Released: April 24, 2026
Six Feet Under are not a band people talk about gently.
That is part of the deal at this point. Chris Barnes has one of the most recognizable voices in death metal, but he also brings a lot of baggage with him. People have opinions. Loud ones. Some fair. Some lazy. Some just repeated because the internet likes an easy target.
That makes Next to Die interesting.
The question is simple: what happens when a band with that much baggage stops trying to escape it and leans into what still works?
Released in 2026, Next to Die is Six Feet Under’s fifteenth album. That alone is wild. This band has been around long enough that nobody needs to pretend they are suddenly going to become something else. The smart move is not reinvention. The smart move is knowing which parts of the machine still have teeth.
This record understands that.
The album is basically split between two sides of Six Feet Under: the faster death metal stuff and the slower groove-heavy stuff. That is the right call. When this band is successful, it typically hinges on one of two factors. Either the riff moves fast enough to drag Barnes forward, or the groove is dumb-heavy enough that everything locks into place.
“Approach Your Grave” opens with purpose. It has enough speed to show that the song is not just the band crawling through mid-tempo mud for 40 minutes. Jack Owen’s riffs are sharp, and Marco Pitruzzella’s drums give the song more snap than you might expect. That matters. Six Feet Under need movement here. The songs cannot just sit there and rot.
“Destroyed Remains” keeps that heavier push going, but the record really shows its personality with titles like “Mister Blood and Guts” and “Mutilated Corpse in the Woods.” This is not tasteful death metal. Thank God. Six Feet Under are at their best when they sound like a horror VHS box that somehow learned how to play riffs.
That is why “Unmistakable Smell of Death” works as a centerpiece. The title is pure Barnes. Gross, obvious, and kind of funny in the way old death metal is supposed to be. The song has enough stop-start movement to keep it from turning into mush, and Barnes sounds more locked in when the band gives him something simple and ugly to ride.
That has always been the trick with him.
Barnes does not need fancy music underneath him. He needs riffs with room to breathe. He needs grooves that leave space for that low, rotten voice to crawl through. When the band gets too busy, the whole thing can sag. When the band keeps it direct, he still sounds like himself in a way nobody else really does.
The groove side of the album is where Next to Die feels most connected to early Six Feet Under. “Skin Coffins” and “Grasped from Beyond” have that slower, heavier stomp that points back toward Haunted and Warpath. Not because they copy those records exactly, but because they remember the appeal. Six Feet Under were never about dazzling anyone. They were about making death metal that felt like it was dragging something behind it.
“Mind Hell” and “Naked and Dismembered” keep the album nasty without trying to dress it up. The lyrics are bloody because of course they are. This is Six Feet Under. You do not come here for poetry unless your idea of poetry involves corpses, killers, and terrible decisions in the woods.
But that is also why the album works better than it probably should. It knows what room it is in.
Ray Suhy’s leads give the record extra bite without turning it into a guitar-showcase album. Jeff Hughell’s bass keeps the low end thick. Pitruzzella gives the songs more life than a band this deep into its career could easily have. And Owen is the key piece here. His riffs know when to move fast and when to settle into that old-school groove pocket.
That balance saves the record.
By the time the title track hits, Next to Die has made its point. This is not Six Feet Under trying to prove the critics wrong with some grand statement. It is not trying to clean up the band’s image. It is not pretending that the rough edges are not there.
It just makes those rough edges useful again.
So what happens when a band with this much baggage stops trying to escape it and leans into what still works?
You get Next to Die. Not a reinvention. Not a redemption speech. Just Six Feet Under remembering that their best moments come from ugly riffs, stupid-heavy grooves, and Barnes sounding like a corpse learning to complain.
It works because it does not try to be smarter than the room.
It just drags the room into the grave.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
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