SIX FEET UNDER

Dogged, relentless and unapologetic, SIX FEET UNDER have dragged death metal along like a steaming corpse for the last 33 years. The genre has expanded in a variety of ways during that time, but Chris Barnes has seldom shown any interest in competing with younger generations when it comes to speed, technicality or production polish. Instead, his band have always been proud outliers, playing slow and groovy death metal that sticks rigidly to an old-school diet demanding the listener to bang his (or her) head at a manageable pace and until a lasting concussion has been achieved. SIX FEET UNDER have their critics, and often justifiably so, but no one could accuse Barnes or his band mates of compromising or abandoning their principles. It is also true that the band's earliest works were never celebrated with sufficient enthusiasm: both 1995's "Haunted" and 1997's "Warpath" remain classics, and there are plenty of thrillingly gruesome high points to be found on the other albums they have made.

Whether by fortune or design, the last few SIX FEET UNDER albums have been particularly strong, their best since the early days, and that surge of quality and intensity continues on "Next To Die": the third album to feature Jack Owen, another former CANNIBAL CORPSE member, and the best songwriting foil that Barnes has worked with since the '90s. Anyone expecting a radical change of direction will be swiftly disavowed of the idea, but when it comes to disgustingly heavy, straight-ahead death metal with lyrics drawn straight from the warped mind of a madman, SIX FEET UNDER are doing rather better at this point in their career than anyone could have predicted.

As with their last album, 2024's "Killing For Revenge", this is an astutely produced and impressively varied collection of horror stories. The opening "Approach Your Grave" is deathly slow and sinister, as Barnes growls his way through ominous threats and promises of mortal ruin over riffs that generate atmosphere through sheer ugliness. "Destroyed Remains" is faster and nastier, with macabre lyrics that relish death's finality and a chorus that lingers after the (bloody) event; and "Mister Blood And Guts" tells the tale of a deeply unsavory trip to the cinema ("Aisles are filled with blood / Seats are filled with heads!") via an angsty, mid-paced onslaught that is vaguely redolent of SIX FEET UNDER's early works.

As ever, there is nothing happening here that will shock anyone, gore-drenched lyrics aside, but there are so few bands pursuing this particular strain of death metal in the 21st century that Barnes's myopic approach remains endearingly unique and impossible to dislike. Songs like "Mutilated Corpse In The Woods" and "Skin Coffins" are more than worthy of being included in a SIX FEET UNDER greatest hits set, and Owen is still a one-man riff machine with an intuitive understanding of how this kind of music is supposed to sound. From the murderous and heroically problematic "Naked And Dismembered" ("My hatred drives me to kill the helpless / To slaughter them in frenzied molestation!") to the offal-spattered, woozily anthemic title track ("You have been skinned alive / Genitals snipped right off!"),"Next To Die" delivered the expected goods, adds a few horrific ideas to Chris Barnes's lyrical Rolodex, and further cements the notion that this is the most effective SIX FEET UNDER lineup since the days of Terry Butler and Allen West. If you want death metal that dazzles with virtuosity and pushes extremity to the limit, there are plenty of bands out there doing just that, but for a satisfying hit of stripped-down barbarism, "Next To Die" is more than horrible enough.