'True Carnage' is the fourth studio album from Six Feet Under. The band features ex-Cannibal Corpse throat Chris Barnes, ex- Massacre guitarist Steve Swanson, ex-Death bassist Terry Butler and Greg Gall on drums. With body parts and fetuses in glass jars and a title 'True Carnage', I really waited for some twisted and brutal death metal. On their previous albums, the band managed to deliver som classics, but I could never call them "fucking brutal" nor "incredibly sick". And with some tricks the band utilize on this one, they have managed to go ludicrious. In its own way this is fucking sick, but not in a right way.

Six Feet Under were always straight and quite simple in their song writing. On previous album, 'Maximum Carnage' (1999), they were on their most meandering. On 'True Carnage' there's nothing meandering. It's extremely straight material, way too straight for my liking. The band's performances are simplistic for a big part, or then incredibly one-dimensional sound destroys all nuances. There's no echoing, everything sounds live and raw for sure, but the sound is just so inept. Sounds like it was all recorded on one take and breathing, amplifiers' drone and such were left on the album. Everything comes out on similar level, usually, but sometimes vocals bury the guitar quite badly. Claustrophobic is the word how this sounds. The music is also sludgier and slower than usually. Maybe because the sound sucks, since faster parts sound worse than slow ones. The music is very rhythmic, but that alone doesn't make it memorable. And that's another big problem here.

Again, vocals are gory and all that. Themes vary from zombies to real-life school killings to all kind of mutilation and killing of a person. Sick or childish, whatever one sees them. Chris Barnes tried something new on this one; higher growl. Sounds like fucking Cartman (that fatso kid from South Park)! Not funny, not brutal, just fucking ludicrous. Of course Mr Barnes does his trademark low stomach acid gurgle a lot. There's two guests: Ice T rapping on 'One Bullet Left', which doesn't work, and she-beast Karyn Crisis vokilling on 'Sick and Twisted', which works! Rap on a death metal record?! Yes, sadly. Well, it is not that song alone that destroys this album.

At first, I watched the cd-rom video track 'The Day the Dead Walked', which looks great. My expectations were high as I started to listen to the album, but they were never met. 'True Carnage' is extreme at some points, but in a wrong way. It left an expression of being ludicrous, not brutal.

Rating: 4- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
05/31/2004 22:54