When Six Feet Under announced their new lineup, which now includes three members of Chimaira, and then shortly afterwards announced a short tour with a stop in Cologne, I just had to get a ticket. Because I live one hour away from that city. A week before the gig, Debauchery were added to the touring lineup as special guests.
Check out my live review after the jump. All the pictures included in this article were either taken by me or a friend of mine.
Six Feet Under's tourbus
First off, the concert took place in a pretty small club in Cologne called Werkstatt. Considering the concert started around 7:00 pm and ended around 12:30 am on a Monday, the club was packed and the crowd went totally crazy.
We arrived a little late and missed Dust Bolt. The first band I watched was Hastur from Italy. I watched about half their set and wasn’t impressed in the slightest. Maybe they just had a bad day or something but I thought they sucked, so I went downstairs to check out the merch, chat a bit with Thomas of Debauchery and take some photos with him. I also bought a new Six Feet Under hoodie, with a brand new design by our friend Dusty Peterson.
The next band was Goddamn from Norway and the first thing I noticed was that they didn’t really fit in with the rest of the bands on the lineup. All the other bands were Death Metal bands and Goddamn play a pretty melodic style of Death Thrash — in the vein of early Hatesphere. I really liked most of their songs and their energetic performance though and I’ll definitely check out more of them in the future.
Thomas of Debauchery
Next on were Debauchery, the band I was most familiar with when it comes to their live shows as I’ve seen them three times prior to that already. They definitely proved once again that they’re one of the best live acts in Death Metal.
They played a mixture of older material and a couple of songs off their new album ‘Germany’s Next Death Metal’ and closed with ‘Death Metal Warmachine’ off ‘Torture Pit.’ The set went over great with the crowd who chanted along during most of it. It was cut short because they’ve just been added to the tour shortly before it started, which was a shame because I really enjoyed them… However, I’m sure I’ll see them again.
Next on were Six Feet Under.
Chris Barnes (front) and Kevin Talley (back)
When Six Feet Under took the stage, I was standing right in front of Steve Swanson. They started their set with a Cannibal Corpse classic, ‘Stripped, Raped And Strangled’ and the crowd went nuts for it. The band then played lots of classic Six Feet Under tunes, including most of their first album, ‘Haunted.’
Steve Swanson
The band was obviously having lots of fun playing together. What I noticed was that Kevin Talley, SFU’s new drummer, added lots of blastbeats to the songs where there usually weren’t any. It made the band sound that much more awesome. Also, now that there’s two guitarists — with the addition of Chimaira’s Rob Arnold — Swanson added lots of quick solos which kicked my ass.
As an encore, the band played one of the most well known and popular Death Metal songs of all time: the Chris Barnes/Cannibal Corpse classic ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ and it was fucking insane. The band, and especially Barnes, nailed it.
I know there are a lot of people who bitch about Barnes’ voice nowadays but he was on fire yesterday and he sounded awesome on the Cannibal Corpse songs.
Chris Barnes
The new lineup is definitely the best thing that could have happened to Barnes and co. Matt DeVries played flawlessly, Rob Arnold was having a great time and allowed Steve Swanson to shine like he never has before in SFU and Kevin Talley gave the band more brutality and speed. I seriously cannot wait for their upcoming album.
After the show, me and my friends waited for about 40 more minutes and then got to take pictures with Chris Barnes, Matt DeVries and Rob Arnold, who were all extremely nice and thanked us for coming out to see them.
