SLAYER: World Painted Blood

Produced by Greg Fidelman
Released October 30, 2009

It may come as a surprise to some readers of this blog to learn that Slayer has never been one of my favourite bands. I've never failed to see them live when I've had the chance, I still wear a shirt I got from their 1998 tour, I've always checked out their albums (although I skipped about the last decade's worth and apparently haven't missed that much), and I won't deny their influence on metal and outright awesomeness at what they do. It's just that whenever I've had to think about a list of ten or twenty bands that I like most, Slayer has never featured. Hell, I even suggested that Reign in Blood might not actually be the greatest thrash album of all time. So my approach to a new Slayer album isn't the same as it would be to, say, a new Alchemist CD. That is, I don't go into it really anticipating anything one way or another. And with that said, after one listen through of World Painted Blood, I found myself really digging it enough to spin it a second time right away.

Of course there's going to be a section of Slayer's fanbase who will argue that they've once again failed to deliver, but there's always that element that seems to expect too much, especially when it comes to the idea of blokes in their late 40s being able to pull off the same rebellious energy they had in their early 20s. The truth is, there's something almost intimately familiar about World Painted Blood that people who over-analyse or over-expect are going to miss. Whether it's Tom Araya's frenzied unsung shouting (especially in "Psychopathy Red" when he sounds like he's gone insane), the bursts of guitar savagery in places you don't expect them to be, Dave Lombardo's Heruclean drum fusillade or lyrics that shamelessly veer from the meaningless, cartoonish violence of "Beauty Through Order" to surprisingly incisive social commentary like "Americon" without any sense of irony, World Painted Blood has it all.

This is the most brutal Slayer album in ages: "Psychopathy Red" is absolutely crushing and in its frantic riffing "Unit 731" ends up sounding a little like "Reborn". There's a non-linear structure apparent in a lot of the tracks, with unexpected time- and tempo- changes and haphazard arrangements that also recall their earlier days. Yet for every neckbreaking thrash assault like "Snuff" or "Hate Worldwide" there's a mid-paced groove track like "Beauty Through Order" and "Human Strain" with their interesting uses of dynamics and control, or "Americon" that almost has a rock feel. Near the end is "Playing With Dolls", an experimental track that doesn't quite come off and one that will perhaps be the most contentious inclusion on an album that in every respect really is a mixed bag. Production-wise, the drums are forward in the mix, just to remind everyone that the key to Slayer's relentless assault is Dave Lombardo's furious and precise timekeeping. The solos of course are nothing special and the themes are mainly comic book violence and the usual serving of Kerry King's Christbaiting bullshit, but no one ever listened to Slayer for lyrical depth.

World Painted Blood seems to be aiming for the middle ground between Slayer's classic thrash period and their later groove era. Fans who only like their old stuff will only like about half the album and fans of their last few albums will like the other half. Everyone else will probably take it or leave it, even though this is easily the best Slayer album since Divine Intervention.

1. World Painted Blood
2. Unit 731
3. Snuff
4. Beauty Through Order
5. Hate Worldwide
6. Public Display of Dismemberment
7. Human Strain
8. Americon
9. Psychopathy Red
10. Playing With Dolls
11. Not of This God

Rating: 78%

SLAYER AND MEGADETH LIVE IN SYDNEY

Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
October 8, 2009

With two of the greatest thrash bands of all time playing together here for the first time, it was pretty unsurprising that not only was this show sold out weeks ago but the line to get in stretched right around to the back of the venue and halfway down Driver Ave. So it was impossible to catch opening act Double Dragon, who got a twenty-minute warm up set, and in fact Megadeth had already begun by the time I made it inside.

The sound wasn't the greatest it could have been, but Megadeth didn't let this impede them as they ripped through a bunch of their best-known songs, having kicked off with "Set the World Afire" that somewhat appropriately set the place ablaze. Each new incarnation of Megadeth seems to reignite the band, and after pulling the strings with Jag Panzer for a decade, new guitarist Chris Broderick was setting about showing how he fit into the machine. The closing trade-offs of "Hangar 18" were a perfect way to do so and the crowd were treated to a tight set of favourites with only "Head Crusher" making the cut from new album Endgame. Indeed, that was the only concession to post-2000 material made for the whole set, as Dave Mustaine led his men through a choice set of cuts from the classics (oh, and Cryptic Writings), keeping both the energy levels and the shred factor high. Mustaine's voice wasn't always up to the task, but he's never been much of a singer and the rest of the band made up for it with a dynamic and engaging performance. "Tornado of Souls" and "Head Crusher" were killer and for the encore they worked "The Mechanix" into a medley with "Holy Wars" for a rousing climax to the set.

Slayer took the stage after a minimal changeover and were as omnious-looking as always. For some reason they opened with the title track to the new album, a song that's only been out for about a week and one that almost no one yet knew. Even had they known it, the mix was so uneven and awful that it didn't matter. A band of this stature playing in a room like this should not sound so diabolical: the guitars were unevenly matched, with Kerry King blowing Jeff Hanneman offstage, Tom Araya's vocals were buried and Dave Lombardo was louder than everyone. Once the glue that held Slayer together, tonight the drummer was part of what made them come unstuck. He was all over the place like the mix itself. And really, Slayer seemed to be just going through the motions. It was obviously more than enough for their fans, possibly the most fanatical in metal, but their uninspiring and uninspired newer songs only got in the way of the classic catalogue, and even they seemed half-arsed. By "Dead Skin Mask" they were starting to warm up like the jets of fire shooting from the lighting gantry but the set was two-thirds done by then. Something wasn't sitting well with the Slayer lads tonight, but leaving off the scream in "Angel of Death" could well have been a precursor to Araya's laryngitis vocal blow-out in Melbourne the next day when he could barely sing at all.

The Slayer nuts won't agree, of course, but Megadeth won the night.

Megadeth setlist:

1. Set the World Afire
2. Wake Up Dead
3. Hangar 18
4. Skin o' My Teeth
5. She-wolf
6. In My Darkest Hour
7. Devil's Island
8. Tornado of Souls
9. Head Crusher
10. Rattlehead
11. Symphony of Destruction
12. Peace Sells
13. Holy Wars/The Mechanix (encore)

Slayer setlist:

1. World Painted Blood
2. War Ensemble
3. Jihad
4. Born of Fire
5. Psycopathy Red
6. Mandatory Suicide
7. Chemical Warfare
8. Ghosts of War
9. Hate Worldwide
10. Disciple
11. Dead Skin Mask
12. Hell Awaits
13. Angel of Death
14. South of Heaven
15. Raining Blood

SLAYER: Reign in Blood

Produced by Rick Rubin

Released: 1986

Slayer's third album is hailed by many as the ultimate thrash album, the one that somehow defines the genre and sets the benchmark for everything to follow. In truth, there's really only half an album here and Slayer made better records both before and after this. Reign in Blood's real notoriety stems from its energy and intensity, aspects which can't be denied, but for the most part this exists as extreme for extremity's sake. While it's a fact this is an album that bridges the gap between hardcore and metal like none before it and helped to lay the foundation for death metal, it's also probably fair to say that if Reign in Blood didn't contain two of the best thrash songs of all time, hardly anyone would ever listen to it.

By the time they went in to work on this album, Slayer was apparently "bored" with standard song-writing techniques and promptly dispensed with them, coming up with a bunch of tracks where the usual metal formulas really were thrown out the window. From the moment it began with the piercing scream that ranks as one of the best openings to any album ever, Reign in Blood just relentlessly bludgeoned the listener with an endless barrage of pure insanity. Riffs flew by so fast it was almost hard to tell where one ended and the next began. Tom Araya's vocals were a tuneless shout with little to no variation and all forms of real guitar soloing were replaced by a mishmash of frantic, thrown-together single-note repetition, dive-bombing and noise. Indeed, most of the album is closer to hardcore than it is to thrash, almost completely stripped of melody in an apparently ruthless quest for atonal dissonance and blinding pace.

A little bit too often on Reign in Blood, Slayer overplayed this, resulting in a mixed bag where speed and violence dominated. Songs like "Necrophobic" end before they've had a chance to get going and in "Jesus Saves" they try to fit too many lyrics into too small a space. Snatches of groove appeared but were gone too quickly to set, some songs have no real structure whatsoever and in more than one place Slayer seemed to be playing almost too fast for their own good. If it wasn't for Rick Rubin's instinctive production, a lot of this would have ended up as unlistenable garbage, a blur of guitar noise and screaming unfit for release. Slayer's apparent goal to out-extreme everyone had been achieved, even if it meant that Reign in Blood was the musical equivalent of an exploitation film, existing for the sake of intensity alone.

In light of the band's philosophy behind the album's intentions, it's somehow ironic that the two songs to most closely follow a standard structure are the ones that make Reign in Blood great. "Angel of Death" and "Raining Blood" are two of the greatest metal songs in history. The first piles on lyrical horror upon horror, a litany of gruesome imagery that presages the gore-grind phenomonon that would follow, winds down into an epic slow section that would later be sampled by Public Enemy and explodes again into chaos. Kerry King's inane "solo" is a bit of a let down after such a gargantuan build up, though. Finally, there's "Raining Blood", possibly Slayer's greatest contribution to metal: a menacing, sinister intro, furious, bruising riffage, Araya's demented vocals and a truly cataclysmic ending, the perfect way to round out an album that often sounds like total destruction.

In hindsight Reign in Blood lacks the majesty of Master of Puppets, the technical wizardry of Peace Sells... and the darkness of Darkness Descends, all of which came out earlier the same year. But it certainly set a new standard in extremity, spawned two incredible songs and paved the way for death metal and gore-core excess like no other release. And any album with a song like "Raining Blood" on it is a deadset classic.

1. Angel of Death
2. Piece by Piece
3. Necrophobic
4. Altar of Sacrifice
5. Jesus Saves
6. Criminally Insane
7. Reborn
8. Epidemic
9. Post Mortem
10. Raining Blood

Rating: 85%