SSSLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!

Best album: Hell Awaits
Best songs: Angel Of Death, Raining Blood, Posmortem, Seasons In The Abyss, Chemical Wafare.

Discuss.

The Pale Rider wrote:

Dead Skin Mask Disciple Here Comes the Pain Payback Bitter Peace

Those are all songs that I despise.

You know, I actually do have a lot of negative criticism regarding Slayer. The first of which being is that they are the most overrated metal band ever. Yes that includes Metallica. As far as I'm concerned Metallica have a shit-ton of detractors who will say they suck at any given blabbermouth announcement, so that cancels out any unnecessary mainstream ass-kissing they get. But Slayer, Slayer have managed to get away scott free, despite having not released a single decent record since 1991. For two reasons, their music is too ugly to recieve a fair trial, and even if it wasn't, their idiotic, psychotic, and violent fans scare them away. So for all you know the second you put on "Show No Mercy" you think an arm with knife is going to come out of your stereo speakers and stab you to death. When the truth is that album is nothing more than a brilliant NWOBHM record with a tad bit more sophistication than say...Venom.

Another problem I have with Slayer is the fact that in this day and age where every band under the sun is being accuse of a Hot Topic puppet, designed to market to the "shock" market, Slayer is exactly that. Their fucking fanclub is named after some Nazi faction, alot of their merchandise looks really goth, mallcore, and stupid, and the fact that Kerry King has become a public relations agent for every trendy metal band that's come along in the past 9 years is more than enough for Lars Ulrich to ask "Why does the metal elite hate me again?". I mean, Chimara, Slipknot, Machine Head, Arch Enemy, Lamb Of God, Marilyn fucking Manson? These are all basically the "tough guy" equivalents of the hair metal scene. The only difference is they don't dress androgenous (sp?) or have pop sensiblities in their music so the fans don't question their crediblity.

So at the end of the day, I just can't stand the free pass Slayer get for the stupid shit they do just because OMG THEY PUT OUT RAININGBLOOD (which isn't even their best album, see above). Hey guess what, The Number Of The Beast is a much better record but if Maiden were caught touring with Marilyn Manson the cries of sellout would be unbearingly loud, whereas Slayer has toured with him twice, and no one has said shit.

FYI, Slayer is not Death metal. To me the most distinguishing thing about Death metal is guttural vocals, and Tom Araya has anything but.

Reign In Blood for my money, is the most overrated record of all time, but there are good things I have to say about it.

1) Perfect production and guitar tone. Especially when you compare it to Hell Awaits, which had a nice ambiance to it, but I can't help but wonder what Crypts Of Eternity would sound like with Reign's production.

2) For my money, this is the album that began the crossover of hardcore punk and metal in the late eighties. I'm surprised more people don't talk about this.

3) Angel of Death just might be the greatest metal song ever.

Yet on the other hand, that song sounds like it was left over from Hell Awaits. Here's what I don't understand about Reign In Blood. Slayer said that after Hell Awaits, they wanted to make an album consisting of very short songs, shorter than the ones from Show No Mercy. Considering that Hell Awaits was them "wanting to write a bunch of long songs" I think that's an understandable way to go. But then they go ahead and start their album off with a 5 minute song. What the fuck kind of sense does that make? Same thing with Raining Blood, it's 4 minutes. Everything else is 2 minutes and under. Now some of these ideas work within their paramters, like Necrophobic and Epedemic, but others, like Piece by Piece and Reborn, are underdeveloped and never quite go anywhere.

So Reign In Blood is a good, possibly great album, but the whole "greatest metal album of all time, every note of every song" raving is bullshit.


And Syd, I completely disagree on the "there's no melody in extereme metal." I once asked my school music teacher to specifically define melody in rock music and he said to me "Melody is a sequence of notes that's highly noticeable, that's it." The intro riff of Raining Blood that you heard, that's melody. And anybody whose heard Death's Zombie Ritual can tell you that the intro riff is not only melody, but harmony as well. Yes, there are plenty of moments in extreme metal where it is "noise," and some of those moments I care less for than others, but to the untrained ear, the opening riff to Into The Void (Black Sabbath) is just as much noise as the intro to Incarnated Solvent Abuse (Carcass). The truth is there is just as much melody as there is in extreme metal, as there is rock, soul, and hip hop. The only difference is because the melody happens to be coming from loud, heavy as fuck, and sometimes downtuned guitars, which for some reason causes people ears to have a more visceral reaction. But as far as I'm concerned, if you can sing any piece of music in a coherent manner, then it has melody.

And you think "Now I shall Reign in Blood" is goofy? Well, I'd rather take that than say..."Old men, and young boys...it's my tme."

Slayer is absolutely thrash. And I also wouldn't say they were PC Baiting, at least not in the classic years, now their all too happy to do it, which is part of the reason I don't care anymore. But the whole "Write about Satan despite not being satanic" was directly inspired from Venom. In fact I'm sure quite a few people would call Slayer a Venom tribute band. But am I to assume that because of this, you also don't like Venom, or Mercyful Fate?

Also there was once a time when Kerry King's solos didn't sound like a cat in a blender, see the Show no Mercy album for this.

And Greg, what do you mean by "inspiring crust?"

Mustaine can absolutely write and sing. I think he has the 2nd most emotion in his voice of all the thrash bands (Joey Belladonna obviously being the first).

Greg the White wrote:

JRA wrote: And Greg, what do you mean by "inspiring crust?" Crust punk is a style of punk that basically sounds like the worst hardcore bands you could imagine trying to sound like Slayer. If you need a sample, try these guys, they're probably the most famous crust band: http://www.myspace.com/ausxrotten

Ok, I'll admit that sucked, but pretty much every innovator gave us some shitty bands as a by-product. I mean hell "Black Dog" probably spawned the entire-glam metal scene alone, so Led Zeppelin should lose points for that?