I used to be one of the biggest Chris Barnes fans until 2000. I even copied his live performing style when sang for a death metal act back then! Well, I think he’s made one of the biggest artistic mistakes when he and his fellows in here (Butler/Gall) decided to turn Six Feet Under from a side project to a main band. Ok! Sure, “Haunted” was a great album (for its release date) and the two follow-ups (“Warpath”, “Maximum Violence”) had some pretty good songs but after the first album with covers (“Graveyeard Classics”) was released I lost all respect!

I won’t stick, however, to their past releases. “Death Rituals” is the band’s brand new 8^th studio full-length effort (if we don’t count the two “Graveyeard…”) but again one of the same. There are some nice tracks in here like “Eulogy Of The Dead” or “Shot In The Head” but nothing we haven’t heard before by them or by others; yes, they have done nearly the same tracks with much better guitar riff ideas! It’s quite obvious to open-minded listeners that this mix of the ’90s death metal sound with the ’70s musical purity (like Sabbath or AC/DC structures) has nothing else to offer but Barnes and his partners don’t seem to realize it.

I don’t know. Maybe the band is going well in sales figures since they remain one of Metal Blade’s top priorities. But still this doesn’t increase the poor musical quality served in “Death Rituals”. Worst thing is that Barnes’s vocals (one of the bands strongest elements) sound pretty weak like he has a cold or something! For SFU die hard fans only.