Chris Barnes, who was at the time in Cannibal Corpse and Allen West from Obituary started Six Feet Under as a side project band returning to the roots of death metal, while their main bands were evolving outside the realm of classic death metal. However, Chris Barnes got his ass properly kicked out of Cannibal Corpse during the recording sessions of Cannibal Corpse's fifth album Created To Kill (the band later decided to give the album the title Vile), while Obituary simply vanished in the swamp of Florida and later on Allen West got kicked out of Six Feet Under (don't ask me why, I don't remember the reason behind that).

After listening to Six Feet Under's fourth studio album (if you don't count the tribute album Graveyard Classics, the live stuff and other MCD), that's just what I have in mind. I don't want to be catalogued as a purist, but when you listen to their first album Haunted, there's no possible comparison with this almost pitiful new album. Haunted was indeed a fresh reminder of what had been done best in the earliest days of death metal, while every album they put out afterwards were just declinations of the first album, adding slight touches of punk or rap metal in it. There's absolutely nothing new in this new album. Just old hat sickening death metal with mostly punk vibrations and the usual guttural repetitive vocals of Chris Barnes. This is an uncomplicated and unchallenging new album. It's not a bad album at all, but I have listened to that kind of metal a thousand times before and it was sometimes worse, but sometimes better than this. The limited digipack edition contains a making-of DVD and a bonus song that isn't worth a the few extra bucks.

Now, do most of all death metal bands have to decline ? The likes of Entombed, Katatonia, In Flames, Sepultura, Desultory, Benediction or Morbid Angel have produced some of the most challenging death metal albums ever but then simply managed to either warm up the soup producing albums that didn't meet their standards or turn their back to their roots, while on the other hands bands like Carcass, Morgoth, Cancer, Pestilence, Atheist, Messiah or Obituary decided on the other hands to stop all activities before it was too late. In fact very few bands managed to remains faithful to their roots while releasing album after album of above quality materials. Want some names ? Cannibal Corpse, Bolt Thrower, Grave, Immolation, Hyprocrisy, Malevolent Creation or Loudblast indeed did succeed to mature like good old French vines or Swiss cheese ;-).