The worst death metal song of all time: Six Feet Under "Amerika The Brutal"

I know what you are thinking after reading the title: "Dude, have you ever heard Cianide?!" Don't get me wrong, Cianide definitely fucking suck. They are wizard-level masters of being jaw-droppingly terrible. In fact, sometimes I can't sleep because I'm just curled up in the fetal position in the corner of my room, holding myself and rocking back and forth because of the scars carved deep into my soul from just the few moments I've spent listening to their seemingly endless stream of recordings. The reason I am going into so much detail about fucking Cianide is because I want you to understand that I know exactly how wretched they are. Only then will you believe me when I say that, hands down, "Amerika The Brutal" by Six Feet Under is the worst death metal song of all time! Let's look at exactly what makes it so awful...

Please watch this video in full before reading any further. And yes, this WILL be on the test.

Chris Barnes is stangry
I think I have mentioned it on here before, but I'm a huge fan of Loveline (only the radio show, the TV show was awful). One of the hosts, Adam Carolla, came up with the term "stangry," which describes someone who is simultaneously stupid and angry. I really can't think of a better term for Chris Barnes, as his whole post-Cannibal career has that kind of directionless, inarticulate anger directed at SOMEONE who is responsible for, well, all the bad stuff in the world. He reminds me of an old, half-blind moose who gets shot in the leg by a bowhunter and just runs around smashing into stuff, bellowing at the top of his lungs and lashing out at whatever is around him in an attempt to get back at whoever made him feel this pain and rage.

Here are the lyrics to the Old Skull song "Homeless":
People that don't have homes
I look in their eyes...
I see sadness
They don't have enough money to pay the rent
Because they don't have good enough jobs.
Why don't they have good enough jobs?
BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE A GOOD ENOUGH EDUCATION!
WHY DON'T THEY HAVE A GOOD ENOUGH EDUCATION?
BECAUSE OF WAR DEBT!

Least sophisticated lyrics of all time: Six Feet Under or Old Skull?
I am not a fan of affected, figurative writing (unless we're talking about Hipster Runoff), especially when it comes to the lyrics. Please just get to the fucking point, I am a busy man and I don't want to spend time deciphering "coded messages in slowed down songs," to borrow a phrase. That includes the post-Dillinger Escape Plan school of "long witty/sardonic song titles." And don't get me started on Discordance Axis' song titles. That said, even a meat-and-potatoes writer like me must add a certain amount of style to his/her work or it just gets weird. Unless you're The Dwarves, who come off as (extremely creepy, fucked up) geniuses when they have song titles like "Let's Fuck," you can't get away with just stating the facts... which is exactly what SFU does, in the least interesting way possible.

I have discovered a new disease: Chris Barnes' Syndrome, in which you turn into a treant shortly after starting a terrible band.

If you watched the Old Skull video above, you will notice two things 1) their music so loose and noisy that it inadvertently sounds like Nuclear Death and 2) the absurdly simplistic lyrics make Discharge sound like James Joyce. But I can forgive them: as you may have also noticed, they were 12 years old when they recorded that song.

Like Old Skull, Chris Barnes' approach to writing lyrics seems to be "make an angry statement of fact regarding my opinion on a social or political issue." The problem is that he is 42 years old, so he can't use, well, actually being a child as an excuse. A couple highlights from this song:

Listen it's a fucking joke and they make you believe it on the TV
That's how they deceive you-
I watch and I listen and I question their reasons
You know what, I don't fuckin believe em

I worked in print shops for years when I was younger, and this reminds of the kind of thing that I'd hear at work there. Printing basically attracts the same people as framing, roofing, carpet laying, and other bottom-of-the-barrel trades: lots of alcoholic felons who have a chip on their shoulder and want to tell you all about it. You'd be standing there doing some mind-numbing bullshit like punching holes in booklets for 9 hours, and one of these guys would come over to you, lean in as though he was about to tell you something really important and say, "Those fuckin' politicians, man, they're all a bunch of fuckin' liars! I don't believe a goddamn word out of their mouths, they're just in it for the money, man!!" It's really uncomfortable, because what do you say?? I would usually just shrug, nod and say something non-committal like "Well I guess they're not getting your vote, are they?" and hope the guy would go wander off and rant at some other unfortunate motherfucker.

I'm not afraid to speak my own mind
I don't use the first amendment to hide behind
I'm guaranteed that freedom, I'm born with that right

First of all, in one breath he says he's not going to "hide behind" the First Amendment, then in the next line he reminds us that he is actually guaranteed freedom. There's always the possibility that he's got some kind of overthought-yet-insane Constitutionalist position, but I'm going to chalk it up to stangriness again. It has that "you're not the boss of me/you can't tell me what to do/you don't know me/you're not my real dad" vibe that's a sure sign of stangry.

Fart jokes: Never not funny!

If Terrence & Phillip made a death metal video, it would be this
I'm willing to bet Barnes has seen more than a little South Park in his day. What stoner doesn't take a few industrial-strength bong rips then stare at Comedy Central for hours on end while they shovel Doritos into their mouth and laugh way too hard at marginally-funny jokes? Based on the Video Toaster 2.0-level animation and 6th grade art direction, I'd say Barnes is a big fan of the Terrence & Phillip movie, although I'm not sure that he understands it's a joke in which the central premise involves how laughably awful the movie is.

This is seriously a picture of Chris Barnes with his riced-out Lancer Evo. I don't really even know what to say about this... there are so many levels of meaning in this image that academics will probably spend decades unraveling it and filling volume after volume of cultural studies journals with vain attempts at articulating the postmodern implications. It's like a white trash Horn of Plenty!

He was probably too baked to catch that part, and just nudges one of his bandmates out of his weed stupor, points at the TV and says, "Dude... we should our next video like that. I love cartoons, man!!" then they high-five and start laughing uncontrollably. After a minute, Barnes pauses for a second to ask "Wait... why are we laughing??" The other guy gets all serious for a second, then cracks up and says "Dude I don't even remember!!" and they laugh for another 10 minutes.

Here are couple of the best moments where SFU uses images and sounds to beat you over the head with his stangry political opinions. They start out pretty much dumb and straightforward, but by the end of the video it gets real fucking weird:

Racism is wrong! If you're an identical twin, don't hit random black people on the street with your purse!

Corporations have twisted the political system to serve their own corrupt interests! Also, there is a doll in a bikini that rides really high on her hips like they would wear in a ZZ Top video!

America is a country of greedy, shallow materialists whose avariciousness is exceeded only by their lack of self-awareness!

Uncle Sam is really a zombie! A zombie who wants your money!

Uh... I'll be honest, I'm not sure what this part is all about... probably something really deep though, let me get back to you!

OK, this is towards the end of the video. At this point they were probably just high as fuck and turning knobs on the computer to see what it would do. They thought this part looked "trippy" so they put it in the video.

You could literally grab just about every frame in the video and it would be so full of subhuman stupidity that you would probably faint in horror... so if you watch the full video, please make sure you are seated!

Like Pokemon, Chris Barnes is going down the natural path for his species and will soon evolve into his ultimate form. Protip: If you're a stangry stoner for too long, you turn into The Dude! Just ask my stepdad.

Kids, don't smoke pot!
I'm not really into the "scared straight" approach when it comes to talking to kids about drugs, but if you are, just have them watch this video. Then press "stop" on the VCR and turn to face the classroom authoritatively, arms crossed. After an uncomfortable moment of silence in which everybody reflects on the horrors they just witnessed, say "This is your brain on drugs. Any questions??"

It turns out that Bad Dudes was right after all.

When Weed And Metal Goes Wrong

I originally approached this post about weed in metal like “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong” from the Chappelle Show. By that I mean, most of the time weed and metal is a great combo, however, when you fuck it up, you fuck it up so bad that it’s laughable and/or sad.

Truth be told I didn’t even consider the legions of stoner/sludge bands out there for this piece because, in honesty, I think it takes a true fan of the genre to separate the good from the bad and I’m no expert. What I did want to talk about is the everyday, run of the mill metal band and how they tried to tackle the topic of good ‘ol Mary Jane and failed big time.

Six Feet Under – ‘4:20’ (from the Warpath album) Where to begin with this song? First of all there should be a big red flag when a band predominantly does one style (here, it’s boring generic death metal of the horror/gore variety) and then throws a creative/artistic curveball. We can play that childhood game of “One of these things does not belong” to establish this point quite easily here with songs from the Warpath album:

• Revenge of the Zombie
• Burning Blood
• War Is Coming
• 4:20
• Death Or Glory
• Caged and Disgraced

I mean, '4:20' sticks out like a sore thumb amongst that line-up. But I’ll play the conservative role and elaborate further: look at the lyrics for God’s sake! “Let go of perception - enter true reality, A sea of green will set us free, Dank, Expand my inner being, Through what the Earth provides, I hear her voice calling, The hour has arrived...” Yeesh! This is coming from the man who penned lyrics to the song ‘Entrails Ripped From A Virgins Cunt’ so you do the math. I know what you’re thinking, “Chill out, it’s death metal anyway, so you can’t ever tell what he’s saying with those cookie monster vocals!” WRONG! He actually, uses some clean vocals in ‘4:20’. Ahem, Chris Barnes singing with clean vocals (how often do you see that in the same sentence…? Oh yea, and it actually being true?!?! That’s what I thought). Needless to say, the writing is pretty much on the wall with this one, Mr. Frontman got a little carried away with his weed habit and it seeped into Six Feet Under’s music. Since then, it’s been pretty much back to the death metal basics since then (about nine albums worth of it, yawn…) but what cemented this as a major weed and metal DON’T, is the fact that the song happens to be four minutes and twenty seconds long and was recorded on April 20^th. I’m not even kidding. FAIL!

Black Label Society – ‘Stoned and Drunk’ (from the album The Blessed Hellride) This one I will admit I’m a little biased about, but I think it’s a valid reason. To again repeat myself, I think weed and metal can be a very winning combination, however, here it’s done ultra cheesy and white trashy. This band, and specifically this song is like the metalhead’s gateway drug to meth. Years ago, I was on a tour and Black Label Society was on the bill for the whole tour and I never saw so many white trash, missing teeth, redneck, ignorant fans. Full on there were so many of those terrible novelty shirts with a 1950’s era guy on it saying like ‘Marijuana! Hey, at least it’s not crack’ (ironically, most people wearing those kinds of shirts are the ones down to smoke some crack), or just blazing pot leafs, etc. It was like the dregs of society secretly had a subconscious war on weed and were trying to re-appropriate it as the idiot-class drug or something. Anyway, again, the lyrics are bad, but I think it’s the blatant Ozzy/Sabbath worship, particularly in the vocals, which drives me a little crazy. This is compounded by the fact that Sabbath wrote ‘Sweet Leaf’ – THE definitive weed and metal song of all time (speaking of which, check out Thou’s cover of ‘Sweet Leaf’, it’s so heavy it’s like, “Ouch!”), so BLS please distance yourselves a bit.

Brujeria – ‘Marijuana’ (from the Marijuana EP) This one kind of pains me to mention cause I love Brujeria. Musically, their satanic druglord shtick, I dig it all. However in 2000 they released an EP at the height of the ‘Macarena’ craze with their own reinterpretation. A few things wrong here: you CAN’T make that song NOT bad, so to give Brujeria some credit, the chips were stacked against them from the get-go. However, rather than give the song their typical death metal/grindcore delivery with Spanish lyrics, they actually incorporate some of the techno-salsa music of the original song. It’s a bad combo, very bad. Also, like the Six Feet Under selection earlier, lead vocalist Juan Brujo attempts a stylistic shift to using some of the more clean vocals, most notably when we sings the chorus “Heeeeeey Marijuana!”

(Stick to the satanic druglord death-grind please)

Dope – (Anything and everything they’ve ever done) Let’s make this a quick one, after all it’s easy like shooting fish in a barrel. First their name is Dope, and while I can respect the fact that, as their Wikipedia notes, they sold drugs to survive and purchase instruments, once you pigeon hole yourself to such a highly specialized niche, you’re instantly relegated to ONLY that small demographic (Bongzilla, is somewhat in a similar position, but they’re so tongue in cheek about it and I like their music better they get a pass). If they’re going for the mainstream thing on rock radio or whatever, they have their cheesy name and drug connection as a huge liability for success, but apparently they like it and are sticking to their guns (just like hordes of fantasy based power metal bands, never gonna get wide recognition, but are content to rock with the D&D lifestyle).

Beyond trying to piggy back the shock value of their drug referencing name, they also covered “You Spin Me ‘Round (Like A Record)” on their first album, one of their minor claims to fame, which also landed on the American Psycho soundtrack.

And finally, look at their early 90s pseudo-industrial dreads (almost ten years after pioneering bands like Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy et al were just getting DONE with that style)… sigh.

Stay tuned! There could be other editions of ‘When Weed And Metal Goes Wrong’ in the future…