For twenty four years Six Feet Under, piloted by Chris Barnes, have been hammering away at our ears with, on the whole, pretty decent groove based death metal – leaving aside the four “Graveyard Classics” albums that were a total shitshow.

“Torment” is SFU’s 12th studio album and, in a career of peaks and troughs I’m happy to say that…. well….. it’s pretty decent.

I won’t lie, after that last Graveyard Classics album I was more than happy to never listen to anything the band put out again. In my mind Barnes had lost the plot and was churning out utter bum gravy. The previous album proper “Crypt Of The Devil” was pretty duff too.  However, a complete line up change has seemingly lead to Chris to “up his game”. This album features bassist/guitarist Jeff Hughell (Brain Drill) who I believe wrote all the music plus drummer Marco Pitruzzella (Brain Drill, Anomalous, Sleep Terror).

Album opener “Sacrificial Kill” kicks it off but is pretty standard to be honest I found the wibbly wobbly main riff annoying. Track 2 “Exploratory Homicide“ is miles better and one of the fastest SFU tracks I’ve heard. The production is really good with an upfront, crystal clear bass sound and Hughell proves to be quite the bass virtuoso on this with some tasty licks scattered all over the record. Oddly, the only negative here is Barnes’ stroke victim trapped in a wheelie bin vocals. It’s unmistakeably him but it all sounds a bit strained.

There are a total of twelve tracks of groove based chugging death metal on offer here. My favourite being (and this is my song title of the month) “Bloody Underware” with its serpentine riff and staccato structure. I guarantee you’ll be humming this for a while (which will be followed no doubt by a period of self-loathing).

The artwork by  Septian Devenum is striking and to be fair SFU usually do have great cover art and I’m told that every song on the album is depicted with a piece of artwork that explores the lyrical content of each song – just like they did with the “Bringer of Blood” album.

This is a good effort by SFU and if you’re a fan – and haven’t written them off after the utter fuckery of the “Graveyard Classics” you’ll love it.

(7/10 Mark Eve)

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