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Six Feet Under: Graveyard Classics Death Metal, Death 'N Roll Metal Blade Records 2002
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Review
Graveyard Classics, one of the most shrugged off albums of Six Feet Under's career, is a compilation of various cover songs ranging from Punk to Hard Rock to even Thrash. While this wouldn't be all too bad an idea, just realing that it is all done with in a close, just heavier, musical cover style, and translated into Death Metal. Yep, picture that with bands like AC/DC and Dead Kennedys and you've got a real winner on your hands. While there's some material on here that works out really well, there's no denying that some of them just come out laugh out loud bad. The cover tracks kicks off with "Holocaust", originally performed by Savatage, and while it's a decent track, it's nothing too memorable on this release. The cover of AC/DC's track "TNT" is absolutely hysterical to listen to thanks to the way Chris Barnes tries to harmonize his gutteral into a melodic effort while bringing in some of his terrible higher pitched pig grunts from the back of the throat. But, after that rocky start, you'll start to find that some material actually does sound good. "Sweet Leaf" just works so well with Six Feet Under, especially if you are aware about the marijuana use within the band, and "Piranha" is great, but it seems that the real bite of the song is not that and leaves you with the feeling that something is missing. Aside those two entertaining tracks, "Son Of A Bitch" and "In League With Satan" wind up being the real stand out tracks on this effort, even if they don't come across that way at first. Besides these and "Sweet Leaf" and "Piranha", the rest of the album should just be considered a joke because of how laughable the tracks are. While some aren't as bad as others, obviously, one cannot deny hearing Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water" in gutteral is quite humorous no matter what. The same can be said about the cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze". But what can easily be said is that this collection, while it may sound more of a joke then anything, is definitely a rather interesting perspective on covers. Graveyard Classics may be far from a really good cover album, but there are some songs that just seem to have been created in the past to be taken on in such a matter as they have been on this release, and then others are just best left as an experimental project that went awry. It's definitely worth a listen if you feel like hearing something different, or you just need a slight chuckle, or just to hear how Death Metal and the stoner ideals of the earlier days of Hard Rock seem to work well together.
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