SIX FEET UNDER's CHRIS BARNES Explains Why He Quit Smoking Weed

Former CANNIBAL CORPSE and current SIX FEET UNDER frontman Chris Barnes, who previously described cannabis his "best friend for [his] entire life", has revealed in a new interview with This Day In Metal that he doesn't smoke cannabis anymore. "I haven't for about a year and a half," he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "But previously, I would use it in all aspects of my daily life. And it was a wonderful meditative tool to use to write lyrics to, of course, yeah. I enjoyed that a lot."

Asked if he decided to quit smoking cannabis for health reasons, Chris said: "No, it's actually beneficial to your health, so I wouldn't say that was any part of it. It was just, I guess, something I just wanted to do personally… [It's been] year and a half [of] no cannabis, no alcohol. So it's kind of changed gears a little in my life."

Back in 2017, Barnes told Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show about the "relaxed" aspect of his personality: "Well, I'm highly medicated… [Laughs] Cannabis has been my best friend for my entire life, pretty much, so everything I create and do is with the use of medicinal and spiritual use of cannabis. So I tend to keep a pretty even nature, unless someone pokes the bear, you know [laughs], someone stirs up the snake a little bit, I'm all right. But I've been known to have some pretty nasty bites. But, yeah, I try to keep it pretty cool."

Barnes admitted to the "Metal Shop" radio show in a 2015 interview that Washington state's legalization of marijuana in 2012 played "a big part" in his decision to relocate from Florida to Seattle. He explained: "I felt like for a big portion of my life, over half of my life, I was saying publicly and to myself, if there was ever a place that had legal weed that I loved and would wanna live there, why wouldn't I be there? And I asked myself that question a couple of more times, and sold my house [in Florida] in two days, packed up the house and left within two weeks and got up here."

Barnes also recalled how he was first introduced to marijuana at a very young age.

"I was lucky to grow up in a house where my dad and his wife were very, kind of, progressive, and he grew cannabis and sold it," Chris said. "So I remember the original Acapulco Gold strains, and Panama Red, the real Red, that were eradicated… So, yeah, my first time I smoked it, I think I was 12 years old, so it was probably, like, '78 or something, '79. I stole a roach [the end of a marijuana joint] out of the ash tray, and me and my best friend took my mini bike and went trail riding and smoked a couple of roaches."

Asked who the other biggest stoner in death metal is, Barnes responded: "It used to be my good friend Chuck Schuldiner [from DEATH]. He was a great smoking friend. But now I'd say my good friend Landphil Hall from CANNABIS CORPSE."

SIX FEET UNDER's fourteenth studio album, "Killing For Revenge", will arrive on May 10 via Metal Blade Records.

Photo credit: Stephanie Cabral