Seventeen years have passed since the absolute masterpiece of SIX FEET UNDER, "Haunted", and through these years they have created nine albums in total with their latest offering being "Undead". In "Undead" SIX FEET UNDER have under their ranks a new bass player and a drummer plus for their first time in their career (to the best of my knowledge) appear as a five-piece band, having a second guitarist. Rob Arnold and Matt Devries of CHIMAIRA fame joined as full members of SIX FEET UNDER while the new bass player is Jeff Hughel. While line up has changed SIX FEET UNDER remain the same old school Death Metal armada we know and love with a bit of extra technical stuff to enhance their rotting onslaught.

"Undead"comes with twelve songs and the classic duration of 40 minutes as most SIX FEET UNDER records. There are slow songs and others that are a bit sped up which is result of the new blood in the band. From the result I believe the change is more than welcome as they renewed their sound and produced a very interesting record. I am not going to go into further details about the songs as the fans know how they sound and know they will find all the familiar stuff here music-wise and lyrically-wise.

The album's sick artwork of the undead abomination engulfed in the blackest void is eye capturing and a strong image that depicts the atmosphere of the record. As I have mentioned before technically the band is showing great skills a change mostly welcome that is due to the lineup changes. The production is also helping to achieve the undying feeling of the record with Mark Lewis handling it and Jason Suecof being responsible for the mix.

To conclude I have come to terms with the fact that the awesomeness of the first record can never be achieved for various reasons (line-up, band evolution etc). But they keep on producing great records (I do not take into account the cheesy "Graveyard Classics") and by any means their ninth release is much more enjoyable and different than their late ones. SIX FEET UNDER stands before us "Undead" and raging. Beware!