Six Feet Under – Graveyard Classics III

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This disc, coming three years after their last proper album, is a third volume of covers of classic metal bands released over the course of the last ten years including Mercyful Fate, Van Halen, Slayer and Metallica. Where some of the selections on the first volume released in 2000 (the second was AC/DC’s Back In Black album) were a little obvious (Smoke On The Water) and some weren’t (Piranha), almost everything here (Psycho Therapy probably being the exception) is a track not often covered from their respective artists (At Dawn They Sleep, The Frayed Ends of Sanity, A Dangerous Meeting). And every one of them is turned into Six Feet Under’s own “death groove” style completely. Although immediately recognisable from their riffs in some cases, the whole album sounds like a Six Feet Under album, and not the collection of rip-offs that some covers albums can sound like. The main thing though is the production (vocalist Chris Barnes) and mix (Mark Lewsi at Audiohammer Studios) is sheer perfection. The riffs are brutally heavy and crisp, and the mix of the drums is Andy Sneap-level excellence. Barnes’ vocals are what they are. They’re more or less unintelligible and will only appeal to Six Feet Under fans. Fans of the bands covered are unlikely to be comfortable with this versions because of the vocals, but the production and playing from the rest of the band is so good it’s easy to ignore the singing if it’s not your thing and listen to some truly devastating metal (Twisted Sister’s Destroyer has never sounded so heavy and doomy). Covering Anvil feels a little like bandwagon-jumping, but inclusions from BTO, Exciter and Prong make the collection that bit more unusual. One thing’s for sure, Graveyard Classics III will go down as one of the the best produced albums of 2010.

Written by Andy Lye
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