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5.5
- Bands:
SIX FEET UNDER - Duration: 00:46:44
- Available from: 10/05/2024
- Label:
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Metal Blade Records
Streaming not yet available
The world of death metal is undoubtedly a fertile territory these days, between bands with a passion for experimentation and sonic evolution and others who instead know how to refer back to tradition, reviving it with a more current look or simply with that panache and that inspiration which – albeit with the necessary exceptions – are now a rare commodity among many increasingly worn-out veterans. In the midst of this great turmoil, Six Feet Under regularly proves to be a sort of foreign body within the movement, with leader Chris Barnes openly in conflict with the so-called scene and a sound that often seems on the verge of imploding, crushed by a greyness and an indeterminacy on a stylistic level which are now increasingly established.
With their latest work, “Killing For Revenge”, the group tries to redeem themselves after the previous, embarrassing, “Nightmares of the Decomposed”, but the result is only a modest improvement that fails to raise the bar of expectation.
The tracklist boasts a greater dose of aggression, with death-thrash riffs, a vague tone slayerian and tighter rhythms placed at the center of a songwriting – once again managed by guitarist Jack Owen – which tries to rely less insistently on that teetering groove and on the old hard rock ambitions expressed to the bitter end on the previous effort.
However, the increase in instrumental power is not enough to compensate for certain obvious shortcomings. Chris Barnes, the band’s central figure, remains tired and his growling continues to seem incapable of regaining the verve that once characterized him. The metrics, although overall less crude than the previous disaster, do not prove to be treated with the precision that one would expect from a band of this experience. Finally, Owen’s riffing irremediably lacks great flashes: as mentioned, more exuberance can be seen in the instrumental system, but a certain shortage of ideas and impulses still remains; once the initial impact has passed, often due to Marco Pitruzzella’s drumming, the tracks in various cases end up giving the idea of following a degrading spiral, as if due to the accumulation of uncertainties and tiredness, with a few never truly brilliant themes that are repeated ever since too much and a meaning that ends up dispersing after a few ‘turns’ (see the four and a half minutes of “Ascension” or the continuous exhausting twists and turns of “When the Moon Goes Down in Blood”). We therefore proceed by attacking with our heads down, but often without managing to build anything relevant, despite episodes like “Mass Casualty Murdercide” or “Spoils of War” bringing out some effective scores.
In short, that ingenuity and panache that make an album truly memorable and worthy of being listened to several times is missing. Sensations instead transmitted, wanting to give recent examples while remaining on sounds linked to tradition, by the return of Skeletal Remains or that of Necrot, both full of riffs that remain in the head. However, it is not just a matter of fixating on the concept of “making way for the young”, because veteran bands like Immolation and Cannibal Corpse obviously still demonstrate their relevance in the death metal panorama today. Simply, the current Six Feet Under are a tired lineup, which almost never manages to give dignity to the concept of groove and simplicity, as instead happened on respectable works such as “Haunted”, “Maximum Violence” or “Undead”.
“Killing For Revenge” is therefore not a total disaster like “Nightmares…”, but, at this point, it is almost superfluous to point out that the album as a whole does not bear comparison with the majority of the works that this musical genre offers us today , so much so that we ask ourselves why we should continue to pay attention to an old guard that is now extremely weak and pale like the one represented by these Six Feet Under, when there is so much that is stimulating and compelling that emerges from the underground or even from repertoire of older bands, but who still love what they are playing.
