SIX FEET UNDER's CHRIS BARNES: why I quit smoking weed
29-03-2024
Former CANNIBAL CORPSE and current SIX FEET UNDER frontman Chris Barnes, who previously described cannabis his “best friend for his entire life”, has revealed in a new interview with This Day In Metal that he doesn’t smoke cannabis anymore. “I haven’t for about a year and a half,” he said. “But previously, I would use it in all aspects of my daily life. And it was a wonderful meditative tool to use to write lyrics to, of course, yeah. I enjoyed that a lot.”
Asked if he decided to quit smoking cannabis for health reasons, Chris said: “No, it’s actually beneficial to your health, so I wouldn’t say that was any part of it. It was just, I guess, something I just wanted to do personally… It’s been a year and a half of no cannabis, no alcohol. So it’s kind of changed gears a little in my life.”
Back in 2017, Barnes told Full Metal Jackie‘s nationally syndicated radio show about the “relaxed” aspect of his personality: “Well, I’m highly medicated… (Laughs) Cannabis has been my best friend for my entire life, pretty much, so everything I create and do is with the use of medicinal and spiritual use of cannabis. So I tend to keep a pretty even nature, unless someone pokes the bear, you know (laughs), someone stirs up the snake a little bit, I’m all right. But I’ve been known to have some pretty nasty bites. But, yeah, I try to keep it pretty cool.”
Barnes admitted to the “Metal Shop” radio show in a 2015 interview that Washington state’s legalization of marijuana in 2012 played “a big part” in his decision to relocate from Florida to Seattle. He explained: “I felt like for a big portion of my life, over half of my life, I was saying publicly and to myself, if there was ever a place that had legal weed that I loved and would wanna live there, why wouldn’t I be there? And I asked myself that question a couple of more times, and sold my house in Florida in two days, packed up the house and left within two weeks and got up here.”
Barnes also recalled how he was first introduced to marijuana at a very young age.
“I was lucky to grow up in a house where my dad and his wife were very, kind of, progressive, and he grew cannabis and sold it,” Chris said. “So I remember the original Acapulco Gold strains, and Panama Red, the real Red, that were eradicated… So, yeah, my first time I smoked it, I think I was 12 years old, so it was probably, like, ’78 or something, ’79. I stole a roach the end of a marijuana joint out of the ash tray, and me and my best friend took my mini bike and went trail riding and smoked a couple of roaches.”
Asked who the other biggest stoner in death metal is, Barnes responded: “It used to be my good friend Chuck Schuldiner (from DEATH). He was a great smoking friend. But now I’d say my good friend Landphil Hall from CANNABIS CORPSE.”
SIX FEET UNDER will release their fourteenth studio album, “Killing For Revenge”, on May 10 through Metal Blade Records. As a first preview of the record, the band recently released “Know-Nothing Ingrate”. The song comes with an official lyric video.
Stream “Know-Nothing Ingrate” below.
“I chose the title ‘Killing For Revenge’ after we completed writing and noticed that all the lyrics and storylines had a common theme of revenge. Revenge by human or revenge by nature,” Barnes says. “The album title describes the flow of the stories within the lyrics perfectly.”
“Killing For Revenge” marks the second album that Barnes and guitarist Jack Owen (ex-CANNIBAL CORPSE) have created together since reuniting for 2020’s “Nightmares Of The Decomposed”. Owen also produced “Killing For Revenge”.
“We worked well together in CANNIBAL CORPSE,” recalls Barnes. “I loved him to death as a friend and a musician, so I’m really comfortable giving him the reins because I just have such great respect for him as an artist.”
It’s clearly a partnership that works, given the brilliance of CANNIBAL CORPSE‘s early work under Barnes and the fact that the Owen–Barnes rekindled symbiotic relationship has breathed new life, or perhaps new death, into SIX FEET UNDER.
“I asked Jack to map out what parts of the songs he wanted lyrics for, and he just started writing lyrics instead and gave me a demo vocal track for pretty much all the songs,” Barnes says. “I thought it was great. That’s how the music and lyrics wanted to appear this time, so I just let it come through that way and worked with him in a collaborative way. Like we did back in the old days, like on the song ‘Shredded Humans’.”
SIX FEET UNDER was initially formed as a side project for Barnes during his final years with the band that he co-founded, CANNIBAL CORPSE. It became the frontman’s sole focus in 1995, coinciding with the release of their debut, “Haunted”. Only Barnes remains from SIX FEET UNDER‘s original incarnation, but the quality has remained remarkably consistent. The current lineup of Barnes, guitarists Owen and Ray Suhy, bassist Jeff Hughell and drummer Marco Pitruzzella make for a devastating unit.
While Barnes is the sole remaining member, SIX FEET UNDER is about more than he and Owen. The singer is thrilled with the current lineup, and what each member brings to the table. “Jeff and Marco have been with me for about 10 years,” Barnes says. “I’m really fortunate that I have probably the best musicians in metal. If you look at it, we have the same amount of original members as CANNIBAL CORPSE. Jeff is a killer bass player. Marco‘s probably the best drummer out there. Jack‘s the greatest songwriter I’ve ever been involved with over the 30-plus years I’ve been doing music professionally. And Ray is just a phenomenal guitarist who can play everything from jazz to death metal. The lineup now is untouchable.”
The chemistry between the five men is palpable; listening to “Killing For Revenge”, one could be forgiven for assuming that they hid themselves away somewhere for a couple of months and hammered it out in blessed, creative seclusion. Not the case. “We all recorded it on our own, in different parts of the country since we’re all spread out,” says Barnes. “I think the most important thing is to put everybody in a comfortable space so that they get a great performance. That’s what you want to capture. It’s really hard nowadays to afford everyone being in the studio recording like we used to back in the ’90s. It can be done just as effectively this way.”
Barnes previously said SIX FEET UNDER‘s new album would contain “some of the most intense songs we’ve done… It’s a Ripper!!! Some real killer songs on this album. It will definitely satisfy all our SFU Fans appetite. #pureDEATHMETAL'” He also said the LP was shaping up to be “incredibly fucking heavy.”
SIX FEET UNDER‘s 17th full-length album, “Nightmares Of The Decomposed”, was released in October 2020 via Metal Blade Records.
Comprised of 12 tracks, “Nightmares Of The Decomposed” was tracked at various studios, including Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, which over the years has played host to the likes of AC/DC, BLACK SABBATH and AEROSMITH, among others. It was produced, engineered and mixed by Chris Carroll, while the album’s mastering was handled by Chaz Najjar at Badlands Recording in Denver, Colorado. The finished product came packaged in artwork by Luke Hunter.
Barnes exited CANNIBAL CORPSE in 1995, one year after the release of the band’s “The Bleeding” album. Seven years ago, he told “The Chainsaw Symphony” radio program about his departure: “I just didn’t like being around them, because I was being ridiculed, and I just didn’t feel comfortable being in the same room with people that weren’t very nice to me personally. And I was part of that too, so we had all of our own type of differences, personally, and I don’t think it was gonna be able to be worked out. You know, mutual respect goes a far way when it comes to being in close quarters with people.”
Owen left CANNIBAL CORPSE in 2004, explaining in a statement that his “heart just wasn’t in it anymore, and it was reflected in my appearance on stage. Times change, and I just don’t enjoy the music as much as I used to, and the only thing keeping me in the band was steady work, and the pay,” he said. “These things makes it unfair to myself, my band members, and especially the fans.”
After Barnes left CANNIBAL CORPSE to form SIX FEET UNDER, he was replaced in the former band by George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher.
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