Satan Laughs As You Eternally Rot (South Of Heaven - Slayer)

Member Name: amygdala

Product:	South Of Heaven - Slayer
Date:	03/03/01 (426 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Three memorably evil songs.

Disadvantages: Seven unmemorably evil songs.

I was once quite comfortable with my attitude to Slayer. I hated them and I hated their music. Number two, hating their music, came first, after I listened to "Reign in Blood", their infamously heavy early album and discovered that it had all the heaviness of a buzz-saw. That is, none. It was loud, high-pitched, and fast, but it didn't seem at all heavy.

Number one, hating them as well as their music, came along after tuning in to the old Radio One to hear them live at Donnington "Monsters of Rock". The sun was shining outside, but as they were announced it was covered by cloud as quickly as I've ever seen it covered, which seemed a portent of something, though I wasn't sure what. Then Tony Araya, their lead singer, gloated about what was going on in Yugoslavia before they launched into "War Ensemble". So I switched off the radio and decided Slayer weren't for me. They really weren't pleasant people and fortunately their music wasn't worth listening to.

Alas, those comfortable days are over. I heard them live on the new Radio1FM playing "Angel of Death", their infamous song about Josef Mengele off "Reign in Blood" and damn, this time round I liked it. It wasn't just heavy, it conveyed genuine menace in a way that's rare in a theatrical and overblown genre. Then I heard "South of Heaven", the title track off this album, and I was half-converted. I still think Slayer the band are obnoxious people but I like some of their songs.

And three of them are on this album: "South of Heaven", "Mandatory Suicide", and "Read between the Lies". The other seven are loud, fast, and unmemorable, but these three add heaviness to the mix and stop being unmemorable. The lyrics are surprisingly literate too and as an added bonus the picture of the band on the back of the CD enables me to indulge in a little biological determinism. Three of t
he band, Tom Araya, Kerry King, and Jeff Hanneman, look like thugs, with bullet heads and broad faces. One, Dave Lombardo, doesn't: his features look positively delicate next to the other three's.

And which members of Slayer 1988 are still in Slayer 2001? The three thugs, Araya, King, and Hanneman. It seems that genuinely heavy, aggressive, nasty music requires a certain dedication. Lombardo, who doesn't seem to have received an overdose of male hormones, didn't have it; Araya, King, and Hanneman, who do seem to have received that, do.

And while a reasonable dose of male hormones is believed to be good for spatial and combinatorial abilities, overdoses of them aren't. Compare masculine football, which is a complex and skilful game, with hyper-masculine rugby, which isn't. And compare masculine Lombardo, whose drumming is very skilful and complex, with hypermasculine Araya, King, and Hanneman, whose guitars and bass aren't. Slayer's music is crude, but it's heavy and when it's good, it's very, very evil.

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