When Six Feet Under first hit the scene over a decade ago I have to admit I was an instant fan. Back when they first started out they were essentially an Obituary and Cannibal Corpse side project. Cannibal Corpse had just released The Bleeding and Obituary was fresh off the release of World Demise and I was still very early in my death metal listening phase. Haunted and Alive And Dead spent more time in my stereo than they did out of it. I remember snarling along with "Lykanthropy", "Human Target", "Remains Of You" and "Insect".

Don’t get me wrong, by no means do I consider early Six Feet Under to be ground breaking material, but it certainly wasn’t bad, it was just simple catchy fun death metal. Things didn’t really start going shitwards until the release of Warpath in 1997, as soon as I heard "4:20," my interest in the band died instantly. It was like coming downstairs on Christmas morning as a little kid to find a jolly old Saint Nick in a red leather S&M outfit bending your dad over the mantle and fucking him in the ass.

In the years since Six Feet Under has been on a rapid decline into the bowels of shitness culminating in the biggest atrocity in the history of music; Graveyard Classics 2 which featured the entire AC/DC album Back In Black covered in it’s entirety, and very poorly I might add.

Three years have passed since then and Six Feet Under have recorded another album, 13 and released a best-of anthology prior to the recording and release of 2007’s Commandment. I didn’t have a chance to hear 13 so I can’t compare the two releases, but I can say this is infinitely better than Graveyard Classics 2, although that is a lot like comparing Keira Knightley’s poop to a donkey’s turd, at the end of the day it’s still a steaming pile of shit no matter which ass it plopped from.

The material on Commandment is typical Six Feet Under; slow to mid paced simplistic chugging death metal with Chris Barnes snarling over top of everything else in the mix. The thing that’s odd about this effort is that the music itself, while simple, isn’t bad, and the vocals of Chris Barnes are as clear and powerful as ever, the problem is it sounds like Barnes is singing along to a completely different song than what’s being played. He seems to have completely lost any sense of how to sing in time with a melody. I don’t know if that’s because he smokes too much dope, snorts too much coke or whatever, but he’s seriously suffering from some major A.D.D. of some sort.

Bottom line is this is a Six Feet Under album and either you’re a fan or you’re not. Any metalhead with any sense gave up on them 10 years ago, and anyone who listens to their newer material and enjoys it is probably fucked up on meth and sucking dick for crack. They’re awful, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it, but many people asked me to review this anyway. I guess people just like seeing how many gay sex analogies I can use in a single review. Ha! Ha! I just said anal! Here’s another one for you; the only way Six Feet Under could be any gayer would be if during live performances Chris Barnes came out on stage naked with a sparkler stuck in his butthole that shot out rainbows every time he growled. Fuck this band sucks.

Written By: Teufel