A new Slayer album doesn’t happen too often. In fact, it has been a laborious five years since the underrated ‘God Hates Us All’ album pummeled our eardrums on that fateful 9-11 day. Sheesh, if ever a band was created to be the perfect soundtrack for airplanes crashing into towers - then Slayer is it! So here we are, several years later and the band’s original (and definitive) line-up have once again joined forces to bring us another slab of Slayer nastiness! With drummer supremo Dave Lombardo back in the ranks, the band is whole again. Since Lomabardo’s departure, the band never really sounded like Slayer - such is his key influence and importance to the Slayer sound. The return of it’s master skinsman, the aforementioned Lombardo, had this particular fanboy chomping at the bit! So I’ve had the album for a day now and have managed several listens and I gots to tell ya, I’m really enjoying this one. The band haven’t sounded this sinister and visceral since the glory days of ‘Reign In Blood’ & ‘South of Heaven’ - the band’s finest moments. The band haven’t abandoned their Satanic overtones, in fact, they glorify them on this album and mix it all up with the almost pro-terrorist track ‘Jihad’ - a song written from the terrorist’s point of view(!) Now isn’t that gonna rile up the skirts of Christian Middle America? Hell yeah! Slayer are at their best when they shove their collective middle finger in the ass of all that is wrong with this world - and this album is sure to piss off all the self-righteous religious scum of the Earth on the eternal quest for their collective ‘good guy badge’. This is clearly Slayer’s finest moment in over a decade - just do not listen to this one when on your next plane trip!
