Review Summary: A third cover album? Whats the point anymore...
Bands that release covers are either loved or hated by their fans. It isn't very often that a popular band releases entire albums solely based upon covers, let alone more than one. Six Feet Under defies that, and instead of choosing the route of writing their own material, they choose to do even more pointless covers.
I'm going to say this: There is really only one point in listening to this, and that is the curiosity some people might have in listening to death metal covers of ridiculous songs. Most of them have no place in the genre and shouldn't be converted into death metal form at all. They chose to cover some classic artists and songs in the past, such as Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water," and Henrix's "Purple Haze." This time the songs are a little more metal and a little less classic rock, but still the same confusion as to why these songs. There is some Anvil, Prong, Van Halen, Slayer, and even Metallica. Very few of these covers are actually decent.
In my opinion, Chris Barnes went way downhill as a vocalist, and it definitely shows on this album. There's almost no aggression when growling even some of the heavier stuff. It just sounds like he isn't trying and that he is half asleep most of the time, such as on the song "Metal On Metal." Another thing is that it seems like they haven't really changed the instrument sound too much, which is probably for the better, considering that I don't want to hear a toned down version of Van Halen. It's kind of like karaoke with Chris Barnes, except this is actually being put on the shelves of stores.
One thing that isn't too bad is actually the sounds of the instruments themselves. Staying even the slightest true to the original sound can be a positive for this garbage. It's kind of like saying "This cover really sucks, but at least I can recognize the song they are covering." Only because of the riffs of the guitars and the drumming patterns can you identify what song it actually is. Based purely on the instrumental side, some of the songs are actually half-decent. Such as the Metallica cover "The Frayed Ends Of Sanity." and Slayer's "At Dawn They Sleep."
There really isn't too much to say about these set of covers, because it's kind of what you would expect. Death metal sing-along with Chris Barnes is fun at first, but it gets really tiring, really fast. There's really no point in listening to most of these covers; other than just to have a good laugh at how bad Six Feet Under completely butchers them.
