Year Of Metal #083: Slayer – South Of Heaven
We land at last on our final entry in the Big Four of thrash, and perhaps the band I’ve found the most cause to enjoy prior to this project. While there’s plenty odd about Slayer - you can start with the Nazi fascination and move on from there - I think they’re in my thrash metal sweet spot, such that I have one. They’ve got the riffs and swagger, great playing across the board, a couple of all-time metal classics, plus a sense of energy that you don’t always get from Metallica and Megadeth, at least.
So what I found I needed to get past on this album is that they really are playing the same song over and over again. The riffs, in particular, are incredibly repetitive. The opening title track sounds amazing as it picks up momentum, the creepy crawling start, the guitar trills and drum rolls, then the sudden burst into overdrive. Keep listening, though, and you’ll hear essentially the same descending sequence on “Behind The Crooked Cross”, “Read Between The Lines”, and most egregiously on closer “Spill The Blood”.
The way to overcome this issue, for me, is to treat this album as a single suite of songs. It’s only 36 minutes - it’s not a record of 10 distinct tracks, but an overwhelming thrash metal symphony. Imbibed thusly, I found this a scuzzy, headbanging joy. They’re so fast but so precise. The jet propelled “Silent Scream” is a miracle for never feeling totally out of control even when the crazed solo jolts into life. Tom Araya’s vocals don’t do a lot of heavy lifting melody-wise, so the guitars have free reign to play every note on the fretboard thrice over (if I have one complaint about this song, which I do like, it’s a bit overstuffed - the drums, in particular, are exhausting).
It’s a Slayer record, so you’ve got to get through a couple of songs about war, but they’re two of the more interesting cuts on the LP. “Mandatory Suicide” is a blunt weapon of a song with lyrics that verge on the idiotic, but it’s one of the more spacious tunes on here. The rat-a-tat of Dave Lombardo’s drums gets the martial theme across well enough, and even the solo cuts out 50% of the notes or so. You do have to wonder if the relative restraint is in the interest of being able to pick out the words, in which case maybe they shouldn’t have bothered.
They also stick a cover into the mix for the first time in Slayer lore, in the form of early Judas Priest cut “Dissident Aggressor”. Without being familiar with the original, I think you can probably tell this isn’t an original - there’s just too much perky theatre to the “Stand! Fight!” chorus, the kind of thing these uber jocks would dismiss as daft. The combination of abrasive metal and slightly less abrasive metal comes across well on the record, though - from reading about the album it sounds like it was hard work getting this one over the line, so taking a swing at a fun tune by a band you admire is probably just what the doctor ordered.
Even by thrash metal standards I found this to be a repetitive listen, but I think it’s a short enough album that it doesn’t really matter. Just as Galaxie 500’s LPs have a consistent mood that’s perfect for certain circumstances, South Of Heaven guarantees you 36 minutes of uninterrupted moshing action. It doesn’t hurt that Rick Rubin’s production job here is stellar, finding exactly the right amount of polish to lift but not anaesthetise the music. In conclusion: not as good as Megadeth, better than the other two.
