HISTORY
The heavy-metal genre was loose, but the heavy-metal was about to get even heavier and it would later become a world-phenomeon. In America bands started to emerge, because of the heavy-metal from England and the punk in America thrash-metal was created. Some of the first bands to make the biggest impacts in the U.S. was this group of four bands,
Megadeth,
Metallica,
Anthrax and of course
Slayer. All the bands was an influence to many bands and genres but it was
Slayer who did the biggest impact among them alongside
Metallica, this band was a huge influence to the death-metal genre, most because of the very evil, aggressive and fast music style that
Slayer delivered, and still delivers in this present day in albums like their new album called
''Christ Illusion''.
ALBUM HISTORY
This was
Slayer's first album and it is called
''Show No Mercy'', you can definitely hear that the overall sound production is not top-notch in this album. If you have heard
Metallica's ''Kill 'Em All'' then you can imagine how this album will sound like, but I think that this was a bit better production than
Metallica's though. Anyway, this album contains some of the evil sound which was about to become bigger with time, the guitar work is creepy, quite intensive and energetic. The drumming is also pretty intensive here but the vocals in this album might be something you did not expect if you have heard the later material from
Slayer. The lyrics is one factor that made
Slayer loved by the young and hated by the old, their lyrics was even here focused on things like the occut, hell, satan and other obscure and creepy themes.
BAND MEMBERS
Slayer has always been a group of four except when drummer
Paul Bostaph replaced
Dave Lombardo for a period of time. We begin with the frontman
Tom Araya which is the vocalist and bassist of this band. I think that
Tom does one of his greatest vocal work in this album, most of the times he uses his harsh evil-ish vocals but suddenly he delivers very high-pitched shouts/screams. This kind of vocal work can be heard in songs like
The Antichrist and
Face The Slayer, he first delivers his ''normal'' vocals and then he delivers these high-pitched vocals, many would hate these vocals but I sure that there are people who like it, and I'm one of them. Like many bands the bassist does not get much attention or space,
Overkill and
Anthrax are some of few bands that actually has a very audible bass frequence. Unfortunatly,
Slayer does not have a great bass in this album, you can hear the bass lines here and there during the songs but the bass is not loud, no standout perfromances from
Tom and his bass here.
Kerry King and
Jeff Hanneman are the two guitarists, they both does a good job in this album. The shredding is fast and energetic but the guitars sounds very flat or ''weak'', there is nothing wrong with the overall guitar work but it does sound very cheap if you know what I mean. The guitar soloing is though very good though, the solos are energetic, very intensive, not so melodic but they are played with skill. And then we have come to the drummer
Dave Lombardo, a good drummer, not the best but he does a very good job here. The drum patterns has a good variety and a good catchiness-level, there are both intensive patterns and heavier and a bit slower patterns. I would say that
Dave was the best drummer among the ''Big Four'' alongside
Anthrax's Charlie Benante.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
Well, this was a pretty good album actually, not one of my favorites but it grabbed me pretty good. Some things I enjoyed was the fast pace in the material, you can feel that this has nothing with laziness to do. The band really thrust's out energy in songs like
Tormentor,
The Antichrist and
Die By The Sword to mention a few. Another thing I thought was pretty good was the variety in the vocal work, it was like other bands that just churns out the same vocals all the time. These vocals were a bit surprising, first you had the evil and harsh ''speaking'' or singing and then you suddenly have these high-pitched screams. I liked this type of vocal work but it did also annoyed me a bit, it didn't felt like the ''
Slayer sound'' that I have been used to. Some things that I didn't like about this album was the production, it really felt flat and somewhat amateur-stuff. If the material had a thicker and heavier sound it would've sounded great but unfortunatly, this was not so heavy. Another thing that bugged me was the fact that the songs felt similar to other bands material and or sound, some songs felt familiar to
Metallica material and sometimes it felt like
Anthrax material. The songs didn't appeared as copies but the overall sound production made them sound familiar to other bands material.
MY CONCLUSION
''God Hates Us All'' was almost plain bulls**it to me, most because of the overdone vocals and their attempt to be more extreme.
''Reign In Blood'' was nearly a masterpiece (or
is according to musicians and fans), the display of evil and sinister themes can't be better desricbed than by
Slayer. But this album was a hard nut to crack though, the positive things was equally as many as the negatives but in the end it turned out good. I think that every
Slayer fan should get this, thrashers of the old-school area should get this too. I think though that this is an album that needs to grow on you., this is not an album that you will fall in love with instantly. If you have comments on your mind plaese don't be afriad to give them to me, this was the best I could come up with about this album and I hope you liked this review.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- The Antichrist
-- Die By The Sword
-- Show No Mercy
This album was hard to judge but I think this album deserves a 3.5/5
