review: Six Feet Under -- rock and roll death metal

Six Feet Under

Nightmares of the Decomposed

Metal Blade Records

2 October 2020

Six Feet Under is old-school death metal with the spirit of simple, direct rock and roll, like a bunch of death metal dudes that in their own time they don't listen to death metal because they're sick of it and instead they just listen to the music of their youth like AC/DC and Motorhead. It's like rock and roll tuned down, with old-man growling. For those keeping track, this is SFU's 17th album. SFU has been the vehicle for Chris Barnes since his departure from Cannibal Corpse in the mid 90s. SFU is notorious for their cover albums, including covering AC/DC's Back in Black in full. Said SFU album on Metal Archives has 11 reviews with a total average rating of nine out of 100.

The new album is generally simple, grooving songs that sound like punk/bar band rock made to a death metal heaviness through distortion. It is very accessible music. The vocals are a semi-intelligible growl by a man that has been growling for decades. Some fans believe that these vocals are very deteriorated, compared to the 1990s. De-spite the extremely high amount of hatred that the band receives, SFU does have its fans, and this album, being not a covers album, should interest those particular fans. Of interest to said fans may be the fact that former Cannibal Corpse guitarist Jack Owen has joined Barnes, and apparently Owen wrote all the music for the album. One final note: in case fans do not know, in addition to the normal Barnes growl, Barnes does a screechy sound quite a lot, and it sounds something like a cat-screech (or something like that). It will be interesting to see how many people like it. This reviewer found it to be highly annoying. Despite all the hatred that the band gets, the fact remains that a lot of this album is simple and fun. The main issue is the vocals: Where do you stand?!

Nightmares of the Decomposed by Six Feet Under