Here in the hall, we have a tradition called “Squatter’s Rights”. This ensures that if you had the fortune to review something good, you get first dibs on that band’s next release; it also helps prevent the staff from mass-slaughtering each other when trying to see who gets to cover bigger names. Impossibly long-running “Little Engine That Would” outfit Six Feet Under are a remarkable inversion of that rule as the only “big” name where the opposite is true. Rapidly passed about like a blunt when the cops roll up, their last seven albums reviewed here have been through no less than five writers, and now their newest “opus” has fallen to me.1 Previous album Killing for Revenge had the inimitable Iceberg shower the band with praise enough to justify upping their classification from embarrassing to “merely” bad, which is, at least, an improvement in the most scientific sense of the word. Can Barnes and the Boys keep this upward trajectory?
That Next to Die suffers from self-sabotaging of good ideas is no surprise; what may be surprising is how many good ideas there are to sabotage. Against all odds and seemingly with the sole purpose of ruining entertaining writing, Six Feet Under has managed to assemble an album I find very difficult to outright hate. From a collection of fun, tasteful solos (“Destroyed Remains”, “Next to Die”) to grooves and riffs which manage to carry a whiff of old-school authenticity without devolving completely into boneheaded ignorance (“Mutilated Corpse in the Woods”), Next to Die is mostly barren of the rage-triggering flaws of olde. There are moments in here to get my toes tapping and noggin’ joggin’, with high-energy Obituary-isms and riffs that recall the stench of the oldest of old school death.
For the most part, Chris Barnes has managed to get out of his own way, discovering high-brow concepts like hot tea and honey between takes and maybe not smoking all the time. The utter ghastliness of Nightmares of the Decomposed has been mercifully abandoned, as he turns in a performance which manages to straddle a sweet spot between The Bleeding and Butchered at Birth, albeit more sun-bleached and war-torn. True, the more open spaces do him no favors when he tries to fill them with sustained growls, and from time to time, he still sounds like he’s struggling with his pacing (“Grasped From Beyond”, “Wrath and Terror Takes Command”), but he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to talk through a tight and possibly fuzzy leather belt anymore. He’s brought a smidgen more tonal range this go-round, digging deeper for some extra lows in “Skin Coffins” and squeezing out the last drops of juice from his throat in the high-belted chorus of “Ill Wishes”. While it’s only taken a decade or three, Barnes can’t be considered the defining weak link of his band anymore.
Instead, everyone gets to have a hand in things!2 Drummer Marco Pitruzzella often zigs when he should zag, with bizarre drum arrangements and surprisingly minimal beats (“Unmistakable Smell of Death”, “Mind Hell”) which turn into real momentum killers. Some artistic ideas can’t stick the landing, like the aforementioned “Ill Wishes,” which swings for a real album climax in presentation but is ruined by Barnes licking my ears with wildly moist ASMR verses,3 and album kickoff “Approach Your Grave” tries to return death metal to its horror roots with a nifty curtain-raising styled riff that takes two and a half minutes too long to get to the point. Then there’s the paradox of the album: “Mister Blood and Guts.” Musically speaking, this is the crown jewel, with a curb stomping, pit igniting, grin-inducing wad of chug-heavy fun in the chorus, as long as you try not to think too hard about how the lyrics sound like they were written by Sid from Toy Story. Really, that’s the album in a nutshell: there’s some unexpected joy in here, but the sense of relief you feel as the average and mediocre lifts its head is palpable.
“Stand tall, score it appropriately.” That’s what my Freezer Brother Tyme said. Well, I have, and frankly, I’m angry about it. This was not the dumpster fire I was looking forward to. It is not irredeemable, it is not atrocious, and it is not appallingly terrible. It is instead a cumulative result of a surprising amount of good ideas, riddled with enough flaws and imperfections to drag the final product down to average. Many bands would find that devastating. For Six Feet Under, it is a crowning accomplishment, a continuation of their upward trajectory from the unforgivable to the merely appallingly milquetoast.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Metal Blade Records
Website: Album Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: April 24th, 2026
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