Band:	Six Feet Under
Album:	Graveyard Classics II
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	October 19, 2004
Guest review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Hells Bells [AC/DC cover]
02. Shoot To Thrill [AC/DC cover]
03. What Do You Do For Money Honey [AC/DC cover]
04. Givin' The Dog A Bone [AC/DC cover]
05. Let Me Put My Love Into You [AC/DC cover]
06. Back In Black [AC/DC cover]
07. You Shook Me All Night Long [AC/DC cover]
08. Have A Drink On Me [AC/DC cover]
09. Shake A Leg [AC/DC cover]
10. Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution [AC/DC cover]

I have never understood why someone would go to the trouble of covering an entire album. One song is expected, maybe a few, but a whole album? It is essentially pointless, because the album has already been made before, and nobody needs to do it again. This is doubly pointless when it comes to AC/DC, since they have been remaking the same album for decades anyway. The fact that this is a Six Feet Under venture just triples the pointlessness, because, as I explained in my review of the first installment of Graveyard Classics, everything the Chris Barnes Show touches sounds exactly the same.

What I am attempting to drive home here is that Graveyard Classics II is entirely pointless, boring, and terrible. This is a rehashing of the entire Back In Black album that, not surprisingly, accomplishes nothing. Yes, Chris, we know you wish you could have written this album. So do we. It's a genuine classic. Yet from start to finish, Graveyard Classics II sounds like one continuous song. The musicianship is incredibly standard, even a little sloppy at times, and captures absolutely none of the heart, soul, or energy of AC/DC. The guitars are out-of-tune in places, the drums sound somewhat muffled, and there is absolutely zero divergence from AC/DC's original blueprint. Every song already sounded strikingly similar to the next, because it was AC/DC, but that was okay, for the same reason. Now, everything runs together even more, and there is no redeeming quality; this whole project could have been reduced to one crappy cover song.

Chris Barnes is no Brian Johnson. His voice does not work for this style of music. In fact, Chris Barnes's voice no longer works for any style of music. The vocal cords languishing inside Chris are in no condition to support a lead vocalist. At the very least, he could have tried to reinterpret the songs to better suit his own techniques, but he insists on singing every song exactly how Brian Johnson does (sans any changes in pitch, of course), and that causes the performance to suffer even more.

Essentially, Graveyard Classics II is an unimaginative re-recording of Back In Black somehow made worse in every single possible way. If you are going to set aside 40+ minutes to listen to Back In Black in its entirety, you should just stick with the ACTUAL version, and not this shoddy rip-off. This is exactly why covering whole albums is inadvisable; the more time you threaten to waste with your tribute, the better off the listener would be just going straight to the source.