Slayer - In the Kingdom of Extreme Metal

Introduction: The Trial

In an imaginary final trial, on one side we'd have the prosecution: a crowd of horrified voices decrying tributes to the Devil, brutal violence, inhumanity, apologia for Nazism and blasphemy. The fallout from the Elyse Marie Pahler murder case or the hornets' nests stirred up by "Angel Of Death" through to God Hates Us All and Christ Illusion help paint the picture. On the other side, the defense, set on countering with a discography and a story unlike any other, spanning more than forty years, an indispensable pillar of metal. The verdict?

1981-1985: Hell Awaits

1981: Los Angeles, the South Bay area. Mr. King suggests his son Kerry take up karate or learn a musical instrument. To stay out of trouble, you need a hobby. The young man picks the second option. A math genius – until he discovers girls – Kerry plays in Quits alongside his guitar teacher. He meets a peer devoted to hardcore: he comes from a family of war veterans and his name is Jeff Hanneman. Their first rehearsals take place in the garage of their drummer, a certain Dave Lombardo. Only Tom Araya is missing. He works as a respiratory therapist, was born in Chile, but moved to the United States with his – deeply religious – family at the age of five. He plays in another band with King's guitar teacher, and when that project folds, the teacher introduces him to the rest of the gang. Araya takes on the role of singer and bassist. They rehearse the southern rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd and songs by their heavy metal idols, Judas Priest above all, settling on more refined tracks like "Steeler" and "Desert Plains". Now they need a name that inspires fear, one to scream like a battle cry. Slayer sounds good: it could even stand for Satan Laughs As You Eternally Rot...

Early '80s: in the bowels of American hardcore, the band that history would later christen one of The Big Four – Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica and Slayer – forge thrash metal, in which the speed and harshness of the riffs merge with the powerful use of drums, the double bass pedal chasing the gallop of the six strings. Each band has its own well-defined traits, but it boils down to this: “If heavy metal is the law, thrash metal is the law's violent arm”. Meanwhile in Germany, Sodom, Kreator and Destruction indelibly shape the path of the genre's extreme wing. Is a storm brewing in the US too?

While Metallica take the stage in t-shirts and jeans, Slayer paint their faces and wear leather, studs and spikes, surrounded by inverted crosses. Their logo will be the Slaytanic Wehrmacht: one glance and the references are immediately clear. One of their first promo photos captures them grinning and armed, standing over a young, half-naked girl covered in blood (it's Kathryn, Hanneman's future wife): the calm answer to the dominant glam metal. Live, they're sensational: they open for Bitch, and in the crowd is Brian Slagel of Metal Blade. Captivated by the performance, he wants them on the third installment of the Metal Massacre compilation. Slayer agree and record "Aggressive Perfector", their first official step, already containing their "genetic makeup", later also included as a bonus track on the Haunting The Chapel EP.

Thanks to money put up by Araya and King's father (who apparently approved of his son's choice of hobby), the band releases their debut, Show No Mercy, in 1983.

They're still living with their parents, but their vision is crystal clear. The visual and musical coordinates are explicit: a pentagon made of swords on the cover next to a warrior Baphomet/Satan. The impact is raw, just like the music, a fusion of hardcore and metal. Fast and heavy. The influence of their forebears is palpable: Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate; Black Sabbath and Venom for the occult/luciferian soul. It's no mere rip-off: never has so much malice been heard. The flaws: shoddy production, teenage lyrics that provoke a smirk rather than a scare, and fervor at the expense of creativity. Yet, with the scream of "Evil Has No Boundaries", the solos dominating "The Antichrist", and the instant classics "Die By The Sword" and "Black Magic", the seeds of evil are planted... and ready to sprout. Like Thelma Schoonmaker's editing in Martin Scorsese's films, a year after their debut – panned by critics, greeted with solid commercial success – the band takes a sudden leap forward in their diabolical battle.

It's no longer just about showing no mercy, now it's time to storm the places of worship: Haunting The Chapel! Financed by Slagel and well produced by Bill Metoyer (a true believer, certain he'll end up in hell for taking part in the work), the EP's tracks gain maturity and perverse allure. The blade begins to sharpen, the targets come into focus, outlining a trio of songs that would make the fortune of plenty of bands: "Captor Of Sin", "Chemical Warfare", "Haunting The Chapel".

A few months after its release, the first live album follows: Live Undead. But it's with their second studio album that things start to get seriously dark.

We're in the bowels of hell. Hell Awaits is made up of longer, more complex songs, without losing – seemingly impossible, but not for them – an ounce of heaviness and viciousness. A nightmare of sulfur and flames populated by the damned, vampires and necrophiles ready to welcome us in the reverse and forward messages ("Welcome back" and "Join us") of the title track that opens the album. It's the quintessence of the Slayer sound: dark atmospheres, bleak themes propped up by slow riffs that suddenly turn fast, with a style defined by the perfect union of punk/hardcore and metal: a blend that would later pave the way for grindcore. One track to make listeners-readers understand the greatness of the record? "At Dawn They Sleep", a perfect summary of what they'd go on to do in the years that followed. Seven tracks make up their first great classic, with "Kill Again" and "Necrophiliac" standing out among the most destabilizing content ever put to tape:

To fuck this sinful corpse

My tasks complete the bitch’s soul

⟦Q1⟧

Her stomach bursts the casket breaks

The seed has taken form

A writhing shape of twisted flesh

The Devil’s child is thrown

Hungry for the smell of Death

Let's get the Slayer-satanism question out of the way. The rock-devil's music connection runs deep in the genre's roots and history: what makes Slayer different, or at least so distinctive, on this front? The four of them certainly had huge visibility: their satanic period – from 1983 to '86, with a few flashes in '87 – lines up exactly with the peak of thrash's hype (a genre that never really had anything to do with Beelzebub and the like). The American '80s were the years of the satanic panic, just look at the timeframe covered by the McMartin case: this most likely thrust the band into a highly sensitive social and media context.

Let it be clear, it's not that Slayer were little angels, quite the opposite. If we take the dark occultism of Black Sabbath and the names of the First Wave of Black Metal, the Californians update those concepts and aspects, pushing them to extremes and making them more concrete, menacing and terrifying. They've always claimed they were never satanists – Araya professes to be Catholic! – or anything of the sort, and that the diabolical guise of their work serves to make them more appealing and intriguing: "We wanted to scare the people of Hollywood!". They love horror, but that's a far cry from being disciples of La Vey. Meanwhile in 1985, after fulfilling their dream of touring with Venom, they shut themselves in the studio to record – in their own words – the "first ten songs we had ready"...

1986-1990: Reign In Blood

Reign In Blood: one of the most important, beloved and seminal works in the history of music, capable of changing the lives of legions of fans and musicians, both within the metal "scene" and beyond. The greatest thrash album ever made, and perhaps the most extreme album of all time? Yes. It's 1986, and Slayer are keeping tabs on what Metallica are doing in order to go even faster. Enter Rick Rubin, the same man who, in the Beastie Boys' video for "Fight For Your Right (To Party)", wears a Slayer t-shirt. Def Jam – co-run with Russell Simmons – is the hip-hop label par excellence: this doesn't worry the band too much, since they feel much closer to Public Enemy than to many of their metal peers... The meeting of these two worlds proves crucial: Rubin convinces them to leave Metal Blade and pushes them toward their most innovative compositional instincts, and when Columbia Records refuses to distribute the album, the producer makes sure Geffen picks it up instead (though Geffen will keep it off its own catalogue).

In Rubin's production, every detail is pushed toward merciless precision, without sacrificing the songs' brutal structure: a punch that, in 29 minutes, knocks the listener flat on the floor. Before diving into Reign In Blood, let's expand on the subject of the lyrics. Violent, extreme, often unbearable, these verses smashed and threw in the audience's face every kind of taboo and every delicate or disturbing subject. We could divide the Slayer lyrical universe into these broad areas:

-War/Nazism: written by Hanneman

-Satan/society's decline/war on religion: King (a satanic theme already explored on "Hell Awaits")

-Serial killers, human depravity and medical terminology: Araya

Slayer lay it on thick when tackling these themes, but always shrewdly and narratively, well aware that playing with such subjects feeds both their image and their aura of malevolence. The battle is against the oppression and hypocrisy of religious creeds: a subject we'll return to later, in albums dedicated even more explicitly to the issue. As for the war/Nazism theme, Slayer describe without ever taking sides, using terminology as sharp as a scalpel. There's a chronicle, a narrative arc (Hanneman compared his lyrics to History Channel documentaries), but never a celebration. That hasn't spared them controversy and lawsuits: but one only has to look at what happened to Blue Oyster Cult with "ME 262" to understand just how deeply this subject is often handled.

Doctor Joseph Mengele, the "Angel Of Death", is branded infamous, and the laboratory (Auschwitz) stands as the very meaning of pain, and yet simply naming it is already taken as taking a side. The fact that the band has always used controversial imagery for its own branding – remember the logo? – brings us back to the point made at the start of this chapter. Musically, "Angel Of Death" is the fitting opening to an epic work: even today it shakes us to the core, delivering, through that intro and Araya's scream, an incredible jolt that is then sustained at a high level by the following lashings of "Piece By Piece" and "Necrophobic".

"Enter to the realm of Satan!" Araya exclaims in one of the most unforgettable passages, "Altar Of Sacrifice". A realm even more terrifying than the hell of the previous album: an orgy of cannibals, black priests, witches, plagues, "Criminally Insane". A sonic slaughter that, without a doubt, helped give birth to death metal: the hardcore/punk roots are still very much present, as shown by the length of most of the songs and the King/Lombardo/Hanneman outbursts, which push the schizophrenia to its absolute peak.

Closing with "Raining Blood" and "Angel Of Death" will always remain the best way to unleash whatever is most visceral in the soul. As the saying rightly goes, of any event we remember the beginning and the end: in this case, those two tracks alone would have been enough to revolutionize the future musical landscape, just as the whole of Reign In Blood went on to do. The tonal character of Marshall amps has always defined their sound (unlike Metallica, who tended to scoop out the mids in their EQ, preferring Mesa amps): Slayer instead lean right into those specific frequencies to cut through even more, helped also by a tuning lower than standard E, a trait that would become increasingly dominant in the years that followed.

Dave Lombardo, for his part, was the most punk of the Big Four drummers, both in attitude and in sound. The break fill alone on "Angel Of Death" pushed the role of drumming in metal ever more into the spotlight, making it clear that the drummer may sit behind everyone else on stage, but without that kind of energy it would be impossible to achieve the result of "Raining Blood": according to many, Slayer's greatest song. And not only theirs.

The story goes on. In '87 Lombardo makes his first – and rather swift – departure (replaced by Tony Scaglio), while Rubin convinces the band to record a cover of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" to test possible radio crossover: listen to the result before jumping to any rash conclusions... 1988: strip away the chatter, the controversies and the debates, the gimmicks, the photos and the stage effects, and you realize that Slayer are four great musicians, full of talent and intelligence. Nothing more extreme than Reign In Blood can be conceived, and for their new album they change approach.

South Of Heaven, upon release, left pretty much everyone a little disappointed, but it gradually established itself as one of the band's masterpieces – many even consider it their best album – and a cornerstone of metal. Slower passages but soaked in malevolence, more open and melodic vistas for songs in which the sound arrives aggressive and pure.

"South Of Heaven" immediately brings back to the ear that classic Slayer way of building riffs through chromatic movement and the often spasmodic use of tritones, so much so that it instantly recalls the riff of "Raining Blood", though played on a different set of strings; it's followed by "Silent Scream", referring to the silent scream of a child never born. We are in a finished world, without hope, where everything is death and suffering. Zombies appear in this anthology of horror ("Live Undead"), while shifts in battle are marked by sinister swastikas ("Behind The Crocked Cross"), supernatural undertones ("Ghost Of War") and the raw reflection of the superb "Mandatory Suicide".

With Araya taking an ever more active role in writing the lyrics, the band points the finger at contemporary society, as in "Read Between The Lies", aimed at television preachers, followed by a cover of the beloved Judas Priest's "Dissident Aggressor".

The quartet is more united than ever in terms of sound and composition, and the attitude pushes further and further toward the dark, with Lombardo's drumming built around double bass at inhuman speeds. An often forgotten gem is the closing "Spill The Blood", opened by one of the finest guitar arpeggios in Slayer's catalogue: as harsh and demonic as it is, it undoubtedly serves as a fitting prelude to the whole composition, written by Jeff Hanneman, who told Metal Hammer: "You know the opening riff? When i hear that i just wanna slit somebody's throat." No further comment needed...

1990's Seasons In The Abyss shares with its two predecessors Larry Carroll's disturbing artwork, completing Slayer's golden trilogy. The abyss here is everyday life, the society we live in, the world around us: the satanic matrix exits, and serial killers enter the frame – Araya's "fixation". Till Lindemann of Rammstein will worthily follow this path in a good portion of his own songwriting, both on the murderous side – "Mein Teil", "Weiner Blut" – and regarding sexual perversions – "Spiel Mit Mir", "Tier": works unthinkable without "Dead Mask Skin", centred on the deeds of Ed Gein, whose infamous murderous parable inspired films such as "Psycho" and "The Silence of the Innocents":

Graze the skin with my finger tips

The brush of dead cold flesh pacifies the means

Provocative images delicate features so smooth

A pleasant fragrance in the light of the moon

Dance with the dead in my dreams

Listen to their hallowed screams

The dead have taken my soul

Temptation’s lost all control

Lyrics and a composition deserving a place among the all-time greats, thanks to the solos, the opening invitation, and the backing vocal of the little victim, all culminating in the unforgettable:

In the depths of a mind insane

Fantasy and reality are the same

The traits already noted for South Of Heaven are sharpened further on Seasons In The Abyss, a somewhat overlooked work with hidden potential: it's often the album with the most tracks played live. The opener remains one of the most spot-on in the history of thrash metal, and live it's always announced by Araya: his "War Ensemble" has by now become a battle cry. The thematic range widens: "Blood Red" rails against the crimes of communist regimes, with possible references to the events of Tiananmen Square; then there's the devastating nuclear holocaust of "Skeletons Of Society" and the social critique of "Expendable Youth", in which a gang war tears apart the guts of Los Angeles.

Seasons In The Abyss is a successful middle ground between the band's thrash past (self-referenced in "Spirit In Black" and the unstoppable "Temptation") and the openness of its predecessor. The novelty is the title track, with the band's longest intro for the longest song on the album and in their entire discography (debates will rage over the actual length of "Crypts Of Eternity" versus the second-longest, give or take), closing out a more mature work from the four thrashers, undoubtedly a gem of the decade just begun.

1994-2000: The devil's interlude

For metal's sacred monsters, the '90s were a period of contrasts, crises and creative voids, compounded by the rise of new "rival" acts such as Pantera, Sepultura, Machine Head, to name a few. Some opted for a total overhaul of sound and image, some failed to repeat the glories of the previous decade, and some catered to the tastes of a young audience being fed massive spoonfuls of nu metal by majors and media alike. Slayer took the hit, but remained standing.

In 1991 the live album Decade Of Aggression was released, and Lombardo waited for the end of the Clash Of The Titans Tour before leaving the band to be with his newborn son. He was replaced by the great Paul Bostaph, with a commendable track record in Testament and Forbidden (later joining Exodus and Systematic).

Divine Intervention (1994) shows signs of a potential renewal right from Wes Benscoter's sinister cover art. Behind the desk is Toby Wright – with Rick Rubin as executive producer – and Paul Bostaph steps into Lombardo's shoes, trying to mimic his characteristic fast hardcore-punk grooves played on the ride, without of course neglecting the double-bass blasts so beloved by fans.

The guitar sound begins to shift and modernise, something that will carry over almost completely into subsequent albums: the sole purely Slayer-style exception (à-la Hell Awaits) is "Dittohead", brutally fast and hard.

Deeply rooted in the present day, the album lashes out against religion ("Circle Of Belivers") and the false prophets of an increasingly adrift world, targeted by the powerful "Fiction Of Reality" and "Mind Control". The killer's mind is probed in "Killing Fields" and in "213", where Araya adds another sadly infamous serial killer to his lyrics: Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal. Slayer manage to go even further with the sadistic, unbearable "Sex, Murder, Art".

You’re nothing

An object of animation

A subjective mannequin

Beaten into submission

Raping again and again

Amid all this darkness, Hanneman also carves out his own space, narrating the story of the "Butcher of Prague" - Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich - in “SS-3”. Preceded by the single “Serenity Of Murder” and released on American Recordings (formerly Def American, founded after Rubin split from Simmons), the album is a solid commercial success: while not an essential stop in the band's discography, Divine Intervention holds up well enough.

Two years later came Undisputed Attitude, followed in '98 by Diabolus In Musica. The former is a covers collection recorded with Jon Dette standing in for Bostaph (who would return for the next album), useful for digging into the band's basic roots – T.S.O.L., Minor Threat, Verbal Abuse – and to get a taste of some good-natured irony thanks to one of the three unreleased tracks. We're talking about “DDAMM”, i.e. Drunk Drivers Against Mad Mothers, a parody of the MADD association (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). Among the other two originals, “Can’t Stand You” and “Gemini”, the latter stands out.

Diabolus In Musica is musically the most controversial chapter in Slayer's career, long branded as the band's nu metal record. Let's say the heart of it is still Slayer, while the sonic packaging winks in that direction.

“Bitter Peace” opens dark and menacing before exploding into the usual tirade against war's insatiable bloodlust. The real surprise comes with the following “Death’s Head” and “Stain Of Mind”: Slayer position themselves somewhere between Korn and Deftones, and the imminent onslaught of System Of A Down, whose self-titled debut would come out that same year, produced by Rubin. Thematically, there's no straying from the usual pillars: King doesn't pull any punches with “In The Name Of God”, and the morbid “Desire” keeps tackling human deviance. The theme of control underpins the notable “Perversion Of Pain” and “Love To Hate”, one of the strongest lyrics:

Fighting the world without remorse

Searching for blood to never grow old

A personal hell is where I reside

Taunting death sounds cadavers in pain

Judging my soul I am not his son

Screaming God’s name I want some more

Hanneman recounts his passion for football in “Scrum” (visible in the band's concert  outfits), foreshadowing the real battlefields found in the closing “Screaming From The Sky” and “Point”, a painful examination of Vietnam. Far from the heights of the previous decade, Slayer don't lose the fans' love or the respect of the scene. Unlike other peers, they remain true to themselves, refusing to become a franchise, a commercial circus tied to dispiriting creative dynamics. Perhaps not always hugely inspired, and sometimes landing on less-than-fortunate choices, but always consistent with their musical mission: always striving to make extreme music. The execution of that intent may sometimes disappoint, but there's no denying the commitment and consistency with which the band has packed songs full of screams and solos – despite the passing springs, and while sticking firmly to a very specific musical grammar. Their unshakeable consistency will carry them to the threshold of the new millennium, surrounded by a loyal audience ready to grow even further. And so we arrive at September 11, 2001.

2001-2009: God Hates Us

Far be it from us to overstate the point, but the fact that God Hates Us All came out on September 11, 2001 is an unsettling coincidence. Especially after listening to “Disciple”:

Pessimist, terrorist targeting the next mark

Global chaos feeding on hysteria

Cut throat, slit your wrist, shoot you in the back fair game

King would soon explain that the title is just a figure of speech, yet that doesn't spare the band a hefty share of trouble and scathing accusations, especially given the cover art showing a bleeding Bible nailed down and branded with the Slayer logo. Musically, the album marks the start of the modernization of the band's signature sound, moving closer to the modern metal that was starting to take hold at the time (just look at the various tours alongside Slipknot, metal's new rising stars). It's the single “Bloodline” that carries the most new sonic and compositional influences, boasting one of the catchiest choruses the band ever wrote (you'd almost call it pop, but let's avoid any death threats). “Darkness Of Christ”, the aforementioned “Disciple”, written in the first person with “God Hates Us All” repeatedly screamed, along with the following “God Send Death” and “Deviance”, turn the record into a manifesto: it's not about which god or which earthly representation of him, since every religion amounts to hypocrisy, deceit and pain. 

Produced by Matt Hyde, with Rubin increasingly in the background, God Hates Us All kicks off the new millennium in fitting fashion.

With elbow problems forcing Paul Bostaph to drop out of the upcoming tour, what better solution than to call back good old Dave Lombardo? Perhaps, after wrapping up the remaining dates, this could mark the start of a renewed collaboration...

Controversy, criticism and backlash do nothing to shake the band's resolve, and Christ Illusion confirms it. With the return of the founding drummer, the sound swings back toward Seasons In The Abyss: the guitars are as unleashed as ever, but slightly more old school in tone and texture. Dave Lombardo plays a blast beat on a Slayer track for the very first time (on "Supremist"): brief, sure, but a significant novelty on the experimental front, proof that a band whose members are all past 40 still wants to explore uncharted territory.

Larry Carroll returns for the cover art, and the result is striking, drawing the usual protests from religious groups. Quality-wise there isn't much of a gap from its predecessor, but Christ Illusion contains two of the best-known songs - regardless of awards and accolades - in the band's whole catalogue: "Eyes Of The Insane" and "Jihad". The first crawls inside the head of a soldier devastated by the horrors of war, the second recounts the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers from the perspective of a terrorist. These are songs that show just how much Slayer have evolved and matured in tackling their usual pet themes with greater depth and complexity, without ever forgetting what it means to "play" extreme music. The real showstopper, though, is "Cult", the ultimate, definitive peak of Slayer's hatred toward religion:

Religion is hate

Religion is fear

Religion is war

Religion is rape

Religion is obscene

Religion is a whore

The target’s fucking Jesus Christ

The one I’d love to sacrifice

I’d nail him to the crucifix

Beware the call for purity

Infections their facility

I've made my choice

666!

Thirty years into their career, tour after tour packed with crowds ready to scream "Slayer!" as if it were the first time, two solid records marking their entry into the 2000s... do you think that's enough to make Slayer feel satisfied and ready to rest? Answer: World Painted Blood! Produced by veteran sound engineer Greg Fidelman, their tenth studio album, released in 2009, is their best since Seasons In The Abyss.

Lombardo's return has been fully absorbed into the band's chemistry, King and Hanneman trade off more inspired than ever, and Araya once again steals the show: the result is a very solid record, instantly embraced by both longtime and newer fans. It's like an updated anthology of the Slayer universe: the thrash of "World Painted Blood", the usual broadsides against God in "Not Of This God" and "Hate Worldwide", the end of the world already unfolding in "Public Display Of Dismemberment" and "Human Strain", the political critique of "Americon".

But there's more: here comes a new "Angel Of Death". It's Ishii Shiro, head of "Unit 731", the division of the Japanese army that, during World War II in Manchuria, carried out inhuman experiments on prisoners. Keeping him company in this parade of horrors is the infamous - especially within the dark metal world - Erzsébet Báthory in "Beauty Through Order", and the Soviet serial killer Chikatilo, the subject of "Psychopathy Red". Just as striking is the twisted pairing of "Snuff" and "Playing With Dolls".

2015 – ... : No Repentance

Slayer are an icon by now, one capable of crossing - to the dismay of many - even beyond the borders of their own genre: Instagram is full of unlikely people wearing their T-shirts, sold, of course, by H&M. Musicians and showbiz figures name them as their all-time favorite band, late-night talk shows host them with every new release, and magazines and outlets regularly rank the band and their work at the top of every list. In his excellent "Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult", Dayal Patterson calls Slayer "the most successful extreme metal band of all time": how could anyone argue otherwise? But is that enough to come to terms with death?

On May 2, 2013, Jeff Hanneman dies. In 2011, after being bitten by a spider, he had contracted necrotizing fasciitis: despite attempts at rehabilitation, he would ultimately be killed by liver cirrhosis. Thus ends the life – but not the legacy or the devotion – of one of the greatest and most imitated guitarists in metal. Meanwhile, shortly after, Lombardo leaves the band once again: is this the end?

Repentless is an act of survival, of resistance, a will to respond to tragedy and death. Paul Bostaph returns on drums, Gary Holt of Exodus takes Hanneman's place, and King and Araya, despite their disagreements over the band's future, sign with Nuclear Blast and rise to the occasion. The early previews are promising: "When The Stillness Comes", released for Record Store Day, and above all the title track, bring a real sigh of relief: the energy and violence haven't disappeared, and if you add the shocking video – the first of a series of three outrageous mini-films – you'll get a clear sense of what Slayer still want to be.

Produced by Terry Date (whose career spans Deftones, Limp Bizkit, Pantera and Soundgarden), the album is thunderous, tense thrash: pure classic Slayer style. Marcelo Vasco's cover art once again points to the blasphemous line the band has always walked, into which personal issues (the alcoholism of "Chasing Death") and universal ones (yet another apocalypse in "Implode") are woven. Hanneman leaves his mark: "Piano Wire" is one of his unfinished pieces, completed by King. Considering the events that preceded it and those that would follow, we can say that Repentless is the dignified conclusion to Slayer's recording career.

Conclusion: The Verdict

In January 2018, Slayer announce their disbandment and a farewell tour, which will continue throughout 2019. A predictable choice, given the consistency that has always been the band's hallmark, since recent troubles have done nothing to dent the devotion of fans worldwide. Thus closes one of the most glorious and extreme arcs in music history: if you get the chance to bid Araya & co. farewell one last time, go and make them understand the verdict's outcome. Scream that name…

Contributions by Giuseppe Negri 

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