Six Feet Under - 13 (2005)

   As it is widely known, Six Feet Under was formed as Chris Barnes' side project, but shortly after when he was quit from Cannibal Corpse, it became his main band.  

   The main concept was probably to perform his overly exaggerated gore, horror and mutilation based imaginations in a softer, more groovy and therefore audience-friendlier way. The concept proved to be successful, because the repetitive-groovy themes and the mainly middle speed retired bouncing is easier to go into for many, than the brutal death hammering and slamming. It was able to catch the attention even of those who basically didn't like death metal. Therefore it was clear from the beginning, that Six Feet Under meant to be more like a fun-made project, a kind of party compatible aspect of gory sickness. Chris Barnes' lyrics are easy to identify, cause he enjoys to pile up synonyms and descriptive words to illustrate imaginary horror situations that mostly doesn't make sense. But since it's a groovy fun-made thing, it's not really important to be taken seriously. The simpler musical approach probably also had the intention to drift closer to the very roots of the metal genre, because even in Cannibal Corpse times there have been signs that Mr. Barnes likes to play old classics in his style (that's always strictly restricted to his deep growling cookie monster vocal performance with distorted death metal sound). The "Graveyard Classics" series might have been interesting in the beginning, but not many understands why was it good to continue. "13" was already the eighth full-lenght Six Feet Under under album, but even though the band seemed like to stuck as an Obituary-like self-repetitive band, "13" had surprisingly great themes. Even though it didn't show anything different than before, the album was more intense, catched the most advantageous aspect to re-intruduce the band's already iconic groovy death style and didn't collapse by getting tired of itself.