Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heavier than the sky falling on your head....., February 20, 2000
I have to admit that I really didn't come to appreciate this album until the last couple of years. When it first came out, I felt it was too slow, too melodic, too un-Slayer-ish. With age comes wisdom; let's face it, the only real problem with "South of Heaven" (probably the most wickedly clever album title ever) is that it had the unenviable job of following up the Lamborghini Diablo of all albums, "Reign In Blood". So Slayer did the only sensible thing...build a Bugatti Royale.This album's lineage is prestigious; there are spiritual ties to albums like Sabbath's "Master of Reality", Priest's "Sad Wings of Destiny" and "Sin After Sin" ("Dissident Aggressor" is covered here with hats-off reverence) while still retaining Slayer's more sophisticated approach to death/black metal. Heavy, Iommi-inspired riffs combined with hammer-from-hell drumming (check out Lombardo's snare sound on the title track...it sounds like a rifle shot in your ear) and Araya's grisly, sawn-off vocals combine to make this doom metal's all time masterpiece. I can relate this to this album in the same way that I relate to the other spare time passion in my life - automobiles. When I was younger, I was a muscle car freak who cared only for horsepower and cubic inches...now my tastes run towards classic European sports cars. As I grew older, I came to realize that SPEED is no substitute for BALANCE and PRECISION. Don't let your purchase of this album be discouraged by the naysayers who complain that it isn't "Reign In Blood Part II". You'll only be depriving yourself.
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The evolution of Slayer, September 13, 2005
Slayer came to a sort of crossroads when the time came to write their fifth studio release, in 1988. The band knew they couldn't top the speed of their last album, 1986's standard-bearing album "Reign In Blood," so they didn't even try. Instead, they matured and evolved a little.
The first way they did this was by improving Tom's singing style. Instead of shrieking as loud and fast as possible, Tom's vocals became more mid-tempo and tuneful. Guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman also helped to change the band's sound by slowing down the songs' tempos while simultaneously making the riffs heavier. They even added acoustic guitars into the mix (!), at the beginning of track ten, "Spill the Blood."
Another advantage of a slower album, besides the melodic vocals, is that drummer Dave Lombardo can go at his own pace. He doesn't have to play a bunch of different drums as fast as possible because he's playing "catch up" with the rest of the band. Instead, on this album, Dave creates some great, and very catchy drum fills. (Tracks three and four best demonstrate this talented drumming.)
From the beginning of the first track, the title track, you can tell Slayer have changed. Some songs, like "Silent Scream," "Ghosts of War," and "Cleanse the Soul," still race by like a flash flood, but most of "South of Heaven" is only moderately fast.
"Spill the Blood" is my personal favorite song on here, but other highlights are the thumping and blisteringly fast "Live Undead," the scorching solos of "Behind the Crooked Cross," "Mandatory Suicide," which features churning, buzzsaw riffs and a creepy, ominous, spoken-word passage from Tom, and the speedy, chugging and churning "Read Between the Lies."
So, what we have here is an album that shows Slayer's evolution and maturation. Yes, it is a bit slower, but it's equally as great as most of Slayer's other releases. Some songs are as fast as anything off of "Reign in Blood," so old-school fans will be pleased with this album, but since most of this album is slower than usual, it should also attract newcomers and those who aren't fans of Slayer's older albums.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just as essential as Reign In Blood for its own reasons, December 16, 2001
When Slayer released "Reign In Blood" in '86, they obviously had no idea that it would be considered one of the best metal records (heavy metal, thrash metal, extreme metal... whatever) of all time by thousands upon thousands of people, even to this day. After establishing themselves as an infamous underground thrash force with satanic lyrical leanings, they were suddenly thrust forward as blasphemous innovators in style and speed. Once the metal scene's initial shock wore off a tad, everyone glanced sideways at Slayer wondering, "how in the world will they top THAT?" and "will they out-do themselves by playing even faster?" Well, Araya, King, Hanneman, and Lombardo succeeded in shocking everyone, alright... but in a much different way than expected - so much so that they (unfairly, if I might add) lost a number of fans looking for another bloody "Reign" (pun intended).
On the surface, "South Of Heaven" seemed extraordinarily unhurried - or better yet, deliberate -
compared to the album prior to this. The blinding pace of the songs, which was a large part of Slayer's appeal on their previous effort, only surpassed warp-speed in a couple of songs, namely "Silent Scream", "Ghosts Of War", and "Cleanse The Soul". Slayer's focus here was on being heavy, not necessarily fast. Basically, the band was tweaking their sound to define the sinister nature they wanted to portray. The band had reinvented itself for the recording of "Reign In Blood", and in their traditional nature of staying true to that philosophy, the boys quite naturally reinvented themselves once again for "South Of Heaven". Illustrating their mid-paced brilliance are tracks like "Mandatory Suicide", "Spill The Blood", "Dissident Aggressor" (an awesome gem of a Judas Priest cover - undeniably superior to the original, but I suppose it's sacrilegious of me to say that), and especially the title track.
Perhaps with "South Of Heaven", Slayer just decided to prove that a song could be extreme and downright blasphemous without blurring beyond the speed of light. Additionally, something to remember is that this theory wasn't easy to prove in 1988, so it's safe to say that this album was likely as much of a groundbreaker as its predecessor in 1986. All I know is that Slayer had nothing to prove to me in '88; I was convinced of their extreme metal mastery no matter how fast they played. In conclusion, "South Of Heaven" was yet another classic achievement in the history one of the best METAL bands - ever. And if that grabs you attention and gnaws at your curiosity, then you definitely should invest in this masterpiece.
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