Don't Rest In Peace

REPENTLESS
9/11/2015

(Oops, they did it again.)

For the record…I don't like that this review is a thing. Because I don't like that a Slayer album sans the direct presence and influence of Jeff Hanneman is a thing. Tom Araya's reticence versus Kerry King's stubbornness, never was there a possibility that the greatest metal band ever would actually hang up the horns.

Despite misgivings, again, Slayer are the best their genre has yet boasted. How could I not root for 'em? Remember that other album they released on 9/11, and how it treated your scalp like the lid of a tennis ball can?

After years of filling in for Hanneman on stage, former Exodus mastermind Gary Holt finally takes his place in studio. Alleged bad business once more sent Dave Lombardo towards the exits…enter Paul Bostaph, after fourteen years of not sitting around waiting for Slayer to ring him.

So that's a Slayer album without two of the original members.

"Delusions of Saviour"--A nearly two minute intro Kerry wrote after listening to the conclusion of Pearl Jam's "Black" while giving baths to his pet snakes or whatever the hell. As a mood-setter, it beats the odd-smelling pee out of candles named "Essence of Twilight" or "Guest on the Third Day".

Short, enjoyable, goes nowhere, oh shit life metaphor.

"Repentless"--Is not a word. Did Kerry the King not know of the perfectly extant word "unrepentant" (inconceivable!)?

Flame-tosser, still. Kerry writing about the world through the eyes of his late great P.I.C., although honestly it could be about King just as well (the lyrics are just that aggressively angst-soaked). The Seasons-esque intro devolves into a stand-around riff hardly worthy of the legend, but then woo, the fellas start decimating faulty appliances on a timer and all is all right. (Until you realize they left nine washing machines and refrigerators virtually untouched.)

Amidst a riot-ready spray of bad language, King manages to flip a cliche ("What you get is what you see") and I tend to nod appreciatively at such gymnastics, but still…"repentless" is so not a word that my poor autocorrect is audibly weeping.

(Imagine King penning a tune through the eyes of his old drummer. "Pay me what you owe me, motherfuckers!" ad nauseum.)

The solos make me wanna flip off some stupid kids.

"Take Control"--Darkening skies, brightening gazes. Maniacs will incite mania if need be, sending up plumes of smoke and flame into the sky while blades clash and blur below.

Wow, no profanity? Oh wait, spoke too soon--this one's a wedding night.

"Vices"--Outta the way is what I'm gonna get this thing.

"A little violence is the ultimate drug/Let's get high!"

"Vices" is at best unfinished; at worst, undecided. No, actually, at worst, it's that fucking lyric up there. Does Araya come through to salvage it somewhat? Look at those words again. Tell me what you think could make them palatable when spoken aloud. Then tell me how long you've been a syrup-sipper.

When Araya shuts up and the tune can lumber 'long on a trio of wheels, finally I can dig into "Vices."

"Cast the First Stone"--War ships, eh? War with Lego, is that what the situation's deteriorated into? I got two big feet for all the Lego in the world. The imprints and the pains are barely worth the receipt.

"When Stillness Comes"--"Spill the Blood" another 'gain. Slayer do "storytime with a sociopath" so well, but they have also done it better in the not-too distant past. 'Bout as spooky as snakes in a can, but I have to give it up for producer Terry Date, even if many of the bands he's worked with have been the aural/moral opposite of James Baxter rollin' on a beach ball, he cuts 'em from sternum to navel with an expert touch.

"Chasing Death"--Men tend not to do the emotion stuff well, meaning the extent of the helplessness the other guys felt at watching Jeff's losing battle with the bottle will never be fully expressed. (I'm sure there was at least one night that ended with bloody fingers.) The "slave of discontent" earns a screaming heap of disgust and disbelief. The tough love approach is a risky one--try it on me and one of us won't live to regret it.

"Oblivious to the end"--well shit, how would they tell the difference?

"Implode"--I choose to believe the song begins at 0:48.

The apocalypse is thunderously overrated, the supposed imminent zombie apocalypse especially. Extremely picky eaters are supposed to bring about the "extermination of the swine"? Eff zombies, pigs are coming! For thirty minutes, apparently!

Bostaph's best is far from Lombardo's best, but that's not as far as some fanboys might claim.

"Piano Wire"--Inarguably the most-anticipated song on Repentless, "Piano Wire" was rejected from inclusion on World Painted Blood thanks to an underwhelming Araya performance. After the death of its composer, however, Tom gave it another, apparently vastly improved go.

How fitting Jeff's last song concerns Nazi atrocities. While not fit for the pantheon, "Piano Wire" shows why his presence will be missed: doesn't fuck about, values the insidious over the straightforward, doesn't demand that Tom scream like the world's angriest teenager trapped in a middle-aged man's creaking body.

"Atrocity Vendor"--Tom and Kerry time! Dunno which man brought the Elmer's glue and which one brought the soft-batch scissors, but the best thing about Slayer's art projects is this: frequently, they depict horrors I would hate either I or my loved ones to suffer through, but would totally love to see my hated ones endure.

 "You Against You"--Solo less than a minute in. Dunno what makes me more nauseous, the sight of the impotent hard-on or the smell of the fumes.

"Pride In Prejudice"--"Finality to the fuss," indeed.

A single gunshot signals the beginning of the scene. The anti-hero emerges, his definitive stance in an amorphous world nearly as inspiring as his unwavering belief in the self. What followed I totally missed, too concerned that I don't qualify as a real American since I've yet to be shot at. (I've had a gun pointed at me in a non-playful manner once; maybe I can be Russian?



Once carcass kickers nonpareil, once apple pie shit-inners with no equal, Slayer have fallen a few rungs on the ladder whose primary material escapes me at the moment. Repentless is better than Diabolus in Musica and Divine Intervention, but is the whitest shade of pale alongside God Hates Us All and Christ Illusion. (Compared to the classics? No, let's not be cruel.) Forget virgin sacrifices, the worst sin Slayer commit here is that of indistinction.

No Sanctuary

WORLD PAINTED BLOOD
11/3/2009

Not red.  The shade must be specific.

The first Slayer album to be written in the studio proved a successful experiment; Jeff Hanneman just ekes Kerry King with six song credits , but his punk-metal spirit permeates the project deeper than Kerry's metal-punk spirit.  (That's the difference between screaming and yelling, if you need an example.)

"World Painted Blood"--The introduction takes the muttered voices of "Hell Awaits" and the brusque knocks of "Raining Blood" and slaps 'em with a new coat.

The sonic serration meshes unpleasantly with Tom Araya's vocals, but this is Slayer.  Unpleasantness is expected and welcomed.  How could I ever resist the delectably sinister temptations offered within?  It's not about what's right, it's about what's left.  If I want to shave my body hair with a machete, I'll do that.

"Unit 731"--A song about a World War II-era biological and chemical warfare research and development unit responsible for the deaths of thousands of Chinese people?  Human experimentation, chemical exposure, "educational" amputations?  Surgery with no anesthesia?  Yessir--it's another Slayer gem from the wicked pen of Jeff Hanneman.  More delirious verses for bastard behavior.  (Those are the reasons behind all those seemingly inexplicable stink-eyes I level at my fellow public transport passengers.)

Guitar solos are to Slayer songs what Cappadonna verses are to Wu-Tang Clan songs.

"Snuff"--Seasons In the Abyss soloing over Reign In Blood guitars at the very beginning of the song.  Well, I came.

A tune about being tortured to the point of madness really should never make me want to jump rope with two surgically-fused king cobras in place of the rope, but some things in this world we aren't meant to make heads nor tails of.

Tom sounds better on World Painted Blood than on any of Slayer's last four albums, realizing that his voice is a partner in crime and not a reluctant ally.  Tom at his best can bark out the side-dish menu at a BBQ joint and mesmerize a crowd.  "Barbecue baked beans!  Cole fuckin' slaw!  Mac and cheese, collard greens, death to you aaaaallll!"  

"Beauty Through Order"--Huh.  Now there's a word I never thought I'd see in a Slayer song title.

'Bout goddamn time the greatest metal band of ever wrote a song for the most evil woman in history, considering how often the Countess Elizabeth Bathory has been referenced in the genre (including a song on Venom's seminal Black Metal).  The legend claims that this inbred woman of dark desires tortured and killed peasants and servants in Hungary over twenty years spanning the 16th and 17th centuries (totals ranging from 32 to 650 victims), often bathing in a tub full of their blood to stay young.  Whether the Countess really was one of the most vile and prolific serial killers in history, or the victim of a royal conspiracy as some have alleged, will never truly be known.  In the absence of definitive answers, the sensationally sanguine perception persists. 

(Jeff struggled with writing from a woman's point of view until he embraced her evil.  Then the words just flowed.  "Eternity waits for you to drink."  Piss off, eternity.  I'm nursing this.)

"Hate Worldwide"--How about another song for the ladies?  Let's send this one out to Polyurethane Pam.

My mom worked in a bakery for two and a half years.  Near the conclusion of year number one, she had transformed from being an ardent fan of the sacred treat known as "the donut" to blanching at the mere thought of one.  If my mom were a metal band, she would not be Slayer.

"Public Display of Dismemberment"--Do "Dittohead" again, but like Judas Priest!  Gruesome and ghastly, this easily goes awry in the hands of lesser masters.

"Human Strain"--I care about this as much as the band did.

"Americon"--Everywhere around the world…"it's all about the motherfucking oil!"  The dumb is powerful here.  Reese's Pieces powerful.  "Americon" barely qualifies as a one-dimensional experience.  Everyone is holding back, including the producer and engineer.

"Psychopathy Red"--Two straight snoozers after a string of blazers, Slayer better recover quick.  As "Psychopathy Red" was the album's first single, I knew ahead of time they would.

You don't see the world "psychopathy" slung around a great deal, so check in their column.  Slayer deliver with an ape-shit intro--BAM BAM--assemble the pebbles, spray blood on them and slap people square in the puss if they dare rush over and exclaim "Ooh Skittles!"

Those guitars follow you around like a wizard's familiar.  Uncontrollable note-relay races.  Chorus that doubles as a cause of death.  Audible bass!  That part ruled.

"Psychopathy Red" is about the infamous "Red Ripper," Andrei Chikatilo.  I would've loved to sit down and shoot shit with Jeff and Tom about true crime books.  Not just the ones everyone knows (The Stranger Beside Me, In Cold Blood) but the lesser-celebrated tomes like Bestial and Buried Dreams.   Why does no one want to give Earle Leonard Nelson his just due as a jaundiced dude?

"Playing With Dolls"--The relationship between tormentor and tormented is the definition of a "crush." 

"Not of This God"--Thought they'd close the album out with a moody track, but nope.  Instead we get li'l baby "Angel of Death," with a dry diaper and pinched, beet-colored face.   The chorus has some "Fundamental Friend Dependability" thing happening.  Definitely a ditty for the delinquent at heart.



The booklet of World Painted Blood has probably my favorite picture of my favorite Slayer member ever:  Jeff Hanneman onstage, clad in his omnipresent Oakland Raiders jersey, left hand on the guitars neck and his right hand held triumphantly skyward.  He stares out at the crowd, his mouth wide open, face twisted in an expression of devilish glee.  And of course the pic is tinted blood red.

Looking inward instead of outward would serve a band like Megadeth well; Slayer have done this for the last three records and gone from strength to strength as a result.  Their glory days are behind them, but the gory days go on and on. 

Where's Your Disfigured Pirate Jesus Now?

CHRIST ILLUSION
8/8/2006

Originally set for a 6/6/2006 release, but the dream was crushed when other, lesser bands announced their identical intentions.  Ridiculous that such shenanigans were deemed permissable; that date was clearly made for Slayer and Slayer alone, all other racket-gangs fall back, but oh well.  6/6/06 was still International Day of Slayer. 

For their first new full-length in five years, Slayer brought out the big gun--or rather, brought it back:  Dave Lombardo.  You done good, Paul Bostaph, but the master just returned home.

"Flesh Storm"--Twinned guit-fiddles make robots flat-line.  What is on display here is every Slayer riff ever to be fighting war, total war, corrupting our souls and bodies sans compunction.  It ain't just the youth that's expendable.  America in toto is a glorious melting pot of disposable waste. 

"Catalyst"--Trods a trail so many have stomped down before…but fuck it, Slayer's boots are bigger, and festooned with spikes.

"Skeleton Christ"--The riff stutters worse than me at a job interview.  Emaciated religion is killing the world, one desiccated tissue at a time.  God sucks, y'all.  "Hail Satan!"  Eh, sounded better in '86.

Jeff's one solo here slaughters both of Kerry's whammy-bar parties.

"Eyes of the Insane"--The guys ease up on the gas, prompting me to start whining and writhing.  I kick at the back of the drivers seat in a pitiful protest.  Finally, Kerry whips his snake-head around and hollers, "Calm your ass down or I'll make you hold the Grammy we won for this song for the whole rest of the trip!"  Borderline child abuse, but it works.

"Jihad"--One of the most unique note progressions in the band's history opens up the album's most controversial song, which looks at the events of 9/11 from the terrorists POV.  Why pull punches when you can push 'em through someone's skull?  ("Fuck your God, erase his name.")  Tom's rapid-fire delivery ain't perfect, 'cause nothing deserves that distinction, but it's damn near to my ear.

Unbelievably, Kerry King does not have a songwriting credit on this song.

Christians and Muslims, united in gullibility, their insane desire to assuage someone they can't see to assure a future they might not have.  Earlier in this series, I spoke about Slayer being the ideal soundtrack for my personal revenge fantasies.  Meaning, revenge against people I knew for personally wronging me, to satisfy me. Not this other stuff. 

"Consfearacy"--Portmanteaus-a-poppin' for what is essentially "Dittohead Pt. 2" (or "Necrophobic Pt. 3).  Unoriginal, yes, but I'm a contented gondolier nonetheless.

Dave sounds like he's snapping bones on the chorus.  Mine.  Hurts so fucking good.

"Catatonic"--Slayer slow it down, but a quick finger to the pertinent spots reveal a heart rate fast as ever.  Skin and bones both crack from the pressure. 

"Black Serenade"--I can tell Jeff wrote the music here.  Transitions, y'see.  The guitars shadow the lyrics so I keep waiting for the whish of the blade.

"Cult"--"In God I distrust."  Ah, well done.  Also, thanks for comparing religion to rape.  Wholly equivalent.  This is just four minutes of "No shit!"  Tom sounds better on the whole of Christ Illusion than he has in quite some time, perhaps inspired by lyrics like "infectious imbecility" (which as of now can consider itself stolen). 

"Supremist"--The flesh is weak.  The music is strong.  My head hurts, though.  Either I'm getting too old, or Slayer is, but both of us are refusing to reconcile that fact if it is, indeed, a fact. 

"Supremist" urges me to play hopscotch on the gravestones of people I've murdered.  Ha, I'm just kidding, none of those people had proper burials.



Yeah, not really too much more to add.  Christ Illusion's heights aren't as mountainous as the ones on God Hates Us All, but it is more consistent, and more mature.  Slayer makes me proud to be a human being--even while informing me, over and over, how hopeless the entire race is.  That is some true art, right there.

Luciferian Delirium

GOD HATES US ALL
9/11/2001…yep

With their eighth album, Slayer jettisoned any nagging impulse to innovate their sound.  I appreciate that.  Slayer at peak efficiency provide the soundtrack for our bloodiest retaliation fantasies.  This album:  everybody dies!

God Hates Us All is Slayer's angriest album to date, due to Kerry King's dominant presence (credited on eleven songs).  His songs have almost always been pissier than Jeff Hanneman's, more liable to talk about why he wants to bludgeon you than just describe the moment when it finally happens, and that blunt, brute power is practically another member of the band here. 

That's why I always find this quote from King funny, when asked why Rick Rubin wasn't involved with GHUA (virtually meaningless "executive producer" credit aside):  "I wanted somebody who knows what's hot, who knows what's selling, knows the new techniques, and will keep me on my toes."  I doubt Slayer needed an outside party to tell them that claiming the alleged creator of all things despises his creations would garner some extra attention, or to recommend desecrating a Bible for the album's cover and booklet.  And even then, how many more units did they foresee shifting with these tactics?  They're still fucking Slayer.

"Darkness of Christ"--What is this weirdness?  Intro pieces do not get more inauspicious!  (Unless also featuring farts.)  Speak up, woman!  Speak up, Tom!

"Discipline"--Now this is how you start the day:  quicker than a hiccup. I need this like sixteen ounces of cremated beans in the AM, or sixty-four ounces of the common man's nectar. 

The world would be a pretty cool place, if not for all those pesky people.  Perhaps someone has a fix-it?

The soldiers hit the ground, cat-style, but they move forth and attack like rabid pits.  All wearing the same green fatigues and buttons that read FUCK YOU, I'M NIHILIST.  Some of 'em are even wearing gun belts despite the fact that they aren't even firing weapons that are belt-fed to begin with.  Doesn't matter.  EVERYBODY DIES.

"God Send Death"--Band send breather.  My heart has not stopped so suddenly from fright since watching Frankie Avalon's performance as a flute-tooting slasher in Blood Song. 

"New Faith"--Oh, cursed chaos!  How I yearn to dissolve and regenerate inside of a mob scene, over and over.  I desire for my shaking hands to clutch sharp objects and for my body to convulse in a homicidal delirium.

There is some inflammatory language in this summabitch.  Just remember that it's an avowed Catholic singing lyrics written by an avowed atheist, so it's almost impossible not to enjoy.

"Cast Down"--More hardcore-sounding than thrash-sounding, but Kool Moe Dee would definitely give the guys an A+ for "sticking to themes."  If you can bear to vacuum away the cobwebs, you are more than welcome to have the time of your life with the drug-addicted angel and her cocaine halo.

"Threshold"--Probably an even more obvious nod to the sonic world around them then "Stain of Mind," but Slayer can get away with that.  Tom tells me how he loves violence, and brooks no pussies, and I can believe that shit.  That twat-biscuit from Disturbed, whatever his name is, I wouldn't let him shovel my snow. 

"Exile"--"I need to vent/Let me tell you why."  And so he does. "Exile" probably contain more utterances of the word "fuck" than every other song in Slayer's catalogue combined.  Ripping off faces, pulverizing hearts, all because the Chinese delivery guy was ten minutes late?!  So fucking metal. 

"Seven Faces"--All wearing masks depicting unique grotesqueries.  Scars shining pink, bite marks, violent patches of red, unsightly growths (some coming out of other, larger growths), it's a freak show. 

"I live for the things that make me hollow."  Dude, me too!  I have not related so profoundly to a song since "Pac Man Fever." 

"Bloodline"--The lyrics are Hangover levels of dumb-shit. 

Forever rape mortality
I smell of death
I reek of hate
I will live forever
Lost child pay the dead
Bleeding screams of silence
In my veins your eternity

Labored licentiousness and odious tedium weigh "Bloodline" down, but thankfully, the solos remain untainted.

(Kerry actually thought this would be the "radio hit" from the album.  Yeah, bro.  And purge fluid is totally marketable as a soda.)

"Deviance"--When shooting and stabbing and smashing and bashing and burning get old-hat, nothing shakes things up like drowning your victim.  Just grasp the back of their head and plunge it into the nearest body of water!  They'll struggle for breath, you'll giggle till you pee, everyone has a good time.  It's good to hear Slayer switch thangs up a li'l bit. 

"War Zone"--My river deep/mountain high expectations for songs whose titles contain the word "war" come largely from Slayer.  I anticipate smirking defiance.  I expect thoughtless evisceration.  "War Zone" brings it all.  The Slaytanic Army is leader-free, let's be honest.  Satan's just a figurehead, a killer icon, a brand name you can mistrust. 

"Here Comes the Pain"--Perfect to blast as some overpaid, overhyped, overly-drugged meat marionette makes his way to the squared circle. 

The best revenge is a life well-lived.  Knocking your nemesis unconscious with the nearest, heaviest whatever is pretty quality, as well.

"Payback"--Go out great, guys, my brain begged.  The guys did.

It is useless to resist the pull.  You'll hurt yourself.  Then what?  Pride won't handle those hospital bills.  So go ahead and go crazy. 

Life is a bitch
Payback is a bitch
Life is payback

Syllogism achieved!

"Payback" urges me to chuck a bowling ball through the window of a Bob's Big Boy.  Just so that when I tell the story later on, people might could deny the veracity of every single detail, but no way can they deny the alliteration. 



God Hates Us All is the Slayer album that has changed the most in my evaluation from the time of its initial release to now.  In 2001 I was mildly irritated by what I gleaned to be a stubborn single-mindedness that resulted in music that, while very loud and fast, didn't present me with much new to grip onto and hold.  Ho-hum goes the drum. 

In the past couple years, however, I've come to rank God Hates Us All pretty highly.  Slayer weren't being the crotchety old men of metal--they were cementing their status as the genre's most imperial stalwarts.  Whatever low points can be found here generally commit no greater sin than just being boilerplate thrash.  The high points beat Christian grandmothers with spiked bats.  Even if the topics aren't fresh, or the lyrics especially thoughtful, the anger is the savior.  Which is always a weird word to use in a Slayer review unless preceded by "murder of the."

Violent By Design

DIABOLUS IN MUSICA
6/9/1998

In the Middle Ages, music was seen as a gift from God and thus composed to praise God.  Songs celebrating His holiness, gracious and solicitousness were written and performed using the only most gorgeous notes so as to please not only the Savior himself but also all those who believed. 

This meant no tritones.  These impure, sour, foul-sounding intervals comprised of three whole tones were the opposite of good, the enemy of joy, and the Catholic Church spoke out against its use in church music (although stories differ as to whether or not the Church actually banned the tritone). 

The tritone isn't in and of itself "scary," in the way that an item of food isn't in and of itself "tasty."  Black Sabbath receive--and deserve--credit for creating the genre of heavy metal music, and also the use of the tritone in said music.  But are their songs pants-shittingly terrifying?  I never thought so.  Menacing, sure.  Dark as pitch at best; ponderous as a giant's waltz at worst.  Does The Simpsons theme give you shivers? 

Hell, back when I first heard Slayer and they scared me speechless, a tritone had nothing to do with it!  Just some good ol' fashioned yelling from someone who had apparently just been disemboweled by a lion. 

Oh, yeah.  Speaking of those guys.

Diabolus In Musica isn't exactly fright night at the movies for the blind either, despite boasting Slayer's first creepazoid album cover of the decade.  The guys had clearly reached a sort of crisis point creatively with Divine Intervention.  The release of Undisputed Attitude in 1996 showed a group with much left in the tank… but they were expending that fuel on covers of the old punk songs that inspired them.   Could they muster the same git-up for a new record of original material? 

As much as the return of Jeff Hanneman in a creative role excited fans (he had a hand in every song save for "In the Name of God"), the band's decision to play most of the album in a dropped tuning either deflated or inflamed a good many of them, worried that their beloved antichrists had gone "nu-metal."

No, Diabolus In Musica is still Slayer.  Just not quite the Slayer we're accustomed to.

"Bitter Peace"--A self-cannibalizing take on "War Ensemble" that chucks the tank and stays on foot.  When the terrain changes from sand to pavement, things get a tad less interesting--but it still sounds tough.

Peace is like a Vince McMahon sex tape--nobody really wants that shit.

"Death's Head"--Resist the n-word, friends.  Let us show some equanimity here.  Yes, that intro is choppy, and there's some superfluous sonic trickery.  Paul Bostaph--hell of a drummer, let me never hear otherwise--has spoken with pride about playing on Slayer's "most experimental" album, but what were they really experimenting with, other than elements of the prevailing musical trend of the day? 

"Stain of Mind"--Yep.  "Stain of Mind" grooves.  It churns.  And I love it, maybe more than anything else here.  Groove is in the heart beating its wild life against my chest, the thudding reverberating in my ears, the alarms blaring in my brain. 

Sure, the "oh yeah!"s are cheesy.  So's a Jucy Lucy.  The man you hear on this song is not a pasty-skinned dread-locked wanna-be Scot crying about some hands-y male member of his family.  Nor is he a prematurely-balding, ball-cap wearing failure of a human being rapping and singing with equal ineptitude about how fickle women are.  This is Tom Araya, screaming at you until the skin begins to peel off your face. 

If nothing else, Slayer look more dashing in these new duds than "Panthrax."

"Overt Enemy"--Why is Tom singing through a floor fan set to "medium"? 

"I infiltrate/Continue lies/Then masturbate." 

Who wrote this?  Really?  Well…maybe Jeff just wanted to see how crap a song he could get the other dudes to roll with.

"Perversions of Pain"--Here comes the ax!  And here comes the smasher!  Take it like the men you aren't, jobbers.  The throng is throbbing and frothing before word one even escapes into the light.  Slayer cranks up the whites more than Russell Mulcahy. 

"You better learn my name!"  Yeah!
"'Cause I'm the one insane!"  Oh yeah!

"Love To Hate"--The fact that people have called Tom's delivery here "rap-like" just shows how many metal fans have no idea what rap music actually is.  

Paul continues to impress, earning his wings as a dark lord of finesse even when performing such a vile task as melting skin. 

When you've been around as long as Slayer, and been as strong as Slayer, some people expect more.  They could visit an elementary school with a cardboard box marked MacBooks and iPads and Puppies!, play some bowdlerized acoustic ditties in the auditorium, then have an "unveiling ceremony" where it turns out the contents of said box are two armor-clad midgets with machetes who start chasing teachers and students--and all of a sudden that's not good enough anymore.

"Desire"--Mine is to skip this song.

"In the Name of God"--AKA, The One Jeff Didn't Have Anything To Do With (still the best episode of Friends). 

Hey, baby, what're you doing for the rest of your life?  Why not come with me to a sacrifice?

Tom had some issues with Kerry's lyrics here--"lies in the name of God," "Antichrist is the name of God," that sort of deep-fried sacrilege. King bristled at the singer's sudden reticence:  "Whether he agrees with it or not, he didn't write it--I wrote it."  And it's not like Tom hasn't penned some gnarly shit in his day ("Sex.Murder.Art." for fuck's sake!)  Tom capitulated, but the fact he had reservations in the first place reveals a fundamental truth about Slayer.  Unlike the members of a black metal group like, per example, Dissection--a Swedish band who boasted several members in the Misanthropic Luciferian Order/Temple of the Black Light--none of the Slayer guys actually adhere to Satanic law, or even believe any of that shit is real.  (Just like Kerry and Jeff, at least, didn't believe in the God shit.)  They just wanted to write about extreme, evocative topics--and then get shit-faced.  No one is  fucking dead bodies, or slaughtering priests and/or nuns then eating their hearts.  No one is getting into heated discussions about how Anton LaVey was a pussy.  This is rock and roll.  You play rock and roll so you don't just lose it someday and wind up impaling someone on their own arm. 

"Scrum"--The Probert vs. McSorley of sports songs. 

"Relentless brotherhood of discipline!"  That's why the Washington Capitals will never win the Stanley Cup.  Championship teams exit their locker rooms in a synchronized death march.  Not whatever viral dance craze is sweeping the nation.

"Screaming From the Sky"--A mischievous pugilist that runs out of opponents, but retains a surplus of fighting spirit, will eventually beat themselves up. 

"Point"--Ironic title, as this song is ultimately without a point.  DUN-DUN-DUN-screeee!  Hell, this might be the bizarro "War Ensemble."  Way to bookend the record, guys…?



Jeff's songwriting dominance on Diabolus In Musica was due in large part to Kerry King's disinterest in and discouragement with the late 90s music scene.   He could scarcely be bothered to pick up a guitar, and later dubbed this period  "my darkest time as a musician" in an interview with Metal Hammer.  (Which makes the "trend-chasing" accusations of some fans doubly hilarious.)

Having put out back-to-back records dominated by one man's creative mind (and each of those records being lesser offerings in Slayer's oeuvre), perhaps the band would get the hint and make their next album a more egalitarian affair.

The Tom and Kerry Show

DIVINE INTERVENTION
9/27/1994

Any discussion about the music on Slayer's sixth album has to be prefaced with the acknowledgement of events outside of the studio.

Early 1992, Dave Lombardo informed his bandmates that he would not be available to tour in September, as his wife was due to give birth to the couples first child that month.  The band's manager stressed how important touring revenue was to a band like Slayer (who could be counted on to garner gold with each release, but rarely ever achieve platinum).  Lombardo remained steadfast.

There's a couple ways to see Dave's decision to leave Slayer.  The birth of your first child is an event that happens once and only once, guaranteed, and it's natural that a man would want to be there, to establish an immutable emotional connection with the newborn.  There is also the harsh reality that he will be providing for his child by doing his job, and his job is playing drums in Slayer.  He can go and play drums for other bands, but what are the odds any of those positions will be as lucrative? 

The announcement that former Forbidden drummer Paul Bostaph was selected to replace The Father of Double Bass was received anxiously by fans.  Would this dude just mimic Dave's classic style, or would he bring something new that the other guys would get behind?  Would fresh blood galvanize the band, or leave them enervated?

Kerry King took a huge step towards staving off encroaching baldness and overall middle-age lameness when he shaved his head, grew out a goatee, and got himself covered in more demonic ink than Satan's letters to the archangels.  Fuck yeah metal. 

Perhaps most troublesome was the diminished participation of Jeff Hanneman.  He receives only three songwriting credits, and unless he played a solo, he didn't play.   Yep, Divine Intervention is Slayer with a new drummer and one virtually absent guitarist.  Welcome to the Tom and Kerry Show.

"Killing Field"--The very first thing to hit our ears is Paul Bostaph, filling in.

I really wanted to love this 'un.  'Cause of "field."  (It's a big thing with me.)  But unless hearing a legendary metal band rock out on autopilot sends shivers racing up and down your spine, this is forever ignorable.

"Sex.Murder.Art."--"You're nothing!…A subjective mannequin…Raping again and again!"  Oh Tom, you hopeless amorist! 

Bostaph is certainly proving to be a technically precise bastard who wears his hats high. 

This over the top tale of a rapist-torturer and his interesting hobbies doesn't disturb me; never has.  The only fictional depiction of rape that has ever made my skin crawl is the unedited, nine-minute one in Irreversible, which I could only take for two minutes before turning the film off.  (Now there's a fuckin' party game for ya.)

"Fictional Reality"--Reminds my ears of those mid-tempos gems on the last album.  Going out exploring with a flashlight is weak; take a machete along too. 

And then use it to carve the band's name onto your inner forearm.*

"Dittohead"--"Necrophobic" revisited..'cause there ain't much difference between a congressman and a slice of adipose tissue. 

Kerry's attack on political malfeasance is fast and deadly as a dragonshark.  The ascending riff at 1:45 is so wickedly simple, gah, why doesn't it just see us out the door?

Not every Slayer fan knew (or cared) that a "dittohead" was another name for a fan of Rush Limbaugh, the ultra-conservative radio and TV blowhard.  Back in the 90s, millions of chucklefucks took this fat cunt seriously.  (Then he started talking about black quarterbacks in the National Football League and how only sluts use birth control pills 'cause a woman has to take one every time she has sex, obviously, and that's what we're spending our tax dollars on?!)  Among the chucklefucks were Kerry and Jeff.  These days Kerry identifies himself as a political "Independent," so I can't get very mad.  Also, this song is fuckin' great.  I mean if Slayer can write amazing songs about actual goddamn Nazis, why can't they get a pass for writing one in honor of a walking tub of Oreo cookie filling who wishes he could have handed out towels at Auschwitz? 

"Divine Intervention"--Does the job of spearing three ill-shaped forks into my brain.  Every first word of every verse urges me to run headlong into glass, thanks to Tom's tuneless yelling, but the "web-like Hell" gleams compellingly.  I'll stick around, all right.

"Circle of Beliefs"--Closed-minded people suck.  Attacks on them should not.

The distortion on the vocals ain't a little bit cool or edgy, nor tough or evil.  The venom is dripping!  No, just drool.

"Slayer don't fuck around!" is great to say, and greater still to believe, but listen to this song, guys.  That's all they're doing. 

"SS-3"--So the wannabe Nazi gets a fucking killer song, and the actual Nazis get this snoozefest?  This is 'bout as mighty as a sand castle crafted by 48-month-old hands (or 48 month-old hands).  The snares are tuned to "soft as bananas shat out of rhino butt" and the guitars are simply the dullest yet...and duly the simplest yet. 

"Serenity In Murder"--Guitars!  With but a single intake of breath, the Lord Satan commands that you distinguish yourselves! 

"213"--Yet another demented love song from Tom's pen (taking its title from Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment number).

When the big boy guitars make their presence heard, the overriding impression is that soon they will make their presence felt.  The abrupt switches are the best parts of the song, but Tom is not comfortable here.  Or at least the mix makes it seem that way. 

That's a pretty li'l blood spill--till you end up taking one of your own.  The thump of your back hitting the uncarpeted floor activates a trigger that opens up select ceiling panels.  Chunks of putrid flesh rain all over your body before you can even react.  Death by death.

"Mind Control"--This is "Hallowed Point" bored out of its skull 'n' bones pajamas.  The lyrics are far from the problem here; more often than not, the wordplay on Divine Intervention outshines the musical tracks.   

That is how to slap someone on the back and smash a brick in their face in one half of a sentence. 



Per Tom Araya, American Recordings gave up on trying to get a "hit" out of Slayer after the release of this record.  That the label had any such aspirations at all is frankly amazing.  Slayer specialize in base rage represented through outsized splatterfest imagery both lyrical and musical.  There will be no "Enter Sandman" coming from their camp.

All questions about Paul Bostaph's impact were rendered basically moot when Divine Intervention turned out to be Slayer's most poorly-recorded and poorly-mixed effort.  Both his drums and Tom's vocals are cranked up, almost like they felt they had to convince the listeners that just because they were down one original member, Slayer could still fucking rip your face off.  Which wouldn't be such a problem if they'd bothered to write any classic songs.  (Or maybe, let me just fucking say it, if Jeff could have been bothered to write any classic songs.)  As it is, Divine Intervention is a very loud, very average record. 




*One of the most hardcore moments in fan devotion, ever.  I love Sonic Youth more than Canadians love hockey, but I can't ever imagine carving even their initials onto my body. 

Bombard Till Submission

SEASONS IN THE ABYSS
10/9/90

On that date above, exactly two weeks shy of my entry into the world of adolescence, my parents gave me some money to grab an early present for myself. Could I have chosen better than the album that combines the heartless aggression of Reign In Blood with the leisurely menace of South of Heaven? 

Third straight rec produced by the redoubtable Rick Rubin, third straight with cover art by Larry Carroll (which is okay, but I would have loved if the face was puking Christ into a pit), fifth straight fucking great effort.  Even the booklet is memorable.  The eight-panel foldout features complete lyrics in barely-legible gothic font, surrounded by black and white photos of the band members, looking like they're embarrassed to be near such piss-poor design. 

The credits show promising parity:  six songs touched by Tom, and seven each for Kerry and Jeff. 

"War Ensemble"--Not a pro-war song, but easily misinterpreted as one by people who have chicken pot pie for brains instead of for dinner. 

There's no respite on the battlefield, so why should there be respite in the studio, or on the stage?  "War" has never sounded better (the actual word, I mean).  Slayer do not give the tiniest sliver of a shit.  The word "blood" appears twice in the first verse.  This is pinnacle Slayer.  All that's missing is a "Hail Satan!"  But maybe that's implied at this stage.

"Blood Red"--This band would just as soon spray you with piss as impress you with technique, finesse, or logic.  I love you, Slayer.  I want you to take me behind the school and perform my abortion.

Slow, without being plodding.  The chorus lick is playful, but not happy.  (Slayer are never happy!  Stop smiling!)  This is the second song by a Big 4 band to reference the Tiananmen Square protests in China, but where Anthrax's "One Man Stands" saluted the resolute will of the justice-seekers, Slayer is more concerned with the unsightly face of tyranny, or what happens when "peaceful confrontation meet(s) war machine." 

"Spirit In Black"--Seasons in the Abyss is nagging me, but I dig it.  There's a section of my brain that requires a good tune to obsess over for a decent portion of the day, and these offerings are qualifying with minimal expenditures of effort. 

This one, goddamn.  The progression from campfire to wildfire is quite a sound to behold.

Meta time!  "Where the blood forever rains"; "Hell awaits!"  (Tom even says the second in the identical timbre and cadence of the original.)

"Expendable Youth"--Slayer tackling social commentary.  Odd.  Kinda…Anthrax of you, guys.  (Only Anthrax would have a guest appearance by Ice Cube and it would be awesome.)    Not bad by any stretch, I'm just accustomed to Tom talking about blood-dripping demons giving the high hard hellish one to pale shrieking virgins with all the elegance of a tank.  Variety is the spice, I suppose.

"Death the only solution!"

No wonder y'all wrote about it, then!

"Dead Skin Mask"--As a true crime buff, I'm not sure why you'd write about Ed "The Plainfield Ghoul" Gein and not Carl "Rage Personified"  Panzram.  So Gein killed a couple old ladies, robbed some graves and kept weird shit around his Wisconsin farm to scare visiting children.  Panzram traveled the country, killing 21 and sodomizing (by his count) a thousand unlucky boys and men.  I can only assume that the sheer volume of his depravity overwhelmed Slayer. 

Most overrated Slayer song?  All's subjective, but I'd give it my vote.  (Which according to the Internet is only half a vote, seeing as I pee sitting down.)  Musically it's passable, but the imagery is far too fanciful for a schlub-farmer with abnormal urges.  "Placid faces and lifeless pageants."  Nah.  Not for Ed Gein.  For H.H. Holmes, maybe.

"Hallowed Point"--First blast louder than el diablo's le petit mort.  A "War Ensemble" reprise of sorts that focuses on the artillery.  Ascension is the cause of, and solution to, the tension.

"Skeletons of Society"--Grinds similar to "Expendable Youth," but not so I'm put-off.  Creepy as a smiling pug, and wouldn't you know that's not a deal-breaker either.  Clean the kitchen to this one.

"Temptation"--Another lurid trip into a decadent netherworld…but I guess they all are.  In the mood to acquire some souls?  Ten'll get'cha twelve.  Live a little!

The most riveting thing about "Temptation" (those dual vocal tracks during the verse) was not part of the original plan.  When the engineer put both of Tom's takes up to a band vote, they couldn't decide.  Tie goes to the listener.

"Born of Fire"--Originally intended for South of Heaven under the title "Stress."  The decision to place it on the next album was wise, as they turned the piece into a savory slice of the infernal afterlife.  John Milton woulda killed to create such a foul cadre of cretins.  They eat flesh of any age, drink blood of any type, and defile bodies of any shape.

As much as I enjoy the rollick to be had throughout, "Born of Fire" is really about Kerry's final solo.  At first I thought it most reminiscent of a prolonged sting from a bullet ant.  But that was when I was a silly teenager whose metaphors were entirely reliant on animals.  Now--older, wiser--I hear a musical approximation of a woman in the throes of multiple orgasms.  This is a good thing, namely because multiple orgasms are good things.  Or rather, a lot of one good thing.

"Seasons in the Abyss"*--The title track happens to be the longest and bestest track as well.  Close as Slayer ever got to a radio hit, thanks to that sonorous beast of a chorus that stopped short of phenomenal, kicked it in the gut with such force it fell onto its side, and then with one quick leap 'n land, snapped it in half. 

Slayer have dominion over dozens of caverns filled with broken adjectives.


Seasons in the Abyss, what a wicked little bastard.  Every song sounds like the last thing you hear before a bullet crashes through the window and smashes into your head. 



*That's Kerry King doing backup on not only this chorus, but the one for "Skeletons Of Society" as well.

Smile For Your Neighbor Satan

SOUTH OF HEAVEN
7/5/88

(Or, to quote my sister when I showed her the CD I'd just purchased:  "Why don't they just call it 'Hell'?")

Thriller was not an album.  It was a cultural phenomenon.  I lived through the MJ days, so if you missed out, you can trust me when I tell you that everything you've ever read and/or heard about how massive the man and his music were back in the 1980s is the gospel truth.  Everyone loved Thriller.  It sold tens of millions, owned the 1984 Grammy Awards, and singlehandedly changed the "M" in MTV from music to Michael.  Could any artist fathom the amount of pressure he felt to follow all of that up?

Yes.  Slayer could.

Oh, I've lost you already.  The eyes are rolling, the tongues are clucking, the cries go up, Oh what is to be done with this Trapper Jenn and her hit-hungry hysteria?  While it is true that Reign In Blood has not sold millions, nor received multiple industry hosannas, or been remixed by Will.I.Am, it did mark a major milestone for metal music.  Up to that point in time, no album had been that unrelentingly heavy, in both subject matter and delivery.  Slayer proved themselves A-1 flesh-rippers, simultaneously inspiring awe and envy in their peers.  Every band that heard it knew they had to top it, someway somehow.

Did Slayer themselves ever feel that same urge?

South of Heaven sent a sizable jolt coursing through the metal community as an eager audience absorbed what was the same and what was different.  Ten songs like before, but a running time eight minutes longer.  Rick Rubin behind the boards yet again.  Larry Carroll on the cover yet again, with demons lurking in orifices. 

But…the Slayer m.o. has shifted from slaughter to smolder.  Everything sounds a bit mellower (save for Dave Lombardo's drumming), a bit more thoughtful, a bit less willing to bludgeon first then ask questions. 

Slayer themselves are not huge fans of this album, Kerry King in particular.  In addition to some beefs with the songs themselves, he was/is a vocal non-fan of Tom Araya's performance behind the microphone, which went from growling and screaming to singing.  Reading about Kerry's attitude surprised me a bit, since he was recently-wed at the time, and it's been my experience that newly-married people tend to enjoy stuff way too much.  Then I did some history, and discovered his connubial bliss meant he was not as involved in the songwriting for South of Heaven, resulting in the first Slayer album to not feature a song solely written by King.  And of course he was divorced several years later.  So the enmity isn't precisely a mystery, then.

Certified gold five years after release.  People are the legitimate shittiest.

"South of Heaven"--After switching it up on the last record, Slayer return to kicking off the proceedings with updates on the current status of Hell.  (Still hot, still eternal, still got more soul than it can control.)  The unnatural amplification of unnatural desires clouds the air, as ever.

Slayer News also confirms the existence of an afterlife!  Lamentably, going from alive-alive to dead-alive is the only transmigratory experience we'll get.  So be careful what you wish for.  You might just get Slayer.

"South of Heaven" progresses at a relative snail's pace, but that is one motherfucker of a shell on its back, no?  There is no need for the "fight or flight response" in Hell, but the desire to do both is strong throughout.  The last forty seconds are a drone that submerges bodies and subsumes spirits.  Turn me on, dead guys.  On and on.

"Silent Scream"--Dave Lombardo quit Slayer in 1986, over growing financial concerns.  He was coaxed back into the fold by Rick Rubin in time for the next record, and there was much rejoicing.  Because what you hear is not a wooden stick striking plastic skins.  That is a golden scepter crashing against the sides of a granite obelisk.  That is a king taking his bejeweled head-piece to a servant's bare backside.  That is Piggy being murdered by his conch.

Speaking of kids who need to die…

The Silent Scream is the title of an anti-abortion propaganda video released in 1984.  It became a sensation among people who were really sad and uncomfortable at the thought of women practicing  bodily autonomy.  The major selling point of this sexist shit-show was ultrasound footage that purported to show in-process abortions.  Most chilling of all, the viewer is treated to the sight of a fetus with its mouth contorted into an "open-mouthed scream," proving beyond the silhouette of a suspicion that fetuses feel pain thus abortion is murder thus do what the Lord wills, you insane sluts!

Tom wrote the words, with all the references to "sacrific(ing) the unborn" and "electric circus wild deep in the infants mind."  Considering he's an non-lapsed Catholic, I ain't surprised.  I don't actually care that much to start ranting.  No, really, any time a man shares his opinion on abortion all I hear is Charlie Brown's teacher.

Luckily for me I can listen to "Silent Scream" without gritting my teeth.  Turns out trumpet doesn't go so bad with thrash metal, first off.  But mainly it whisks me right back to 2007, at the 9:30 Club, when I saw Slayer play live for the first and only time.  "Silent Scream" was on the setlist that night, and it inspired some of my most intense headbanging.  Thinking about that show always gives me the happy thoughts.  Some guy near me was miming air-chords and air-solos to every song.  That is dedication, kids.

"Live Undead"--Zombies are so overhyped.  I'll cower quicker at a quacker apocalypse (the wood ducks will try and fool ya--don't let 'em fool ya).

Time to take a nice bite down on a nicer slice of human layer cake.  My appetite isn't even ruined when the sounds of frantic flesh beating against wood and metal hit my ears, running concurrently with the terrified shrieks of…some…one?  Thing?  Oh, the days I believed claustrophobia was the fear of Santa Claus.  Such innocent times. 

This "new" sonic template fits Slayer well.  Start out slow and seething before ratcheting up the madness. 

"Behind the Crooked Cross"--Jeff Hanneman's song entirely, and he apparently never cared much for it.  It does smell faintly of "Here's another song about Nazis since the last one went over like bacon pancakes," but it doesn't smell at all like bacon pancakes.  You would have been executed for even suggesting such a food-mash in the 1940s. 

"Mandatory Suicide"--One of the most-loved songs on South of Heaven*, but to my ears the one that has aged poorest.  When it comes to Big 4 condemnations of government-ordered open-air massacre, "Mandatory Suicide" simply doesn't match up to Metallica's "Disposable Heroes."  Repeated listens reveal two glaring flaws:

--The song lacks both lyrical and musical gravitas, that presence of puissance which elevates good to great. 

--The outro, where the listener finds out Tom Araya's speaking voice is as snoringly sapless as his "Slayer voice" is sumptuously sinister.  Oh, the days I believed in Santa Claus.

"Ghosts of War"--MOAR WAR.

The first nineteen seconds are a buried-in-the-mix reprise of "Chemical Warfare"'s final riff.  Brilliant idea.  From the twentieth second on, shit is bonkers as a comically oversized fruit crashing through the roof onto some piano-plonking poindexter.

I especially adore every exhilarating second of the chorus.  Imagine the sight of your most hated enemy's head spontaneously combusting, multiply it by a thousand, then divide that by a hundred.  There you are.

"Read Between the Lies"--Song #3,578 of the "Evil Evangelist" craze that swept through metal music in the 80s.  Wherein Slayer take the riff they usually reserve for the bridges of their songs and use it instead for the verses.  It's okay, just weird.  I keep thinking there's ninety seconds of the song I'm missing out on.

"Cleanse the Soul"--Thank you, Kerry King's rabid hatred of this track, for introducing me to the phrase happy riff.  (He means the part beginning at six seconds, not the dun-DUN!! dun-DUN!!)  I find this to be a raucous delight.  I would never kill scores of people in a church, not when there's so many abandoned buildings still standing, but I can see how hagiographic art is a fetish for some people.

dun-DUN!!

"Dissident Aggressor"--Decent, ultimately unnecessary Judas Priest cover.  Treat yo'self to the original.

"Spill the Blood"--Jeff's songs tend to be real creepy sons-a-bitches.  Tom's whining only heightens the ghoulish atmosphere.  Dave is still snapping bones, this time to ward off the tempter.  Kerry is…on his honeymoon, I think.

Time has been kind to South of Heaven.  Enjoyed not as a follow-up to the so-called "heaviest album ever," but as a stand-alone work in a monumentally accomplished discography, it proves to be a flawed but worthwhile listening experience.  Let the fires from down below melt away the constrictive steel of expectation.




*The promo CD single didn't hurt notoriety either.  The officially-released T-shirt with this design is assumed rare by many and goes for exorbitant amounts at online auctions. 

Pile of Barbarism

REIGN IN BLOOD 

10/7/86

Now,  I finish the story I began way back in the introductory piece.  

You may recall that I spent a goodly portion of my formative years sneaking peeks into my big bro's collection of vinyl records.  Featured players were KISS, Ozzy, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Boston...nothing esoteric by any measure, but still fresh and vibrant to pre-teen ears.  Also, the ELO record had a big ol' spaceship on it!

One Sunday afternoon, as my brother and his friends were off doing menial shit, I was in the attic again, rifling through his stuff.  I picked up an album I had not even seen before, much less thought to play, and so decided to satisfy my curiosity.  The cover didn't give me much to go on: dark, murky, and lacked strong lines for my eyes to follow.  I assumed it would be some heavy, Priest-type metal.

Yeah.  Lawrence Murphy Priest-type.  It was Reign in Blood.

I placed the needle down carefully, cautiously, and out came those opening chords.   Basically Satan slapping his cock on a butcher-block table.  (Wow is this loud.  I hope mom and dad can't hear this all the way up here.  These sounds are really weird together.  Do I have this on the right speed?)

Then, after the rev up, is the take off.  Tom Araya lets loose one of the most legendary screams to ever be.  You could say that the album doesn't truly begin until that holler of the inveterate virgin-ruiner is heard.

(OhmyGodwhatwhatwhat.)

I hauled chubby ass, y'all.  Before he even finished, I was gone.  No screams, yells, or yelps; hell, not even so much as a squeak.  I immediately ran down the attic stairs, turned, and ran down the second floor hallway...down another flight of stairs, then made two sharp right turns, taking me past the dining room, past the kitchen, and out the back door.  Once outside I did not stop churning my legs until I reached the small in-ground pool.  I turned, panting, eyes seeking and then locking upon the attic window.  I was petrified beyond understanding.  What had I just heard?  All those sounds together created a dissonance, a goddamn horror movie scene of a body suspended from a ceiling by-- a rope?  hook?--the face gray and sunken in, blood pooled at its dangling feet, viscera slung over its shoulders.  Briefly I wondered if I'd allowed some evil entity to escape from its enticing enclosure.  Could I ever step foot in the attic again?  

It took a few weeks but eventually I made my way back up those half-carpeted, half-cracked steps.  I hadn't doomed the planet after all.

Still wasn't gonna touch that fucking Slayer record ever ever again, though.

Except I did, five years later, and heard an album that lived up to every hosanna bestowed upon it.  Reign In Blood is legitimately a nonpareil classic of the thrash metal genre, and thus a classic of music, full stop.  Hell Awaits was a bacon-flavored popsicle.  Reign In Blood is a butter burger--outrageous, dangerous, uncontrollable, totally unique.  Hell Awaits was flecked with blood.  Reign In Blood stinks with the sticky stuff.  The brevity of punk (ten songs, twenty-nine minutes) smashed up against and smeared into the brutality of metal.  That it has merely gone gold in the United States is a fucking travesty.    Reign In Blood deserves to sell more copies than Bing Crosby's "White Christmas."

You know Rick Rubin signed Slayer to his hip hop label Def Jam and produced the record, right?  You know that Larry Carroll cover is a demented and has two penises featured within, right?*  Yeah, I mean Wikipedia exists for a reason, and there’s a couple cool Slayer bios out there to be read.  Let’s fucking go.

“Angel of Death”—Possibly my favorite thing about “Angel of Death”—other than how it nearly my heart explode before I reached double-digit years on the planet—is that first amazing riff.  It’s not only irrefutably bad-boy-gone-worse, it’s also pretty much the main riff of the song “Hell Awaits” tweaked juuust a biiit.  Am I the first to notice the similarity?  Hardly.  Does anybody really care about the similarity?  Also hardly.

I won’t make a case for “Angel of Death” as their best song, or my favorite of theirs, but I’m hard-pressed to think of one which is more notorious.  Jeff Hanneman penned a graphic retelling of the sickening acts committed by Nazi doc Joseph Mengele (including experimentation on still-live human bodies straight out of a sci-fi flick).  By merely documenting the frightful scenes, without providing blatant commentary, Slayer made themselves easy targets for critics who interpreted their lack of condemnation as tacit approval.  Hanneman’s response said all:  “Isn’t it obvious?  I shouldn’t have to tell you.”  But the sad fact is, some people need things to be set against black and white, because gray gives them seizures.  (There is a cure for such a condition, but isn’t it obvious?)

That second amazing riff is unfair.**  So much talk about how great music causes new bands to form, how about great music that causes new bands to throw their equipment in the river?  We need to celebrate that more.  

“Piece By Piece”—Following that is a Kerry King creation.  Shorter, less steeped in reality, but the stench is still gloriously foul.  What a friggin’ loon King is.  He was the head of a Dickensian orphanage in a past life, I’m positive of that.

I want a song titled “Piece By Piece” to echo with butcher knives and meat cleavers doing their filthy work.  I want such a thing to have these lyrics:

Bones and blood lie on the ground
Rotten limbs lie dead

Decapitated bodies found

On my wall, your head!

If Reign In Blood had been released in 2006, metal heads worldwide would have blown up Google already.  First the word “abacinate” in “Angel of Death,” and now repeated use of the “modulistic” as part of the chorus of “Piece By Piece.”

“Necrophobic”—In a single album, Slayer have gone from fucking the dead to fearing them.  Oh, the swings of life!  Can you imagine if I’d lasted long enough first time round to reach “Necrophobic”?  No way I would have survived.  I would have fashioned a noose out of the tape inside my brother’s cassettes and hanged myself.  (I was a precocious lass, you know.)

Tom Araya attacks like Moschitta gone feral, as his bandmates go Masaccio.  Itemizing the horrors that can assail the human body have never sounded so emotionally devastating.  

250 BPM?  Fuck love, Slayer are too fast for life.

“Altar of Sacrifice”—Satanists sell their hyper-idealized flights of fancy with the same single-minded fervor to be found in Christians, Muslims and Buddhists.  Just the music is better, is all.

Komodo dragons chase stragglers down the halls in the kingdom of damnation!  Their forked tongues stab the air!  No animal shows a stronger faith in and loyalty to the Darkest Lord.  (Take that, red panda!)  Or are they but an illusion experienced by the damned, who in fact ran to the fire of their own accord, proclaiming they didn’t deserve such a terrible fate while realizing deep down this place was still good for them.

“Jesus Saves”—The ultimate send-off for the previous track segues nicely (I mean, uh, terrifically!) into “Jesus Saves,” a spit-fist to the faces of those God Squad members who live all the days of their lives adhering unflinchingly to the Word, or rather the words written in the Bible.  These people believe that the world’s problems stem from the fact that not everyone lives all the days of their lives by an old book.

Never have I heard bones break so cleanly.

“Criminally Insane”—Noctavigant shenanigans are never innocent.  A simple stroll to clear one’s mind does not require the cover of darkness.  

Are those guitar solos, or is the neighbors cat being vivisected by those two best friends who always hang outside the Shell?

Read that Richard Ramirez was an inspiration for this one.  Richard Ramirez was a fucking skinny little wimp who only attacked women and unconscious men.  If a man was awake in a house, his heart would skip a beat and he’d slink on to the next place.  He wore AC/DC ball caps and was brought to justice by vigilantes, mostly men with crowbars and lead pipes who surprise surprise he put up no fight against.  Hell, Dave Lombardo’s drum intro here would have made Ramirez faint into a puddle of his own cloudy piss.

(Were Kerry and Jeff ticked off at Tom when they wrote this?  Y’know, forcing him to spit out the word “criminally” all lightning-quick.  I mean, you try it sometime.)

“Reborn”—Too many men moan about how difficult it is for them to write female characters.  Kerry King did a commendable job of capturing a wicked woman’s voice by focusing on the wicked part.  Truly it gets no more so, as the bitch is a witch who cackles at so-called death.

“Epidemic”—The “Leper Messiah” of Reign In Blood, but that’s not entirely fair.  I’d rather hear about plagues wiping out millions than God Squadders coaxing the feeble-minded masses out of their hard-earned thousands.

“Postmortem”—Nearing the end, Beelzebub’s most facetious followers decide to slow it down and stretch it out for a spell.  The first half practically grooves in comparison to what has come before.  Although really, "a phlegmatic rush towards banal destiny" might fit better than "groove."

The second half is the ravenous killer dragging you by the scruff of your neck towards death.  His (her?) feel smacking against the stairs as they ascend to where you wait, the second or so of silence that somehow seems much longer, then they crash through the door and ain't shit sweet except the time they're taking getting to you.

"Who I am, what I want/I'm only after death." My single favorite lyric on the entire album, a magnificent play on the very title of the song.

"Raining Blood"--On some CDs, "Raining Blood" starts at the second part of "Postmortem."  Slight fucking mistake.

There exist in this world people who still confuse the titles of this track and the album.  I have no patience for these people.  If a person doesn't have the brain strength to remember the correct name of heavy metal's greatest-ever song, they should re-examine their daily routines.  Perhaps ingest a vitamin or two.  Eat smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day.  Read a fucking book.  I mean, yes, the very last words of the song are "Now I shall reign in blood," and it is very similar indeed, but it is not the same.  Come the actual hell on.

Lyrics:  Hanneman/King
Music:  Hanneman

The velocity, the ferocity.***  You think "The Four Horsemen" had a nasty gallop?  Nah, not really.  Slayer are as of this song less a band, more a juggerhemoth.  (FUCKING PORTMANTEAUS INFECT MY PEN!  INFEST MY SIN!)  The description of a body trapped in purgatory as "a lifeless object, alive" is pretty much perfect.  As is every goddamn thing else.

Kerry and Jeff use porcupine pricks in place of plectrums, slamming from strength to strength until the end, which per the CD liners is

Noise:  Hanneman/King

Each song, in addition to the lyrics, also includes information such as that track's composers and also which solo was played by which guitarist.  No lie, that appears at the very end of the info for "Raining Blood."  And yes, take it from Virginia's daughter, the ending squall is as much "noise" as any racket smoked up in musty, power-plastered basements in the American Midwest by dudes whose makeshift musical instruments are all held together with moonshine and mucus.  This is not a pastiche of solos, this is Jonathan Winters vs. the Gas Station.  This is the long-promised rain of angels blood, falling out of wounds opened up by hacksaws missing their handles.  

      

The speed of the playing and the stamina of the players lost as many people as it won over, if not more.  "What is this, a race?"  Sure, one where the spectators hand out cups of blood to the runners.  Slayer's music could not make a homicidal maniac out of a peaceable person, no matter how many times it comes up in discussions had by those "concerned" with how violent art negatively affects society.   No one's music has that power.  But if you were to listen to this whilst in some severe emotional turmoil, and did something terribly wrong, it's still not the fault of the art.  Nor could you point the finger if  the art made you do something wonderful.  Nothing on Earth is wired funnier than a human being.  Everyday, in every way that we open ourselves up to be touched, we run the risk of marks, permanent and temporary.  At age nine, I heard Slayer and was filled such immense terror it paralyzed my vocal cords.  A quarter-century later, I've been playing Reign In Blood every day for the past two weeks in a hotel room located square in my hometown, a place I swore would never get its crackling jaws around me again.  I have no place to live after my money runs out, and I'm somehow hearing reasons to live and create in every dry chord that blasts out of my earbuds.



*The back cover is the best of its kind since McCartney's first album:  the members of Slayer, holding cans of Stella Artois, mouths agape, or teeth bared, untouched hair grown past their shoulders, fugly as a prossy's pussy.
**It's also the source of the best use of a rock sample in a hip-hop song.
***Years later, Tori Amos did a frankly incredible cover of "Raining Blood,"  reimagining the subject not as a fallen angel but a vengeful goddess whose menstrual blood would serve primal justice to those sexist marauders in the Taliban.  Just typing that sentence was a goddamn highlight of my life. Still, she could have just covered "Reborn" and not hand to change much at all.  Eh.   

Selected and Exhumed

HELL AWAITS
3/1985

Wherein four evil fuckers de-emphasize the puerility and assert the gore for their sophomore effort.

"Hell Awaits"--Doom is the air.  Breathe it in, you'll believe it then.  Wear your mask backwards to confuse the angels.  Don't forget to tip Charon at ride's end.

Slayer are no longer naive kids trying out the Ouija board.  Nor are they content to roleplay as the king Donn.  They have matured into villainous cretins with distorted visions.  Still dying by the sword.  (Really, they gave us fair warning on their last release.)

Of the song's six minutes, the first is dedicated to a taped conversation held on a demonic sex chat line.  The next two are a riff parade that must've made metal bands worldwide gnash their yellowing teeth.  Slayer could have excised any random part and had a strong starting point for another song.  But nah.  They just had to stitch 'em all together into a fiery Frankenstein's monster as adopted by Demogorgon.

That leaves the second half of the song, a roaring success despite production that sounds best-suited for NES game soundtracks.   The band as a whole are playing much tighter together, and the lyrics are classic:  "Hells domain," "damnation's edge," "Satanic laws prevail"--Kerry King must have had a C4 time writing this.  "Pray to the moon/When it is round."  Not pray to the full moon.  I love this damned band.

Much as I dig hearing about the minions crashing Heaven, slaughtering God, and corrupting all the pure souls, I also like the concept of a vengeful Lord who punishes those mortals who have perverted "the moral order" by hurling them to his archenemy's stomping grounds.  Reluctant detente between deities or all-out war to settle the score?  Is Hell a finite form of torture, or is the soul's suffering truly eternal?

"Kill Again"--It's a thin line between, "I'd like to punch you in the face" and "I'd love to stab you in the neck."  Capable men of despair and death are far more engrossing than men of prosperity and life. 

Imagine being bound and blindfolded in the back seat of a nondescript vehicle as it drives in interminable circles. Imagine your hair being pulled, your neck being twisted, your bell being thoroughly rung.  Imagine a fate beyond your imagination.

After all the songs referencing the slayings of women, it's refreshing to hear Tom Araya command the listener to "Watch the infant die."

Not even halfway through their second album, it is apparent that Dave Lombardo is the best drummer in all of the Big 4.  We haven't even heard Megadeth yet, but it doesn't matter. 

"At Dawn They Sleep"--Slayer switch from Satan to serial killers to sun-shunners.  The lurch is pure zombie, though.  Tom plays the role as an undead homicidal maniac with relish, far more an Eric than a Bill.

Another epic circle, but "Dawn" knocks the mighty title tune on its smoldering keister.  The "Kill" chant, for my money--and keep in mind, I am homeless as I write this--is even more powerful than "Creeping Death"'s legendary "Die!" exhortations.  The gear shift is suffused with blood-draining menace, and Tom sounds a half-second away from ripping both your throat and his.

Lombardo's double-bass solo near the end is superfluous and superb. 

"Praise of Death"--More earthly pain!  No exquisite build-up either, just boot in the door and toss a grenade into the pantry.  Drop magazines on the coffee table.  Firebomb the toilet.  Call the cops and order a pizza.

Less a song than a mouth-dropping tornado of notes, beats and barks, "Praise of Death" communicates fluidly with all apex predators.  Add in the brief bass break and the glorious yawn of feedback, and you have Slayer's most overlooked song.

"Necrophiliac"--Women:  don't beat 'em, eat 'em!

Do the Dark Lord or any of his minions ever fuck just for the fun of it?  Why is the goal of demoniac diddling always the conception of the Antichrist?  (I guess it's preferable to being one of heaven's angels, flying that celibate life.)  And why should Slayer be slaves to mythology?  Defy!  Defy!

I shy away from intricate lyrical analysis, especially when dealing with a band who admits to writing about matters of evil for shits and more shits).   Often I find it foolhardy to even proffer a unique interpretation of a general overall theme, given the capriciousness of the creative mind.  But "Necrophiliac" is about banging a dead chick and somehow impregnating her,  I feel sure of this.

"Crypts of Eternity"--All have perished.  Hell awaits.  The gatekeeper is the seventh son of a seventh son.  From here to there (to where?) requires a demented carousel ride that would make Willy Wonka wet 'em.

It's really not very nice of Slayer to bust out the Strappado and then spin my body over and over and over, but the experience has left an indelible impression on more than just my joints.  Last time I'll try and sneak Rollos from the forbidden candy bowl!

"Hardening of the Arteries"--The proverbial shady spot.  I love Jeff Hanneman. Why say "death is certain" when you can instead say "Death is assured in future plans"?  (Also, this is the only track on Hell Awaits written by only one member.)

Musically, a slightly subdued "Praise of Death," and a bitchin' way to end the…whoa!  Oh crap!  Hell Awaits is lapping itself!  Slayer make depravity sound like the only sensible way to go.



Comprised of a mere seven songs (one for each son, then?) and boasting some amateurish production, Hell Awaits is still one of my very favorite Slayer albums.  The tracks are vicious and focused; intensive training have served these soldiers of metal very well.  And honestly, how could you not hoist one up for any band that will literally piss on its influences?

The Ashing of the Christ

(See, that's how ya do it!  Just the swords!  No need for the biped goat-lord.)

HAUNTING THE CHAPEL
6/1984

A fourteen-minute long EP written, recorded and released to tie over the frothing, growling, growing long-maned masses who needed less Sayer and more Slayer, lest their roiling guts blast out of their stomachs and drench the carpets of their bedrooms like so much spilled beer.

"Chemical Warfare"--This live favorite is basically the aural equivalent of the "shot on shitteo" movies that were likely flickering in the background as Kerry and Jeff were songwriting. 

There is something fascinatingly horrible about being able to "destroy without destruction," to leave a trail of corpses fully-formed (if rendered grotesque, depending on the method of attack) and no messy blood for the ground to absorb.  To leave the masses confused, gasping, and vomiting.  To stare down in wide-eyed bliss and scream, "It's too late for you!  All your gas masks are obsolete!  You pissed on all that gauze for nothing!"

Slayer nearly qualify as a deadly agent themselves, playing with a grave purpose that signals their transition from NWOBHM fanboys to grim arbiters.  (Beware, guitar solos may cause fasciculation.)  I recommend sitting back, remaining still, and accepting your bloodless demise…"the lords of Hell await."

"Captor of Sin"--Starts off with a solo, so clearly we are in for some death from above.

Slayer do their very best with the hoary "Satan rapes random harlots, Antichrist baby bound to desecrate a womb eventually" theme.  I would definitely not want to be alone in any room--no matter the dimensions and lighting--with this Tom Araya. 

The Slayer vision of what Satan's boudoir looks like is pretty wild:  a floor constructed from at least three different materials, walls painted an array of palette-defying hues that affect the heart rate if stared at for too long of a time, and a bed with human limbs for posts and intestines for mattress stuffing.

Spread your wings as I penetrate your soul
Feel the fire shoot through your body as I slip into your throne


As a total work of art, "Captor of Sin" is far superior to The Jade Unicorn (both novel and film adaptation).  I would never have thought to refer to my vagina as a "throne"….but as a throne is a magnificently-kept place to sit upon, well, why wouldn't I?

"Haunting the Chapel"--Zombies attack a church chock fulla chumps?   This isn't a music record, it's the best horror anthology never filmed!

The zombies were also obviously never shot, as the subjugation is absolute and ferocious. 

Headbanging the air is for the weak.  Find-a-wall.  Or at least one that Dave Lombardo didn't fucking pulverize already.


While touring to support Haunting the Chapel, Slayer made a stop in San Antonio, TX.  A moment of truth awaited them.  They would need to become the real-life conquering villains of their songs.  A local metal band also named Slayer had been sowing their oats for a year, gigging faithfully behind their one EP and one LP.  Going by the same name as a band who'd released two well-received records on Brian Slagel's Metal Blade label,  that they were able to tour the country with, could have pressured boys with softer spines into relinquishing their handle.  But that ain't the Texas way.

So the two racket-gangs fought for it the old-fashioned way:  they played a gig together, on 11/30/1984 at the legendary San Antonio venue Villa Fontana.  Texas tried to mess with California Slayer, and California Slayer messed up Texas.  The alternate outcome would have permanently altered the landscape of American metal music, so why 11/30 isn't a sacred date to all of us who love excoriating guitar riffs played at cheetah-fuck speed while an octopus plays drums I have no idea.

(As to the fate of the newly-christened "SA" Slayer, their guitarist went on to play in a band with Neil Turbin.  When the bottom drops, it drops.)