by Steve Huey

With the presence of former Cannibal Corpse frontman Chris Barnes, it was a pretty safe bet that Six Feet Under would epitomize death metal at its most cartoonish, and that proved to be true. Maximum Violence, the group's third full-length album, isn't vastly different from its predecessors -- basically simple riffs alternate between slow and fast tempos, with ridiculously over-the-top vocals spewing tales of death, dismemberment, and other variations on gore and splatter themes. The main problem with the record is its lack of variety, in both style and subject matter -- one gets the impression that any riff or lyric could be moved from one song to another with no noticeable difference in the overall effect. Still, if you're a fan of this particular style of death metal, Maximum Violence does deliver the goods.