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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The root of all evil is the heart of a black soul", October 4, 2008
My second pick for my favorite Halloween albums goes to the most evil band walking this earth. All who came after are pretenders walking their footsteps. these guys were and are true originals. I love live albums and since most serious metal bands don't bother with "greatest hits" packages this is the best album to get to hear the greatest songs of the original Satanic heavy metal band (Sabbath was never actually Satanic).
It's Slayer, it's live, it's Slayer live. Nobody can mistake the sound and experience of this for anything else. There simply is no show like a Slayer concert. The fastest and heaviest of thrash metal's revered "Big Four " (the others are Anthrax, Megadeth, and Ride the Lightning), these guys take no prisoners and actively seek to offend and even terrify all but the hardest core of rock fans. Unsatisfied with typical musical scales, dueling lead guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman created their own and in doing so made their shredding solos so chaotic and unpredictable that they turned off a good deal of metal fans who appreciate the genre largely for the technical proficiency of the musicians. Add some wild squealing Floyd Rose whammy bar action, Dave Lombardo's unrelenting double-bass drum assault, and Tom Araya's incomprehensively fast simultaneous barking vocals and bass guitar and you've got pure sonic anarchy.
Single disc live albums? For wusses. To capture the epic nature of a truly great live performance, you need at least an hour and a half of unrelenting music. "Decade of Aggression" gives you that and more. Most bands put out live albums, but it's a lie. They add extra vocals, guitars, and whatnot to the mix after the fact to cover up their perceived inadequacies. None of that here, though you wouldn't know it without reading the liner notes; this album sounds fantastic.... like Slayer live.
Slayer's lyrics are as pitch black as they come; almost to the point where they come full circle and become silly at times. Not any sillier than the films they often reference, but silly enough that any non-idiot music fan wouldn't take them literally. Anthems of damnation and Armageddon ("Hell Awaits", ) and anti-government rebellion told through grisly tales of war ("War Ensemble", "Mandatory Suicide") are the norm and both real life and supernatural horrors are explored in full. My favorite tracks are "Dead Skin Mask" -about Ed Gein, who inspired the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-, the epic "Seasons in the Abyss", "South of Heaven", "Blood Red" and, of course, the two unforgettable songs every metal fan knows by heart: "Raining Blood" and "Angel of Death" from their penultimate thrash album Reign in Blood.
Whether mocking Christianity ("Jesus Saves") or depicting the tortures of a Nazi concentration camp (the previously mentioned "Angel of Death"), you are almost guaranteed to be amazed by this band's capacity for darkness. Even the name their fans go by, "Slaytanists", is offensive. All of these things makes Slayer a must-hear band for anybody who can call themselves a metal and/or horror fan. This music is indeed the Soundtrack to the Apocalypse.
And my parade of musical horrors marches on...
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2.0 out of 5 stars
FIRE THE SOUND ENGINEERS!, July 15, 2009
I'm surprised how no one else is speaking out about the issue of the sound of this live album. On disc 1 Kerry King's guitar is so much louder than Jeff Hannemann's, that when Kerry King plays a solo you can't even hear Hannemann's rhythm guitar. And in general you can only Jeff Hannemann when he's playing high notes. I know that King's guitar tone is harsher and Hannemann's more fuzzy, but the fact is that Kerry King is turned up much higher. That, along with the muddy drums and crappy snare sound, and barely audible vocals, ruins disc 1. Disc 2, on the other hand, is much better. The 3 songs from Wembley sound quite good, the songs from March 8, 1991 are muddy too, but at least the guitars are more even. Oddly, the drums are mixed very upfront on only the last song "Chemical Warfare". In fact that song sounds so good, it really makes you wonder why the rest of them don't sound this way. It just teases with a what could have been.
Now that all that is out of the way, what about the performances? Well, they're pretty good to great. Very energetic, fast and sometimes chaotic sounding. All the songs from the pre-Reign in Blood albums, as well as the songs from "South of Heaven" sound better live. Disc 1 is a full unedited concert from July 1991. Disc 2 is made up of two concerts and songs that aren't on disc 1. A major complaint though is too many songs from "Seasons in the Abyss". There are 8 songs from that 10 song album. On this tour they did play "At Dawn They Sleep", which could've replaced "Expendable Youth" and made disc 2 a little longer, because it's 38 minutes long, while disc 1 is 50 minutes. As a matter of fact, "At Dawn They Sleep" is on a limited edition version, along with "Skeletons of Society" as bonus tracks. More than one song from "Hell Awaits" would be nice too.
I'd give this four stars if it weren't for the incompetent mixing/production. And no this isn't meant to be "raw", this is a plain technical problem. You've been warned, so beware, because I wasted 13 euros on this.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Even God Listens to Slayer? Join Us...NOW!, April 29, 2009
Slayer is one of the greatest bands in the world, they didn't change their music style to get more money, just like some band called "Metallic" or something...well anyway you know the band which makes Diamond Head covers. The idea for this live album was great. They had just made great albums. "Seasons in the Abyss" was their latest one, and also "South of Heaven" and "Reign in Blood" had achieved critical and commercial success. Also "Hell Awaits" and "Show No Mercy" are brilliant but it's sad that many Slayer fans don't know them. So, the first CD was recorded in Florida in July 1991. What better way to start the live concert than with the song "Hell Awaits" which begins with "SU NIOJ" (Join Us! backwards). The energy that the audience has is absolutely amazing! I haven't heard anywhere so rapid fans base. (Well maybe Manowar but that's another story...) The band slayer is also (of course) great. They really wanna give all they can. After "Hell Awaits" straight to "The Anti-Christ". After that there's a small break but when Tom Araya starts speaking and screams "War Ensemble!" you know that the party isn't over! It's just beginning. After "South of Heaven" they play three songs from "Reign in Blood" without breaks. After short intro speech they play "Dead Skin Mask" which is much better live than studio. "Seasons in the Abyss" is also amazing in this live album. The last two songs are also great except the thing that Araya's voice cannot be heard clearly in "Angel of Death". AFter 50 minutes of Slayer live you need a break. If you don't need a break, start listening to CD number two...
The second CD is a compilation of two shows: "Hallowed Point", "Blood Red" and "Postmortem" were recorded in London in October 1990 and the rest of the songs in California in March 1991. This CD has same kind of power than the first one. Probably Slayer liked to offer some other songs after one live gig. It's nice to hear "Chemical Warfare" and "Born of Fire" live, especially because they seem to get better. Still, I wonder where are the classic songs, such as "Crypts of Eternity" and "Silet Scream"? I would have like to hear them too in this live album...well I wait for the next Slayer live album.
Stars: Chemical Warfare, South of Heaven, Hell Awaits, Seasons in the Abyss, Die by the Sword, Altar of Sacrifice
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