When asked in an interview what his favorite Cannibal Corpse album that he worked on was, he commented "I love them all, I really do. I really enjoyed them all". In the same interview when he was asked about his time with the band, he responded "I look back on it with a lot of fond memories. It was pretty much my starting point - it wasn't exactly my starting point, but it was as a professional musician. I think that I really helped bring about a certain style of music, and with that band I really outlined what most people think death metal vocals sound like - I'm part of that. I'm really proud of the imagery, and the lyrical stories that I put together on all those albums. We set out to conquer the world though, and I think we did as far as our corner of the world was concerned."
Barnes was fired from Cannibal Corpse because of personal differences with the rest of the band members. Barnes was then able to devote his full attention to the band Six Feet Under, which had been his side project since 1992.
In 2005, Six Feet Under released 13, their 6th full length album, an album that Chris also produced.
In the same year Six Feet Under released A Decade in the Grave, a Box Set highlighting the past 10 years of Six Feet Under.
With the success of two Death Metal bands already under his belt (Cannibal Corpse and Six Feet Under), Chris Barnes joined the Finnish death metal band Torture Killer in the fall of 2005. At the time, Barnes said he was fully committed to the band, and appeared on the band's debut album Swarm!, which was released on February 24, 2006. However, he left the band in January 2008.
Six Feet Under released their newest album Commandment on April 17, 2007 to highly positive views. Chris Barnes has stated "Commandment" is his favorite album, claiming to have received over 5,000 messages in support, many fans cite it as their favorite Six Feet Under release since 2003's Bringer Of Blood.
Barnes is known for his rather extreme vocal style, which consists of low and snarled death grunts that have been described by as "thunderous" and "like Satan on a diet of razor blades and paint thinner." He has also been praised for the fact that his famous grunts have never been manipulated or enhanced by a recording studio. Some have speculated that Barnes can get such low vocals because he is a known marijuana smoker, although this has never been confirmed or denied by Barnes. He also seems skilled at raspy screams, exemplified in the songs "Hammer Smashed Face", "I Cum Blood", "Post Mortal Ejaculation", "Pulverized", and "Stripped, Raped and Strangled". Ironically, in interviews he is known for having a very soft voice and for being very mellow.
Chris's vocals on "Tomb of The Mutilated" were so inhumanly guttural, that inside the booklet of the album there is a message that states "Electronic Harmonizer was not used to create any vocals on Tomb of the Mutilated".
In an interview, he said the following about his early singing aspirations: "I was really enamored with Gene Simmons from Kiss and the whole visual idea of a demon being a singer in a band, which kind of stuck with me in a way. When I saw Kiss in 1978, 1979 for the first time as an eleven or twelve year old kid, I was really enthralled. I felt “Wow! This is a live performance”, and I really loved Simmons and what he was doing. At another level I kept listening to music and it got more and more heavy, and then at one point as a teenager I said “Well I love this music so much, so I think maybe I could do that also”. At that point, I started singing along to my favorite albums by Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Venom and so on. I'd sing along to the tape, and I'd try to sing like those guys would in those bands. It just progressed from there really. When I was in my first year at college in the university, I was in a band at that point writing original music. It was the most fun in my life, and being in school I didn't really know what I wanted to do so I wasn't really sure of my place. I just thought to myself one day when I was in school, I said “I don't want to be here”. As a result, I got up, walked out, got in my car, and then cranked it up. I drove up to rehearsal and said “This is what I want to do”
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