It's been three years since
Slayer last dropped a ton of original decibels on its faithful minions,
three years since the world's most grisly band terrorized rock & roll
with its patented growl and seething thrash. Following a change of labels,
Araya, Hanneman, King, and Bostaph--names that will live in infamy on the
Devil's shortlist of gnarly superstars -- are back with DIABOLUS IN MUSICA,
their Americai/Columbia debut, another ballcrushing blast of confrontational
uber-noise. And so at last begins the next scene in the theater of hate
that is Slayer.
"Yeah, I guess it!s a new
beginning," guitarist Kerry King, still the bands tattoo-spangled straight
talker, adrnits. "I think this records gonna do it for us. Then again,"
he laughs, "I thought the last five would, too." DIABOLUS IN MUSICA is
Slayer's most visceral and evocative outing since 1990's Seasons In The
Abyss, a scorching new work that cleaves to the bands original principles
of anvil-heaviness, yet reaches out to looser and craftier musical terrain.
Songs like "Scrum" and "Death's Head" thunder with the red-hot brand of
'Slayer' emblazoned on their bellies, while "Love To Hate" is a complex
cadre of bits stitched together featuring some prog-ish dual guitar figures
to accompany King's manic soloing. Further, "Overt Enemy" is a stomping
homage to Slayer forbears Black Sabbath. Above it all, the band remains
faithful to its fascination with violent, socially-skewed lyrics. On "Love
to Hate," for example, Araya sings, "Absolute reign a malevolent mind/Conceptions
so vile in this bottomless soul/Shooting up hate, nothing beats the rush."
In the end, DIABOLUS IN MUSICA is the inimitable work of a singular band,
the same band who laid down Reign In Blood, the record that became a blueprint
for neo-metal and a hair-raising apocalyptic manifesto of noise. Today,
more than 15 years since coming together, Slayer still musters a surfeit
of five-chord power, enough to scare the bejesus out of music fans the
world over.
"This record's really important
in keeping us on track for the future," says Araya. "I'm confident it'll
come out and be everything we want it to be." This time, though, the band
hopes DIABOLUS IN MUSICA will supersede the goals they've achieved for
themselves in the past. Out of the nine Slayer records released, five have
reached RIAA gold status. Not bad for a bunch of sarky outcasts who recorded
their first album in a week with only $400 in their pockets. (That record,
1983's watershed Show No Mercy, went on to sell 60,000 copies.) Tom Araya
remembers back that far, and the tough-as-talons credo that would later
become Slayer's defining quality: "You only get one chance. If we didn't
do it when we had the chance we were fucked. So we took the chance and
here we are." When the dust settled, Slayer had become warlords of their
very own hyper-evil music empire, a land impervious to the trends and whims
of todays changeable modern rock.
"For whatever reason," King
says, "we don't give a damn about music today, about the concerns of tastes
having changed and Slayer not." As the rock scene dances weakly from genre
to genre like a maimed drunken dog, Slayer remains the rock steady backbone
of heaviness, content to wait out the changes and remain faithful to their
own noise, the noise that changed forever the landscape of heavy modern
rock. "We believe in ourselves," says Hanneman. "We don't feel the need
to change because everything and everyone else is. Of course, I won't name
names."
One man they do name is
Rick Rubin, the Slayer buddy who moved from a casually appointed executive
producer on past projects to the band's full-fledged man-in-the-studio
on DIABOLUS IN MUSICA. "He knows where we come from and what he wants the
record to sound like," says King. "He's got weight behind his opinion,
but he knows when to leave us alone, too."
"When he's mixing the record
it's a big weight off our shoulders," says Hanneman. "We know what we want
to sound like, but sometimes it's hard for us to get there or even explain
it." Rubin's right on with his hands-off but I'm-here-for-you approach,
ultimately allowing the band to trust its own impeccable instincts. "Given
what the band's achieved without radio," adds Bostaph, "the fact that Slayer
has put out gold records consistently is just a statement of its integrity
and its instincts with zero compromise."
For Araya, every note on
DIABOLUS IN MusicA holds true to that credo. "Even after all @s time together,
this shit still matters to us. IVs our livelihood. We want the band to
stay crucial." With the book on Slayer far from closed, their wish is our
command.
