I ****ing Love...
Today at work I inexplicably could not think about anything but Slayer. I was going about the usual Burger King kitchen bull****, barely talking to anybody for several hours straight, thinking about that one time I saw Slayer live, about when I'd get to do it again, about how ****ing awesome it would be to meet them and buy Kerry King a shot of Jager; in my mind and under my breath I was singing the lyrics to "Disciple", "Angel of Death", "Kill Again", "At Dawn They Sleep", and probably others I've forgotten about, over and over again. Several times I'd have to wipe tears from my eyes before anybody noticed and asked me what was wrong, because Slayer is just so sick that I can't even handle it. So important to me that even these words are a pale imitation of my feelings for the band. I'm not sure what brought this on, but I don't care, cause it's not often my passion for anything gets that intense, so I savour it like a crack fiend whenever I get random fits like this. And now I lay on my bed, writing this, having just listened to
Hell Awaits and
Live Undead, now blasting
Show No Mercy, and I keep having to wipe more tears from my eyes cause I just can't handle the Slayage. So I'm just gonna ramble for a bit about Slayer, cause **** it why not?
Man, I've been listening to Slayer since I was fourteen, maybe thirteen, and they blew me away from the very first song I ever heard ("Die by the Sword"), and then again five minutes later when I listened to
Reign in Blood. Like pretty much every metal fan they popped my extreme metal cherry, making a impact I can never quantify on my musical tastes for nearly two decades. I mean, they're ****ing Slayer. They're so raw, so brutal, so aggressive, so god damn fun. They sang about Satan, for God's sake. And Nazis. And serial killers. And they didn't give a **** about it all being in the poorest taste. The fantasy of it all was one of the most exciting things I've ever been introduced to.
I was a massive Metallica fan at the time, but I was on my way out and moving on to Megadeth, and so the path was open for Slayer to wreck my world. I don't even know how many times I've listened to
Reign in Blood,
Hell Awaits,
South of Heaven,
Show No Mercy,
Seasons in the Abyss, and even
God Hates Us All (their then current release). Those albums are basically merged with my DNA at this point, fused into my bones, and if you took a hair follicle test, it would probably morph into an inverted cross and scream, "SSSSSLLLLLAAAAAYYYYYEEEEERRRRR!!!!!!!!!!"
It helped that I didn't have money to buy many albums, or a decent internet connection suited to piracy, so those few albums I could get I wore out day and night, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and Slayer were an irreplaceable part of making me forget the hell of high school. I'm sure many of you can relate to getting home from school, unplugging from all of that trauma, and disappearing into music. There are far worse ways to immerse yourself than pressing play on
Hell Awaits, I assure you. The atmosphere of that piece of work was the coolest thing since whatever Slayer album I'd heard just before. Then
Reign in Blood is perfect to completely unhook your brain and lay on your bed, headbanging like a retard and pumping your fists in the air, devil horns on full display. And oh my god Show No Mercy is one of the most perfect cheese metal relics of the early 80s that turns the fun up to 11 no matter how stupid it is. Slayer is just so, so, so... SO good. And awesome. And bitchin'.
But no matter how many extreme metal albums I listened to afterward from bands who took what Slayer accomplished and ran with -- from death metal to black metal to whatever -- Slayer never lost that intensity that puts so many more brutal bands to shame. I can still listen to a million death metal albums and be bored to ****, no matter how supposedly savage they might be, while Slayer still reigns supreme, cutting the legs out from the pretenders and skull ****ing their screaming soon-to-be-corpses. There's simply a black magic to the band which can never be denied and only be bettered in theory.
Fast forward to 2006. I was now an experienced Slayer fiend. I'd overloaded on their classics, but lost some love for
God Hates Us All and was well aware of their relative decline in the 90s. Enter
Christ Illusion. I don't remember what I was expecting from the album, but I doubt I was thinking it would be the amazing return to form it turned out to be (I bought it at KMart for Satan's sake). As someone who'd never had the privilege of being a fan during their peak period I never thought I'd get to feel the excitement of gushing over the awesomeness of another classic Slayer album, but here I was, ****ing loving the new release and ****ting myself over the thrash godliness I was assaulted by. Probably one of the best experiences I've ever had with buying a current release, and
Christ Illusion still holds up today. Mother****ing "Flesh Storm", "Skeleton Christ", "Eyes of the Insane", "Jihad", and, like, all the rest of the album, bitches. **** yeah.
Fast forward to... whenever. Mayhem Fest. The first and only time I've seen Slayer live. And with their original line-up no less. Stoked is an understatement. I'd love to tell you that it was a life changing experience, but I was in no state to enjoy anything and I'm still sad it wasn't what it should have been. I only had money for a 40oz before the show so I had a slight hangover by the time Slayer took the stage, and having been dropped on my head twice crowd surfing, I had the headache from hell. Luckily sound didn't seem to affect my cranial agony, but I couldn't even move my head without nearly blinding pain. So I sat through Bullet for My Valentine (lame), and then Killswitch Engage (awesome), and was kind of miserable. But I wanted to rest up for the real show and I'd have died before I missed it.
When "Darkness of Christ" started playing over the PA I got my wrecked ass out of my chair and gingerly headbanged for the whole show. Slayer were on point, but I was too far from the stage and too focused on not cracking my skull in half to truly enjoy it. It sucked ass but I made the best of it, cause I was never going to submit to my tribulation when mother****ing Slayer was in front of me. So it was still awesome, just not what it should have been. Next time, though, I will drink myself retarded, turn the pit out, and scream till I can't breath. Believe that. I only hope that if I ever meet Slayer and relay that story to them I will get an approving nod and not the contemptuous curb stomp that I fear.
Well, I guess I'll leave you now before the inspiration dries up and this becomes tedious to the extreme, but I couldn't end this without saying RIP Jeff Hanneman. **** spiders and cirrhosis.