SIX
FEET UNDER
Chris
Barnes - Vocals
Terry Butler - Bass
Greg Gall - Drums
Steve Swanson - Guitars
Metal
Blade Records releases SIX FEET UNDER's latest release
13 with Graveyard Classics 2 as added bonus!
On
August 9th 2005 you will be able to purchase Six Feet
Unders latest release 13 with Graveyard Classics
2 as added bonus!!! 13, as Barnes puts it is our
Reign in Blood. I in no way, shape, or form mean to
suggest that 13 is better than, sounds like, be as
ground breaking, or will be remembered with as much
regard in the history of metal as Reign in Blood.
To clarify for those of you who don't get it, and
for those of you who are quick to dismiss us, let
me break it down once again... in my opinion this
is our best most exciting work since Maximum Violence
and I am thoroughly excited and proud of what we did
on this CD and to those who doubt us, you would doubt
us no matter what, and to our fans -you wont be disappointed.
13
features the following tracks: 'Decomposition Of The
Human Race', 'Somewhere In The Darkness', 'Rest In
Pieces', 'Wormfood', '13', 'Shadow Of The Reaper'
(first video directed by Gary Smithson, featuring
actors Meagan Crawford and Aaron Kinser), 'Deathklaat',
'The Poison Hand', 'This Suicide', 'The Art Of Headhunting'
and 'Stump'.
The
bonus disc will be Graveyard Classics 2 which was
originally released on October 19th 2004. Death Metal
heavy weights Six Feet Under did what no other metal
band has done before... covered an album in its entirety!
Six Feet Under's Graveyard Classics 2 is none other
than the AC/DC's infamous 20 times platinum release
Back In Black! Six Feet Under recorded GC2 at Morrisound
Recording in Tampa, Florida with Chris Carroll mixing
and Chris Barnes producing. For those of you who don't
know the track listing, and shame on you for that,
here it is:
1.
Hells Bells
2.
Shoot to Thrill
3.
What Do You Do For Money Honey
4.
Givin the Dog a Bone
5.
Let Me Put My Love Into You
6.
Back in Black
7.
You Shook Me All Night Long
8.
Have A Drink On Me
9.
Shake A Leg
10.
Rock N' Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
When
he's not drag racing near his Tampa, Florida home,
Six Feet Under's Chris Barnes is a non-stop death
machine. In fact he may be the only living grandfather
of death metal - a tag he "always gets a smile
out of," the singer admits with a blushing tone.
"If anything, that kind of recognition makes
it worthwhile for this style of music. I definitely
appreciate that."
On
the verge of unveiling their latest slab piled with
human remains, Six Feet Under are getting grim this
time... grim reaper that is, a recurring theme surrounding
the 11 tracks found nestled within this freshly-hewn
casket. Recorded at Morrisound Recording in Tampa,
Florida and Criteria The Hit Factory in Miami, the
band's eighth full-length studio effort, 13, "will
rip your fucking heads off," as Barnes so eloquently
describes (although this is a mission statement the
dread-locked legend has used since the band's debut,
Haunted, in 1995). Along with guitarist Steve Swanson,
bass legend Terry Butler (Death, Massacre) and drummer
Greg Gall, the foursome continue to follow a strange
career path that merges simplistic death metal with
their fetish for the tried 'n' true classic sound
of the art form. And consistency is the key to Barnes'
rather stomach-turning ideals.
"We
try to put out some kind of release every year,"
he says, with respect to the band's creative outbursts
that have been an ugly but regular occurrence for
over a decade. "Most bands outside of the '70s
and '80s were releasing one album every three or four
years. I don't have that much time. I feel like I
have to keep moving and keep creating as much as I
can while I'm here. I'm not gonna dilly-dally and
play the games most bands play. I'm here to write
lyrics and make music for ourselves first off. We
are definitely in touch with the people that like
our music and we try to stay in tune with our fans.
I think that's one thing I've always done: stay aware
of what's going on out there around me in the music
industry. I've always had a real love for this thing
that I do. It's a passion of mine and I really, really
love creating. And to do that every three years or
something... I can't pace around that long. I'm an
anxious type of person. When I know I want to do something
I do it. It may take me a couple of minutes to plan
it out right, but I do it and I get into it. I can't
wait for when it comes time to write; it's my passion."
"This
album is my main catalyst right now," he continues.
"We've been getting this together since October.
Now with mastering being completed and a release date
set, it's just a matter of really pushing myself to
accomplish the next step in what I did with this record
and what the band did in writing it. It's just taking
it to the next step, which is what's going to drive
me the next six or seven months."
And
Barnes more than ever guides the SFU death ship, as
he's also credited with producing 13 alongside longtime
engineer and mixer Chris Carroll. 13 features the
following tracks: 'Decomposition Of The Human Race',
'Somewhere In The Darkness', 'Rest In Pieces', 'Wormfood',
'13', 'Shadow Of The Reaper' (first video directed
by Gary Smithson, featuring actors Meagan Crawford
and Aaron Kinser), 'Deathklaat', 'The Poison Hand',
'This Suicide', 'The Art Of Headhunting' and 'Stump'.
Fans
of Barnes' Cannibal Corpse roots (he split with the
band after 1994's The Bleeding) and the malicious,
speed-ridden underbelly of Six Feet Under's death
metal vision will embrace 13.
"It
seems like it's more on the up-tempo side." Barnes
describes the frenzied affair. "I think it's
a direct echo of where we were when we wrote it. We
had just got off the road, three or four days before
we went into the studio. We had no material written.
I had an idea of approaching this album in a different
way, writing and recording. We just went into the
studio and wrote this thing. The aggressiveness and
the tempo reflected our mindsets. We really tapped
into our feelings and it set our pace. We've been
putting out lots of releases and doing lots of touring.
From studio to tour, studio to tour… everything.
We've been on the wheel this past year. I didn't want
to let the band relax after being on that. I wanted
to use that energy that forward motion, and it really
showed itself in the writing process and in the recording,
which was really what I had an aim to do. We wanted
to get a breath of fresh air in the writing process
and hopefully that would stir things up a bit and
make this album contain more stand-out songs. When
you force yourself into a situation, you tend to absorb
the energy and it definitely helps you; I think that
was my motive on this one - for me and for the band."
But
while idle hands are the devil's playground, taking
advantage of the momentum proved fruitful. Creatively
speaking, 13 came together in a flash of death metal
spirit, nurtured along with Barnes' focus on extraneous
ingredients and spiritualistic accompaniment.
"I
had a vision, like everything else I've done through
meditation and smoking lots of marijuana. I've developed
a keen third eye sense - it's a straight vision, tunnel
vision. I can't break free of that tunnel. There's
one set mind pattern in motion and I have to follow
it. That was really my idea for this. I said, 'That
will work, this will work.' Some people will use this
against us if they don't like it, but this is the
strongest stuff we've done. I always say it, but this
is completely off-base for us writing-wise and it
works in an aggressive way. We wrote this album and
laid the drum tracks down in seven, eight days. I
wrote 14 sets of lyrics (11 for 13, the rest for the
box set) in just under five days. I laid my vocal
tracks down in six hours on this thing. Everything
came together so spontaneously and to me it's more
solid than anything we've ever taken time on. I really
don't know how it came together but it did; it's weird.
They're really good songs. A lot of great albums were
written in the studio under the influence of lack
of sleep and entertaining substances. It's a good
thing to go back to the way things sounded and the
way people put things together. Some people at the
label are saying this is the best thing since Haunted.
I really think we accomplished something and we pushed
ourselves in a different way and it formed itself
right. It was a cocky thought I had, but everything
I do has got a little bit of ego to it - it's got
to. That's what an artist does, he embraces his own
creation and that's where it begins. Hopefully people
will enjoy it as much as I do."
The
lyrical element behind 13 is, once again, not for
the weak at heart, as Barnes plunders the dark side,
scythe in hand. "It's definitely a loosely based
concept," he says about his twisted poetry. "It
takes you through a story. Everything I've done lyrically
is about life and death. And this is no different,
but it's a little more concentrated and focused towards
the grim reaper and the thought of the coming of death
in many ways individually and on a grand scale. People
that are really into my lyrics notice certain patterns
of reminiscing towards older things that I've written.
There's maybe a little bit more of a puzzle here to
try and connect the pieces. 13 is kind of that, but
directed in a manner of things to come, things that
have been, things that are happening.
The number 13, on many different levels, biblically,
historically, supernaturally, is a vague type of thing;
it's not just a scary number. “
Six
Feet Under’s 13 in store March 22nd, 2005!
DISCOGRAPHY
• Graveyard Classics 2 (Metal Blade Records,
2004)
• Live With Full Force (Metal Blade Records,
2004)
• Bringer of Blood (Metal Blade Records, 2003)
• Double Dead (Metal Blade Records, 2003)
• True Carnage (Metal Blade Records, 2001)
• Graveyard Classics (Metal Blade Records, 2000)
• Maximum Violence (Metal Blade Records, 1999)
• Warpath (Metal Blade Records, 1997)
• Alive and Dead (Metal Blade Records, 1996)
• Haunted (Metal Blade Records, 1995)
