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Six Feet Under > Warpath > Reviews > bayern
Six Feet Under - Warpath

Buried Deep, but Still Belligerent and Battle-Prone - 82%

bayern, May 11th, 2017

When I bought the “Haunted” cassette in 1995, I had only heard a few notes from "Butchered At Birth". I certainly knew the whole story with the brutal musical outrages, the obscene cover art, the diverse apocalyptic vocal performance… in theory I was acquainted with the Cannibals’ saga, but practice-wise my knowledge amounted to just above zero; one of the five or six bands I took exclusively on prejudice, and never bothered to check them out more thoroughly until much much later.

Anyway, I already knew this new Chris Barnes, and Allen West (Obituary), project wasn’t going to be anything like Cannibal Corpse so I approached it with the utmost curiosity, and was left pleasantly surprised by it. So our favourite hellish death metal throat has decided to embrace the transformational sounds that became quite prominent in the mid-90’s thanks to albums like Entombed’s “Wolverine Blues”, Cemetary’s “Godless Beauty”, Sentenced’s “Amok, and Massacra’s “Sick”, leading death metal out of its rigid canons and frames. The groove had been epitomized only too well into the post-death metal sctructure making this effort a perennial, instantly memorable roller-coaster.

And not only but Barnes and West were able to pull it off admirably once again with the album reviewed here. Hats off to you, Chris and Allen, for these supremely catchy, prime slab of groovy, doomy, speedy, deathy, thrashy delights which wastes no time starting the party with the ultimate groovy pounder “War is Coming”, a rousing hymn for all belligerent and angry metalheads out there, excluding the Cannibal Corpse lovers, seamlessly rolling into “Nonexistence” which throws more playful grooves into the fray as the carefree mid-paced fiesta goes on unperturbed on the short frolicer “A Journey into Darkness”. “Animal Instinct” speeds up to thrashy dimensions and may even pass for the highlight if it wasn’t for the supremely infectious “Death or Glory” which strangely reminds of the Germans Warlock’s brilliant “Dark Fade” from their debut “Burning the Witches” only with a beast, not a beauty behind the mike.

I ended up listening to “Burning Blood” multiple times on the same day also trying to reproduce this brutal semi-recital (“your torture brings me pleasure”) identically to Barnes’ venomous spit, and almost nailed it although I nearly choked in the process; anyway, this prime doomster is one of the man’s finest achievements, a supreme moshpit stirrer regardless of the seeming lack of speed. “Manipulation” is the next in line instant hit with the bouncy playful grooves, the remotest possible musical element from the Cannibal Corpse atrocities. Time for more, this time real, doom with “4:20” on which Barnes even tries some cool cleaner vocals to match the Sabbath-esque ship-sinking rhythms which sink all the ships at exactly 4.20-min. Rude awakening is lined-up next with the brisk speed/thrasher “Revenge of the Zombies”, but don’t expect two in a row as “As I Die” is a surprising Paradise Lost cover… kidding of course!; the staple for the band vivid mid-pacer. Alternation of the two sides is mandatory, and “Night Visions” is a more dynamic power metal rouser leaving the doom-laden finale for “Caged and Disgraced”, another admirable excerpt from both the groovy and doomy roster.

This handsome double established the band on the forefront of the post-death metal transformation movement although it also won them legions of detractors who couldn’t forgive the supposed betrayal encountered here with two death metal luminaries joining forces and coming up with anything but first-rate classic death. Well, the times were calling for changes, and in this particular case this is by no means the worst contribution to the numetal vogues; it even has a characteristic old school aura, especially on the doom metal moments. Obituary’s “Back from the Dead” opus strongly reminded of this album’s playful nature, West incorporating some of the groovy variations into his main band’s repertoire. He left Six Feet Under after this recording, leaving Barnes to cope with all the invective and diatribes alone.

Not that the latter ever cared about who liked his music and who didn’t although he did return to a more aggressive death metal sound on “Maximum Violence” two years later which was a step in the right direction as the old school was bracing itself for another spell with the music industry, and the album sold over 100,000 copies. Barnes never attempted a full-on tribute to his groovy post-death beginnings, and more good quality death metal kept coming also mixed with some horrible displays of bad taste: remember the “Graveyard Classics” franchise… the man and his comrades are by all means having a good time, testing the audience’s threshold of tolerance with dubious, also openly laughable on occasion, references to the classic metal legacy from time to time, but one only lives once, after all, except James Bond… and Chris Barnes, I guess.