Week 5 of 52 albums for a year
Six Feet Under - Haunted
Hello everyone! This week I went with a suggestion from a good friend of mine, Scott. He recommended an older album called Haunted by Six Feet Under. This is an album from 1995 and is pure death metal. He recommended it to me because it 'was nice and chill, and has a good groove to it'.
As you may have seen from previous weeks, this music is far heavier than anything I have listened to recently. Initially when I put on Six Feet Under I thought man, that is a slab of noise, what does he mean by it being chill? It's a real punch in the face after Spencer Sutherland, who makes catchy pop music with themes about love, relationships, and break ups.
I'm not going to pretend I can understand every word that the vocalist, Chris Barnes*, sings (or growls) but I can understand a lot more than I initially thought I'd be able to. For instance I picked up almost every word in the song Silent Violence including the verse: All is quiet as I force my fist down your cut throat. Grabbing tendons and veins I pull your insides out through your lipless mouth. Your stiff body is cold and still.
So this is the chill recommendation my friend gave me that I've spent the week listening to.
And I have to agree with him, lyrics aside, this music can be described as something you can chill to. Songs like The Enemy Inside, Lycanthropy and Haunted are easy to nod along to and are real stand outs for me. They album in general is catchy, there are a lot of hooks and riffs throughout this album.
That is, of course, if you don't turn it off in disgust.
I want to explain, I wasn't initially drawn to the gore content. I'm a metal head from way back and it's the music that often grabs me, the vocals are just another instrument. I enjoy the texture and rhythm of the growls and how it fits in with the rest of the sound. I like dark themes in my music. I like things that are indecent, disturbing, and create a sense of shock, but some of these lyrics are so ridiculous that it can take away from the enjoyment of the music.
An example: Haphazardly I remove your spleen and your liver. There is much blood. Eyes have been removed while you were still alive. Now I tear your flesh, I am ripping your skin.
Graphic? Yes. Shocking? Yes. Enjoyable? Not so much.
Because this album is so fictional, it feels like it’s an album that I’ll enjoy only on a surface level. The music is catchy but once you’ve read through the lyrics a few times, it ceases to have the shocking impact.
That being said I'd be lying if I didn't enjoy some of the lyrics, even if they are a bit full on. There's moments of poetry among the disgusting and disturbing. Here's something that grabbed me from the song Remains of You: I took an axe to your head chopping rotten flesh, brain is seeping from the cracks in your skull. Blood drains from holes in your torso, I took your life from you.
But I have to ask myself, what is it about this that I like? I have no desire to kill someone and mutilate their corpse like this, nor do I listen to true crime podcasts or watch crime shows as a general rule.
It's the last line that grabs me: 'I took your life from you'. That's where the fear and fascination comes from. It's not the gore, but the psychological terror that gets me, the idea that someone has actively decided to do this. It's the way that Chris Barnes has sang from the perspective of a murderer (and from all accounts he is interested in serial killers) that appeals to me. It's fascinating in it's grotesqueness and leaves me feeling uncomfortable, which I kind of like. Although much of that particular song is just a list of disturbing and disgusting ways to mutilate a corpse, the chorus is catchy.
As always, it comes back to the music rather than the lyrics.
I have to take context into account when thinking about this album as a whole. It's from 1995, making it 30 years old (on the 1st of September going by Wikipedia). How much music has been influenced by this album? Can you compare something from 30 years ago with something newer? Does it still hold up?
I'd have to say that it still does. I've been spending more time at the gym and a bit of death metal was just what I needed to get through the last reps of a set. It didn't matter that the album was 30 years old, it's still great. Of the 11 songs on the album, I'd say I like 8 of them. The 3 I don't like (Suffering is Ecstasy, Tomorrows Victim and Torn to the Bone) well they aren't bad to the point of skippable, but it just doesn't really grab me musically. The slower grooves are gone and these songs feel more... sterile and stock I guess.
As a whole, the album didn't leave me with much. It's not like I listened to this album and really resonated with what was being said. I can't see myself putting on these songs because I love the lyrics or they speak to me on a spiritual level or anything as profound as that. This is gore horror music, and similar to a gore horror film, it has a cult like following. It's not bad, but it's not what I would reach for as part of my day to day life. I could see myself putting it on now and then for a spin, especially for the catchy rhythms and beats, but it's not going to be something that I come back to again and again. Perhaps part of this is because there’s no nostalgia element for me. Had I heard this back when I was really into metal, it probably would hold a special place in my heart.
I'll give it 3 and a half fingers, and naturally those fingers are digging into the slightly rotted flesh of a corpse in search of a particularly juicy and tender organ, because that's the general vibe of the week.
Good grief! I need a palette cleanser.
Here's the list so far:
I have plans to write more for the month of February so if you’ve read this far I’d really love some suggestions of albums that have no lyrics. I don't mind if it's soundscape, soundtrack, ambient, EDM, psytrance, post rock, whatever. Just no lyrics and something that you think is fantastic music.
*The vocalist Chris Barnes is the original singer from a band called Cannibal Corpse. I'd heard their music on and off for years and I always thought of it as one of the most extreme bands in the genre, but that it lacked musicality in regards to the vocals. It sounded like noise to me and I couldn't understand a word. I plan on doing one of their albums in future to see if I can challenge some of these old beliefs as his vocals on this album were much clearer than I remember Cannibal Corpse sounding.