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Slayer
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In the early 1980s when Slayer first came on the scene, they were one of only a handful of bands playing thrashy Speed Metal. Throughout much of the band's career, they played in the shadow of Metallica and Megadeth, two bands whose early ultra-heavy sound gave way to hookier, more accessible music as the bands entered the 1990s.
But in the new century, extreme Metal is no longer just a cult-level genre. Even bands like Pantera and Slipknot, whose crushing sound most resembles the kind of music Slayer has made for nearly two decades, have enjoyed million-selling records. Meanwhile, hard-edged Metal as a whole has become a force on radio and at record stores, as groups like Marilyn Manson, Papa Roach and Godsmack have moved several million albums at a pop.
It's a trend that Slayer guitarist Kerry King realizes might work in favor of his band's latest CD, God Hates Us All, which will arrive in stores in August.
"There's a big surge of heavier bands," King says. "I'm not talking about stuff like us, but heavy Rock bands, like Linkin Park and Papa Roach and Godsmack. It gets people going in a heavy direction. Once they get tired of that, (fans say) 'Oh, I need something heavier.' That's when they find Pantera, Slipknot and Slayer. There are so many people taking that route it might just be the time people say, 'I should get some of their old stuff.
"The timing is good for heavy music to come out," he continues. "I think we've got a record going that's going to break new ground for Slayer. As much as Slipknot has gone over platinum, that if you like Slipknot, you're going to like this new album. If you like Pantera, you're going to like this new album. If you like Slayer, you're going to like this new album. So maybe we'll fire on all cylinders, and we'll get some momentum."
Still, King isn't getting his hopes too high. After all, while Slayer, who formed in Los Angeles in 1982, have always enjoyed a sizable cult following, none of the band's many CDs has achieved the million-selling popularity that's fairly common now in Metal. For King, it would be enough for Slayer to just be able to maintain the success the band has enjoyed throughout much of their career.
"We just want to be able to go out and tour extensively and do good buildings and good crowds and just go out and have a good time," he says. "That's what it's about when you do this kind of music, going out and watching it and having a good time."
For the four members of Slayer -- King, guitarist Jeff Hanneman, bassist/singer Tom Araya and drummer Paul Bostaph -- the 2001 version of a good time meant trying to get even darker and more vicious on God Hates Us All. That's no small challenge for a group whose 10 previous studio CDs have liberally reveled in the dark side with common subject matter encompassing death, serial killers, Satanic references and various chronicles of inner pain and chaos. But God Hates Us All is already being billed as the most extreme Slayer CD in years, an opinion King seconds.
"It's definitely over the top in all aspects," he says. "Musically Tom's screaming. We definitely got a performance I'm happy with out of Tom, and that was key. A lot of the stuff that was written had to be sung the way it was sung. Anything less than that just wasn't acceptable."
The song titles on the new CD provide plenty of clues as to why Araya needed to shred vocal chords as readily as King and Hanneman shred on guitar. Titles like "God Send Death," "Here Comes the Pain," "Warzone" and "Darkness of Christ" offer a good sampling of the themes that inhabit God Hates Us All. And these aren't even the most extreme songs on the new CD. That honor goes to "Exiled" (dedicated to that one special someone a person hates with every ounce of his being) or "Threshold" (which wrathfully examines the feeling of someone pushed to the emotional breaking point).
On the whole, God Hates Us All avoids the dark realms of "Dungeons & Dragons"-styled fantasy for lyrical inspiration. Instead the new songs are rooted in street-level reality, says King, who wrote three-quarters of the lyrics, while Araya pitched in with the remaining words.
"I'd thought about what I had done in the past and what I was listening to and what got me, because I listen to the same kind of music, whether it's us, Pantera or whoever," King says. "And I thought 'Well, what can I do?' I wrote so many different songs I had to come up with a different perspective as well. I said what can I do that would make this more personal for anybody who listens to it? "And I thought about just personal issues like revenge, people get under your skin, your threshold, you know, for when you're just going to bust loose and kill everybody, feelings I know people have had. Whether they want to admit it or not, they've had them and they'll relate to what I'm saying."
SLAYER perform Monday at Bogart's.
