world will critically re-appraise this misunderstood artist's body of work.

The unstoppable beating a dead horse meets the unmovable shooting fish in a barrel

The AC/DC covers were so bad that they were good, if Iam having a bad day I just listen to Hells Bells by SFU and burst out laughing.

What is good or bad music though, it's all subjective, Iam sure most people in the board despise most commercial radio music, but the majority of people listens to that.

Oddly enough, he sounded decent on Undead/Unborn and those two albums weren't all that long ago.

I just don't understand how this band continues to sell enough albums for Metal Blade to keep them around. I also don't understand how Jack Owen can slum it like this.

This thread is a good opportunity to ask the following question: Does anybody know the real reason as to why Chris Barnes was kicked out of Cannibal Corpse? From the outside it seems so strange, they released The Bleeding, arguably one of their most classic albums and then from nothing, at the peak of their career they fired him. I recently saw an interview where Chris Barnes says that they ridicule him and treat him badly, but I wanted to know the CC members side of the story, because I take Chris words with a grain of salt.

Edit: I found this transcription of the Scott Burns biography and tells very well the story behind the dispatch of Chris Barnes. It seems he was a gigantic douchebag and fought with everybody in those days and the band weren't happy with the vocal delivery that they were trying, the music got a lot more technical, and Barnes couldn't keep up with the pace.

https://blabbermouth.net/news/inside-cannibal-corpses-1995-decision-to-fire-chris-barnes

Awhile back, I ran across an interview with Scott Burns in which he spoke about the reasons Chris Barnes was dismissed from Cannibal Corpse. It seems that Chris was just really not easy to work with and had difficulty taking criticism and getting along with others. He was not open to feedback and did not want to allow other band members to collaborate with him on song lyrics. There were also concerns about his declining vocal ability and work ethic, which he apparently frequently dismissed. During a break in recording, Chris jetted off to tour with Six Feet Under without providing appropriate notice and effectively put Cannibal Corpse's plans to regroup and continue work on new material on hold. That was supposedly the final straw, and he was dismissed immediately afterwards.

In the 20 years of Torment CC history DVD the band talks about him being resistant to any of their ideas on lyrics or vocal patterns. Guys who were writing songs were wanting to use particular vocal patterns and lyrics and he wasn't interested. Barnes said it was like him telling other guys how to play their instruments.

Plus they were drifting apart personally.

I do find it funny in that he was talking about it like he was writing lyrics that were personally important to him and didn't want to croak about the topics they were writing. So less sexual violence stuff and more pure gore wasn't resonating with him?

Kind of funny since its very similar to why Jack left Deicidie. Steve and Glen werent happy with his songs, so they changed them, so he left.

"resistant to any of their ideas on ... vocal patterns"
Considering just about every single Corpsegrinder era song has the exact same rap-like RUH-RUH-RUH-RUH vocal pattern (with a random "intense" 10 second long scream thrown in here and there), it might be the case that the rest of the band was pushing bad ideas and he just disagreed.

Barnes era CC lyrics weren't exactly poetry--for better or worse, they were the prototype of stupid slam lyrics. But you can see the band begin to self-censor and remove anything that can be construed as "misogyny" after The Bleeding. Not that lack of sexual violence in lyrics is automatically bad, but Corpsegrinder era lyrics are just completely generic and failed to replace the first linup's psychosexuality schtick with anything interesting. A couple lines from the last album:
"Deplete you, unrelenting
I dissolve your resolve
Demonize, begin your transformation"
Lots of verbs that vaguely gesture at something bad happening to some nondescript subject. "Deplete!" "Dissolve!" "Eradicate!" ""Maim!" "Slaughter!" Zzzzz.
Barnes has written plenty of stupid stuff but I don't think he'd ever use a word like "demonize" in such a dumb way.

From the sound of it they are definitely trying to bury Barnes' vocals this time around after how hilariously bad they were on the previous album, no EEEEEEEEEEEs yet either.

Honestly can't tell if this is better or worse because of it, Nightmares of the Decomposed was so bad that it became oddly enjoyable due to the embarrassing vocal performance on display. This just sounds like a generic death metal track.

And it seems nothing has changed on this front

I think one of the definitions of demonize is to transform into something demonic.

Because obviously there's plenty of folks who like their music. I suspect that Barnes is even something of a death metal icon. Whatever goes on in this forum has little to do with the real world.

Nicely put. It took me forever to figure out why I can't connect with post-Barnes CC. The main reason is Corpsegrinder's repetitive monotonous vocals. He's seems to be a genuinely great guy, is an excellent frontman, but vocalist...not so much. No idea about his lyrics since I don't care about lyrics, but I remember finding the lyrics to Eaten Back to Life quite funny when it came out.

I was clued in by someone who toured with Cannibal in the early 2000s that Barnes apparently stole tens of thousands of dollars from the band over a period of several years. Apparently crew members saw him literally taking merch cash out for himself at a show, and that led to the band digging through their finances to determine how long it was going on for and for how much.

That's surprising since listening to the guys talk about the break up on the history DVD, nothing about theft was implied and they seemed like they both thought it was for the best and were on decent enough terms now.

The only one who was totally out of touch was Rusay, who pretty much said fuck you all, gave up music, and never spoke to them again. And while I think the guitars got better with Barrett, O'Brien, and now Rutan, Rusay had a bludgeoning style that was pretty cool.

that's Gala thread & speculation for free, why trying to judge something we don't even know the beginning and the people involved ? SFU is a funny band from the beginning, ACDC is fun and is not intend to be the most serious DM on earth, I have stopped listening since Death rituals and I play this one when I need soft greasy moment, that's it and nothing more

Oh yeah, here's another gem



This is exactly what death metal is supposed to sound like.

That "Amerika the Brutal" song makes me wanna throw my fuckin laptop out of my window.

It's very telling that the actual satirical death metal band, Dethklok, makes better music than this band that's supposed to be a serious one but comes off as satire sometimes.

Yeah that Amerika the Brutal song fucking blows, y'all got shit taste lol.

I swear SFU fans have the weirdest taste in death metal, the songs they choose to highlight are easily some of the worst that SFU have to offer

Disappointed by the single. It's not shit enough. They should double down

If Paul Speckman and Master got even half of the attention Chris Barnes and Six Feet Under get, the world would be a much better place.

Master is so much better at the old school sound with pissed off dude on vocals. Just compare Vindictive Miscreant to Know-Nothing Ingrate. His songs where he critiques the USA are much better thought out as well.

mainly I just want chris to learn how to use a metronome. if his timing was better SFU would be way easier listening imo. not that a change like that would turn their music into masterpieces, but it would resolve a pretty big gripe I have with them.

I don't know what happened to Chris's voice, the first four Cannibal Corpse albums are probably the most influential pieces of music that death metal has created, both commercially and musically, if you hear today's slam and brutal death metal is hard to not look back at those records. Those albums marked with blood the fundaments of death metal.

Yeah, we all know SFU is bad, but CC never released albums of the same influence and brutality as those first 4 albums. And I like Corpsegrinder, George Fisher is an awesome death metal singer, there is no doubt about that. But something in those four albums was dark, disturbing, and real, they were less gimmicky than modern CC is.