Maximum Violence

I sadly had to listen to this album twice because I forgot everything that happened while I was listening to it the first time. Holy shit this album is hard to get through. The vocals are painful to listen to because he sounds like he has no idea what he’s doing. When I listen to this album there is nothing reminding me of his work with Cannibal Corpse. I can't even believe this is the same person. This album literally sounds like my brother just started trying to do vocals with no training.

I don’t even know how to describe this album. The vocals are horrible, the lyrics are horrible and the instrumentals are fine. The only problem with the instrumentals is in some parts in the album the snare is almost like St Anger. “No Warning Shot” to me is a monstrosity of shitty vocals and that goddamn snare. The beginning screams are actually insanely horrible. His little “die motherfucker, die die.” Oh god what can I say about that. It’s just an annoying song that thinks it’s tough. “Torture Killer” is another song I just can’t stand. “Murderer, I rape the dead, torture killer.” I can’t even explain what that is. Again Chris thinks everything he makes sounds tough, but it just doesn’t. “Hacked to Pieces” is once again, a song I can’t stand. From beginning to the end it’s just horrible. Everything about it just annoys me. You honestly have to listen to it for yourself, but even then listening to this album is basically a torture device.

If you want to find a good Six Feet Under album, this isn’t it. This album is forgettable, boring, and has some horrible vocals. Unless you like all of what Chris Barnes does, that’s fine.

This is at very least interesting. It's Rob Zombie's in-your-face rock n' roll in a lower, muffled pitch and with the blinds down. The main point is it's ironical: it's impossible to take entirely seriously, and at worst, it's a parody of metal. Think about it: the lyrics, demeanor, overall imagery and video clips, vocals, the basic caveman riffs and daft drums. Everything here is like a caricature, blown well out of proportion. More technically, it enjoys the gruesome quality of doom, juxtaposes it with groovy chugs and thrashy palm muted taggah-daggah-daggah 16ths. It's got Chris Barnes sounding like an old man all over it; this stuff would be popular in nursing homes, if only for the band name. Honestly though, listening to this can't you picture him holding a mic in one hand and his walking cane in the other ? So this is when it isn't him sounding like an old...witch ? Agonizing mole perhaps. What animal shrieks like that...let's see.

They should try the experiment, with the Discovery Channel or with David Attenborough, and release Barnes from his cage straight into the wilderness and see which animals he attracts when he inevitably starts either the low growl or high shriek. Of course he'd go hungry fairly quickly in that setting, as there's no blood of the insane around or people to hack up or anything. Just regular animals and plants. He'd most definitely find something to roll up and smoke though. Anyways, the music does a good enough job in spurts. Mostly whenever guitarist Steve Swanson goes into the death metal tremolo stuff the riffs are sinister and engaging. There's a good sense of rhythm and the songs do actually show off good pacing alternating between various tempos and moods, and don't just repeat one part forever.

However, those more basic parts tend to be very simple, straight up bare at times, and they're supposed to send the listener into this peculiar horror-movie inspired/marijuana groove with their hair and hands thrashing about, but if you're just a person that isn't 19, sitting there calmly and attempting to extract anything positive from it, a certain dullness irrevocably sets in and there's no doubt whatsoever the band weren't thinking "big" or ambitious when they were making this. That's...for sure. They got a recipe out that they thought warranted the tremendous trouble of writing and then producing an album, and then they just flew with it and, apparently, never looked back (judging by their discography, today, in the 2020's). Also not sure why but Barnes really, really wants "motherfucker" to die. Just outright obsessive about that, Barnes.

Is this good ? It's alright. It serves a purpose and it's fairly adequate at carrying out its plan - for a while. Could it have been better ? Much better ? Yes, certainly. As funny as this might sound, there are actually traces of depth every now and then here: the iconic first track has that doomy dirge, and that part reaches down into the gut a bit, and they did add eerie vocal samples of Barnes' in the back. So there are hints (though very faint) of well fleshed out development. However one gets a sense they should've done a lot more of that to avoid that flatness on the record, emphasizing the gruesomeness and ominousness more, as opposed to relying on a much cleaner, more straightforward and to be frank totally formulaic framework for the tracks.

The album could've been this wonderful attending of a tour in this twisted, dark circus of filth (which this does too little of); potentially a mixture of disturbing satire and poignant obscurity. It possesses some tongue-in-cheek humor, and some tracks are better than others (first track, the single 'Victim of the Paranoid', 'No Warning Shot'), but then it goes serious for most of it and there it takes little time before it's purely just coarse, intentionally dumbed-down death metallish groove with an elderly bear leading the show track after track. After track. Despite the short lengths of them, eleven tracks seems well unnecessary here. Twenty minutes into this and the listener's surely got the point of it, and it's just halfway with twenty more to go.

Life can be nice with a pretty girl, a good drink and a strong album. But without a pretty girl, without a good drink and only equipped with a work of Six Feet Under, one will probably discover the dark side of life. Okay, let's stay fair. The more or less acceptably produced disc starts in a solid way. "Feasting on the Blood of the Insane" (please ignore the moronic title) combines a sinister groove with a morbid malignancy and Hellhammer greet Grave. Only the polarizing, one-dimensional vocals of Barnes do not give me anything.

However, "Maximum Violence" is one of these notorious albums that entice the listeners with a fairly proper opener, but the remaining 33 minutes announce the triumph of mediocrity. I am sure that the musicians have the technical abilities it needs to perform interesting songs, but this fact remains their secret as long as they do not compose interesting songs. Some riffs have been heard a thousand times before and the whole guitar work sounds bloodless. The slow pace of many sections are totally boring and, as mentioned before, the ridiculously deep growls fail to add value to the single compositions. SFU have written ugly songs, but they lack dynamic and vehemence, impulsivity and momentum. Surprising or enthralling elements? Don't even think about it. Maybe the cover song of Kiss was meant to set a contrast, but SFU ruin this song completely. The original version from "Creatures of the Night" with its dull riffing is not great, but here the boring essence of the piece shines in full glory. It sounds absolutely powerless and is performed without any inspiration. I almost feel the urge to call Gene Simmons in order to beg forgiveness, but the unbelievably worthless lyrics of the majority of the other songs ("die motherf**ker") paralyses me.

The pieces have no personality, the entire full-length appears as a sticky porridge. Although the group wants to deliver catchy sections, I belong to the lucky people who are able to forget each and every song immediately as soon as the last tone has faded away. I admit that SFU try to vary their approach within the very narrow guidelines of their style. Many tempo changes indicate their ambition to avoid monotony. But this attempt fails. I am not at risk to press the repeat button. Quite the contrary, the longer the album lasts, the more I wish that it comes to an end. These shitty numbers like "Torture Killer" (these stupid titles make me sick) are amateurish and do not even contain the smallest form of a melody. Okay, death metal is generally not known for offering melodic harmonies in abundance, but a necessary minimum should not be forgotten. Yet here it seems to be killed by the "Maximum Violence", although this blunt and lacklustre work fails to deliver a really violent sound. Compared with the brutality of bands such as Vomitory, the maximum violence of SFU is nothing but a moderate breeze. Give up, dudes, it just makes no sense. And now I need a good drink.

...is it really as good as people say?

When guitarist Allen West left Six Feet Under, he was replaced by former Massacre guitar player Steve Swanson, who remains with the group to this day. The first record to feature him, their third album "Maximum Violence", seems to be one of the only albums by the band that most people can agree is good. Truth be told, even as one of SFU's diehard fans, even I have been able to grasp the reasons why so many people don't care for their music (but I'm not going to get into that in this review). Looking at all of their records from an unbiased perspective, there are very few of them that have genuinely redeeming factors, but this is one of them.

The "Obituary with Chris Barnes" sound that dominated the first two records is completely gone here. The guitar work is much crunchier and at times speedier than before, plus the sound is much more blistering and violent compared to the somewhat restrained vibe of the prior releases. Swanson's riffs pummel the listener with their power, while at the same time sacrificing none of the groove that SFU is famous for. He brought a revamping to their sound that they definitely needed, and to be honest, I feel they began to develop more of an identity once he joined.

Compared to the previous records, the lyrics are much gorier and more akin to Barnes' work in Cannibal Corpse, although it's not as over-the-top with its nature. Unique among the songs is his almost rap-like flow to his growling in opening track and fan favorite "Feasting on the Blood of the Insane" and his breakneck speed in the verses to "Bonesaw", proving that this record turned SFU into a more ferocious beast. The riffs and guitar tone are fantastic, and all the songs are extremely well-composed, not to mention the songwriting is much stronger than the two Allen West albums, being a little more interesting with varied passages and more unique arrangements.

But despite the acclaim that the album receives even from non-fans, the album has a few minor flaws that bring it down somewhat. For one, the production is extremely muffled, making some of the instrumentation lose its punch, which in turn causes it to lose a bit of its impact if the volume on your headphones aren't turned up pretty high. Another thing is that the faster-tempo parts are extremely generic-sounding and at times sound phoned in, not to mention a lot of the lyrics feel like they could have been just a tad more violent than they were, almost like Chris was restraining himself despite clearly trying.

"Maximum Violence", as a whole, is a good record, but it's nowhere near the band's best like most people say. It's highly enjoyable, and it's not all that difficult to see why even non-fans like it, but they've done better in the past and future.

Few extreme metal bands are as often criticized and looked down upon as Chris Barnes second major band, Six Feet Under. From their inception onward, they have been ridiculed for the simplistic riffing and rapidly deteriorating vocal performances from Barnes, which seem to have only gotten worse over the many albums the have recorded now. However, of the bunch, one stands out as being slightly better than the rest. Instead of being an absolute cesspit of recycled Obituary riffs and unimaginative songs, Maximum Violence stands proud as being considered the best in the band's discography, due to its more graphic lyrics and overall better performance from the band than on their other albums.

The most obvious thing about this release is that Chris Barnes is not young any more. The amount of marijuana he smokes coupled with the vast number of years in the business have crippled his voice so that his growls sound overly breathy and his weird shrieks that occurred on his last two Cannibal Corpse albums are far more present and annoying here than ever before. However, something about his vocal patterns on this album makes him slightly more tolerable than on their other albums. For instance, on the song Feasting On The Blood Of The Insane, Chris attempts a style of rapped growls which, whilst sounding cheesy and completely ridiculous, they do have a memorable feel to them and will stick in the listeners head. Also, on fan favorite No Warning Shot, Barnes manages to simultaneously create one of the most laughable and one of the catchiest moments in death metal during the chorus, with the low growl of "Die Mother Fucker" followed by the raspy scream of "Die,Die!" It is very absurd but undeniably catchy enough. The lyrics on this album are considerably more graphic in their depictions of violence than previous Six Feet Under releases, but this works well with Barnes vocals, and is one of the things he has become famous for.

The guitar work on here once again sounds like a second rate Obituary clone, with many of the riffs being extremely simplistic but having a crunchy, heavy groove to them that makes them sound so sweet. Unfortunately, they do nothing new, with the guitarist instead re-hashing his past work instead of attempting anything fresh. However, for what it is, this album boasts some decent enough guitar work, with some cool drumming and thundering bass behind it. This is a straight death metal album instrumentally, with some speedy soloing to finish it all off.

Torture Killer and album opener Feasting On The Blood Of The Insane are definitely the choice cuts here, with the former being a graphic song that is possibly the darkest song Barnes has done since his CC days. Feasting On The Blood Of The Insane is a groove-ridden song with some nice enough vocal work and a few great riffs to top it off. Maximum Violence is definitely Six Feet Under's best album, and it is impossible to help but notice that this band really does not deserve all the hate they get.

This really isn’t good.

I’ve tried to accept Six Feet Under on their own very limited terms. I even count one of their albums among my favorites (Death Rituals), but I can’t escape the fact that there’s barely anything interesting to be heard in these 40+ minutes.

On ‘Haunted’ and ‘Warpath’, SFU were still doing the Obituary thing pretty faithfully. Not as good as Obituary themselves, of course, but it made for a half-decent sound. After that, Allen West departed and was replaced by Steve Swanson, leaving Chris Barnes as the sole creative force in the band. Maximum Violence was the album where they settled into a different and now very familiar formula: make ‘The Bleeding’ over and over, but with half the heaviness and half the effort. Throw in a few dabs of nu-metal or even rap later on, and that was basically SFU’s schtick for the next decade. As a colleague of mine said, “a rock band in death metal drag”. Chug-chuggity-chug GRRRRRR, chug-chuggity-chug RAWWWWR chug-chuggity-chug ZZZZZZZZ.

That’s pretty much what ‘Maximum Violence’ is. When the best song on the album has Barnes shouting “DIE MUTHA F*KKA, DIE DIE!” over and over (No Warning Shot), something is very wrong, and that something had gone wrong for this band. There are some minor breaks in the tedium, like the nice chorus in Bonesaw and some cover tracks like War Machine, but they aren’t enough to save things. My advice: just get ‘Haunted’ and ‘Death Rituals’, and for all practical purposes you will have everything Six Feet Under produced in a 19 year career.

It takes only about 90 seconds of the first track “Feasting on the Blood of the Insane” for one to start laughing uncontrollably at the hip hop timbre inherent within Chris Barnes’ McGruff the crime dog gutturals, but in about half that time you’ll realize that there is a difference in the third Six Feet Under long player: it no longer sounds necessarily like a half assed Obituary. Yes, Allen West has left the building, replaced by another Florida scene luminary in Steve Swanson (ex-Massacre). Granted, there is still a lot of the same hook line and stinker primacy to the writing here, “Feasting…” and a few others laden in the same lame grooves that dominated the treacherous sophomore Warpath, but there are some noted improvements that place it beyond its predecessor in overall quality…

First, the production is simply superior. Brighter, bloody, like a fresh bruise or a newly broken nose. The riffing is just as idiotic as always, with the complexity of a third grader’s packed lunch, but Brian Slagel and Chris Carroll have succeeded in making this record sound richer than the first two full-lengths. Second, there are two songs here that are arguably GOOD: “Bonesaw” and “Short Cut to Hell”, both loyal to the band’s shared influence of early Death and Obituary, with some central rhythms reminiscent of what you’d hear on Scream Bloody Gore, Slowly We Rot or Leprosy. I can’t vouch for the lyrical aspects, but they’re not quite so dumb as the gangsta death anthems here like “No Warning Shot”, in which Barnes sings about shooting cops, countering his gruffness with an unintentionally hilarious snarl during the chorus: ‘Die, motherfucker, die, die’.

A few of the other tunes straddle the line between decency and regret: “Brainwashed” and “Torture Killer” coming straight to mind (interesting that Barnes would later perform guest vocals for a band named after the later…paradox?!) But these are ultimately as forgettable as the rest. No, “Bonesaw” and “Short Cut to Hell” will have to do for the highlight reel here. Unfortunately, they have chosen to clog up the plumbing with a trio of covers that are estimably as lame as those they have previous spurned us with. Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak”, Iron Maiden’s “Wrathchild”, and Kiss’ “War Machine” are all given Barnes’ blunted reconstructions, and they’re exactly as you are picturing them in your mind: lifeless near-parodies with no major difference outside of the gutturals. Hell, the guy’s been hammering us with this idea since “Zero the Hero” on the Hammer Smashed Face EP…

…and he will continue to do so, on the band’s next full-length release, the first installment in the unfortunate Graveyard Classics series (who the fuck green lit that, out of curiosity?). But for all its flaws, Maximum Violence is probably one of the better 6FU albums in the long-run, at least as far as its original content. That’s not saying much, I realize. Haunted is a stronger album overall, and there is no reason anyone possessing a shred of sanity should actually spend money on this (not even I, who got the promo for my old Xerox zine), but it doesn’t reek nearly as strong as the wretched work it has the task of cleaning up after.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

It sure is fun to have a laugh at the expense of SFU. Ha ha, listen to their half-assed repetitive songs, their stupid lyrics, and their pothead lead singer. But even such a weak bunch of slow-motion death metal fucks have their highlights, and goshdarnit – “Maximum violence” is one of ‘em.

If you’ve never heard SFU before, here are some easy steps to imagine what “Maxipad violence” sounds like. Take the new Origin album, “Antithesis”. Now remove 90% of the riffs. Kill one of the guitarists, and threaten the other one with endless urinary tract infections if he plays anything other than rehashed Obituary material. Stick a needle full of morphine into the drummer’s neck. Mate the vocalist with a dying pig, and paste dreads onto their hideous offspring. Give that pigbaby a few bong hits for good measure, and hand it a pen and a microphone. Congrats, you have yourselves a long-running Floridian groove-death metal band’s 1999 effort.

Based on the above description, how could anything good possibly come out of this mishmash of dickwits? You got me. But there are quite a few very entertaining songs scattered throughout the album. If you can turn off your need to hear displays of musical talent and creativity and get right into caveman mode you will learn to like or even love “Maximum anus.” I would say this sounds like prototypical death metal, but then I think about shit like “Pull the plug” and I think again. This stuff is low-effort on purpose.

Anyway, despite a mongoloid mindset the hits abound. Opener “Feasting on the blood of the insane” (with Paul Booth of tattoo fame on backing vocals) has a hilarious English-accented spoken word section. And with semi-rapped lines like, "a son of a bitch, third generation/schooled in the art of human strangulation", how can you go wrong?

“Bonesaw” is a fast one for SFU and I’m sure they all had to take a long break with some G13 government weed right after recording it. To think that Barnes quit one faster semi-boring metal band to focus on a slower semi-boring metal band makes the mind reel.

“Short cut to hell” (don’t take the highway, I’ve heard it is bumper-to-bumper with AC/DC fans) is slow and punishing. And repetitious. Of course.

“No warning shot” features some of Chris “Marley” Barnes’ strained and tired sounding high-pitched vocals which I know everyone adores. Rumor has it that William Blake returned from the great beyond to pen the lyrics for this one. "Die motherfucker, die, die!" indeed.

“War machine” is well-covered, and I can’t believe lyrics this grim were written by KISS. Maybe there weren’t any Detroit whores to pleasure orally that day in 1982. I’ve heard other extreme covers of this tune and as yet no one else measures up. By the way, the songs I’m not mentioning do not deserve honorable or even dishonorable mention. They are painfully average.

Coming up next - “Torture killer” - my favorite, with a slow and evil vibe that inspired some Finns to try their hand at creating takin’ ‘er easy death metal. And recruiting ole Piggy on vocals was a genius move to say the least. Even lyrics stolen straight from the Corpse like "fuck the holes I cut into you" work well. If you want to hear more than three riffs per song though, you might want to look elsewhere.

And “Hacked to pieces” puts the finishing touches on this meisterwork. It sounds a lot like “Torture killer” for a bit, then awkwardly switches pace into, *PANIC*, fast mode again! The ability of everyone in the band is strained to the max in order to keep up with the moderately above mid-paced song they’ve written. Somehow, after much difficulty, they pull it off. Time for another weed break for sure.

There you have it, evidence proves that “Maxicum squarepants” is more good than bad. Which is more than you can say for the majority of SFU’s output. Grab some friends, four hundred beers, ten ounces of endo and prepare to party like you are listening to an album that was recorded in 1999. It might help to hammer smash your face to the point where brains are oozing out. Then you will be in the perfect state of mind to give this disc a:

7.5 out of 10

Originally posted at www.globaldomination.se

'Haunted' was a charmingly shitty album. This is simply a shitty album minus the charm. 'Haunted' had some endearing incompetence to it and a collection of neanderthal riffs that actually made it sort of a worthwhile listen, but this... this is just bad with zero justification. It's still very stupid, but not stupid in a way I can get behind, like Jungle Rot stupid or Lowbrow stupid. This is just dumb like Bobby Hill, disappointing everyone at every time.

There's nothing objectively different about this compared to 'Haunted', apart from, of course, Chris Barnes sounding worse than ever, but that doesn't stop 'Maximum Violence' from being several times more terrible than the band's first album. Really, it sucks simply because it lacks ideas. The ideas on 'Haunted' were idiotic and pointless, but somehow they got the job done. On 'Maximum Violence', there ARE no ideas, simply a constant rehashing of the same few riffs over and over again. Occasionally a faint glimmer of hope will appear in the form of a catchy vocal line, but the release is predominantly composed of bland midpaced riffs that shuffle in place like a guilty six year old. Imagine it now:

"Chris Barnes, where did you put the good Six Feet Under album?"

*lazily kicking at dirt* "I don't knoooooooooooooow..."

I'm not sure how Six Feet Under manages to maintain their popularity with albums like these. It would make sense if they could compose a groove, no matter how simple, but most of this album is dominated by riffs and rhythms that are so awkward that I'd think it's almost progressive if Chris Barnes wasn't heading the endeavor. Very little on the album makes sense; it just wanders around in musical circles with lazy drumming, tuneless riffs, and Barnes' marijuana-strained barking congealing into something that doesn't really go anywhere, but instead just sinks in place, getting slower, slower, slower...

You get the picture.