Chris Barnes, former frontman of CANNIBAL CORPSE and current leader of SIX FEET UNDER, disclosed in a recent interview with This Day In Metal that he has stopped smoking cannabis.
He said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “I haven’t for about a year and a half. 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.”
When asked about whether his decision to stop smoking cannabis was motivated by health concerns, Chris responded by stating: “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] year and a half [of] no cannabis, no alcohol. So it’s kind of changed gears a little in my life.”
In a 2015 interview with the “Metal Shop” radio show, Barnes acknowledged that Washington state’s legalization of marijuana in 2012 significantly influenced his choice to move from Florida to Seattle.
He said at the time: “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 reminisced about his initial encounter with cannabis, which occurred during his youth.
“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,” he 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.”
SIX FEET UNDER have recently announced their fourteen studio album, Killing For Revenge, slated for May 10 release via Metal Blade Records.
