Genuinely Offensive Satanic Drivel

… was Rolling Stone magazine’s verdict on Slayer South Of Heaven. To which my reply is, ‘great, but is it good genuinely offensive satanic drivel?‘. Reader, it is.

Following a genuine classic like Reign In Blood without just aping what made you successful before is tough, on South Of Heaven Slayer stopped attempting land speed records and slowed it on down, to add some proper menace and tonal chops to proceedings.

It is amusing looking at the band’s responses to South Of Heaven, they all seem to hate it, or bits of it at least. Some folks out there still haven’t forgiven the band for using some clean guitar tones here and there and vocalist Tom Araya has been tried in absentia and found guilty of the heinous crime of, it pains me to type this, ‘singing’. I just assumed that everyone who liked this sort of thing loved it, shows what I know.

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South Of Heaven is one of those LPs where I find it difficult to get past the first track because it is just so fucking excellent and I type that having just replayed it 4 times. ‘South Of Heaven’ is perfect, mean and moody, heavy as hell. That opening is perfection, those guitars just paint a scene of dread and when it gets a chug-on it just takes off, add in an incredible chaotic solo and some great shouty vocals from Araya and … wow.

The spasming staccato ‘Silent Scream’ is remarkable mostly for Lombardo’s piledriving drumming* as the band ignore my review’s narrative and plunge hell for leather towards the nearest salt flats looking to go faster than anyone has ever gone before.

One of my very fave moments on South Of Heaven is the intro section to ‘Behind The Crooked Cross’, I just can’t get enough of it, there is something really punky about this one. There is also something particularly chaotic again about the guitar solos here, at their best Slayer never sound like anything is planned just that it HAD to happen that way.

‘Mandatory Suicide’ echoes the title track’s intro, but then veers off onto different turf, proper heavy. I love the way Araya never sounds like he’s breaking a sweat on this track, the guitar solo is just off the scale. I really dig ‘Ghosts Of War’ too, it is just an excellent performance by the band as a whole, everything hanging together like a well-oiled infernal machine.

My other real highlight is ‘Spill The Blood’ opening as with, horror of horrors, an acoustic. The band pull of their neat trick of packing in a good 10 minutes worth of ideas seamlessly into 4:50. It’s great evil-sounding way to end the album.

On which note Rick Rubin’s production and Andy Wallace’s mixing deserve big plaudits here, Rubin puts the drums up front in the mix which gives the LP a very different sound to a lot of thrash from the era and the way the guitars occasionally lurch through the mix at you is surprising and exhilarating.

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As always on Slayer LPs the lyrical matter is war, damnation, death, abortion, German WW2 soldiers, dark rites and a bit of bonus war towards the end. It’s all appallingly/energizingly adolescent (delete as applicable), the same urge to shock that causes your 6 year-old nephew to run around the schoolyard shouting ‘willies!’ at everyone until someone tells teacher. Although, title track aside, Slayer do swear far less than you might think.

I get the defence that heavy music needs heavy subject matter and the band were about to shift from ghosties and ghoulies into societal ills**. The track ‘Behind The Crooked Cross’ is a far more nuanced take on a German soldier in WW2 than the frankly amoral its-just-history stance found on the previous LP’s ‘Angel Of Death’ and much more palatable as a result^. So, not drivel.

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South Of Heaven is an excellent addition to anyone seeking some heavy menacing thrash metal. It isn’t perfect, I would purge a couple of the ‘lesser’ tracks^^ but I really love the disturbing atmosphere it serves up; just the ticket at one of our vicar’s cheese and wine evenings.

So is South Of Heaven genuinely offensive satanic drivel? the only part of that which stands up to scrutiny is ‘genuine’.

1094 Down (stairs).

PS: From 2010:

*as is almost everything the man has ever played on. I just don’t think technical drummers get any better than Mr L.

**slowly coming to the dawning realization that Reagan’s America was scarier and heavier than anything with an upside down cross daubed on it could ever be.

^Time melts away in this living inferno,
Trapped by a cause that I once understood.
Feeling a sickness building inside of me,
Who will I really have to answer to?

^^in a suitably heavy satanic manner, entombing them alive forcing them to listen to Cliff Richard tracks for all eternity whilst wearing a bit of an itchy sweater. I’m looking at you, unnecessary cover of Judas Priest’s ‘Dissident Aggressor’.