It isn’t exactly a secret that Six Feet Under aren’t very good. They’ve always been something of a laughing stock in the metal community. They are however, a fantastic gateway band. If you want to get a youngster into death metal, SFU is the way to start them off. If you send someone straight into Dying Fetus, it can be quite overwhelming. Believe it or not, SFU were one of the bands that got me into death metal; so they’ll always have a special place in my heart.
Even though everyone laughed in their faces, they stuck to their guns for quite a few albums; 12 to be exact. And in 2012, they shocked the world. They detached the jaws from faces and tore the eyes out of many heads. The reason being, that they put out a GOOD album. And I do mean that. “Undead” (the predecessor to “Unborn”) is a very, very good death metal album. I won’t go into too much detail, but I would recommend listening to it before this one, because the 2 were meant to go hand in hand. Considering the wide appreciation for “Undead”, it wasn’t a huge surprise that the band wanted to make a follow up album. And lone behold, a year later, they brought us Unborn. Let’s dig into this.
As usual, we’ll start this off by talking about the production. To put it simply, it’s pretty good. The guitars are crisp and punchy, and the drums are leveled to perfection. I’d also like to point out that there is audible bass on this album too! Yes! It’s still a tad low for my liking, but it could be much worse. Would you believe that this album was produced by the bands front man Chris Barnes? Me either. But it was, so i have to give Barnes credit where he deserves it. His past production efforts were lacking, but he stepped up his game with “Unborn”. Well done, sir.
Enough technical mumbo jumbo, what does this thing sound like? Is it traditional SFU death n’ roll? Thankfully, no. Don’t get me wrong, the classic groove orientation that SFU has prided themselves in is definitely present, but they stepped outside their comfort zone a bit too. This is thanks partly to the new band members Ola Englund (Feared, The Haunted) and Jeff Hughell (Brain Drill, Vile). With Ola’s chugging riffs of fury and Jeff’s incredible bass lines, many of these songs have a much different atmosphere than expected from a standard SFU song. Ola’s wrote two of these songs on his own; “Prophecy” and “The Curse of the Ancients”. “Prophecy” is a nice groove oriented track that reeks of his recognizable style. It definitely sounds like a classic SFU song, but you can tell that more effort was put into the writing of this one. “The Curse of the Ancients” is no doubt the best song that has ever been on a SFU album. It’s not like anything they have ever done in the past. This song sounds like a death metal song; not like the “try hard to be rock and roll with a death metal singer” style that we’re all sick of hearing. They even incorporated blast beats on this track; which Chris said he was sick of back when he left Cannibal Corpse. It’s a great song no doubt.
Not only that, but Chris also had some guest song writers lending a hand too. Members of Whitechapel, former Chimaira guitarist Rob Arnold as well as members of Torture Killer. This gave many of the tracks much more interesting riffs than we’re used to hearing, so that’s definitely a bonus. One thing to noe is that few tracks definitely take on a sound with a deathcore influence (listen to Neuro Osmosis).
Another shocker; the vocals don’t suck! And sometimes you can understand what Chris is saying! Wow! Don’t get me wrong, I respect Chris’s work in Cannibal Corpse and I definitely commend him for being one of the first death metal singers to growl with a guttural inhuman sound; but his voice is shot. It has been for quite sometime. You can tell on albums such as “Bringer of Blood” that he simply doesn’t have it in him anymore. This album though, has pretty good sounding vocals. So good in fact, that it makes me suspicious. The difference between the growls on this album and his past efforts with SFU is night and day. I feel like they were tweaked with in some way. There are definitely many layers and reverb added, but nearly every band does that with the vocals. Perhaps there was extra distortion added, or the pitch of his voice was altered. Or maybe Chris just used everything he had left in him in deliver the best vocals he possibly could. We’ll never truly know the truth, but they sound better than I thought they would.
Unfortunately, the bands line up has almost completely changed since this albums release. Does this mean that this is the final good Six Feet Under album that we will hear? Or will they step up to the plate a third time and deliver to us some more good tunes to head bang to? I hope they surprise us all again and release 3 good albums in a row, even if the odds are stacked against them. This album was definitely worth my purchase, and I’d suggest any metal fan check it out along with it’s big brother “Undead”. Did it surpass it’s predecessor? No. “Undead” is just too good; it would be difficult for them to top that album. They did good though, I sincerely enjoyed “Unborn”. Good going guys, you impressed me 2 years in a row.
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