Slayer- World Painted Blood. Another Man’s Perspective
All Things Heavy — January 23, 2010 8:38 AMMurder, my friends, was not my birthright as though it would seem Tom Araya’s closing scream in Beauty Through Disorder and his final embrace of the sane. Murder would become my right as a victim at eleven years old when a man named Chris would repeatedly shove his eight inch uncircumcised member to the back of my throat. Clean, sharp, and polished. World Painted Blood is intense, ritualistic in all that Slayer slams on the proverbial table, and a great fucking album. “God Belongs To Me!” and “Murder Is My Birthright!” are but two lines in one song reaching towards the climax that never comes… for it is all dynamically pressed to the extreme. From the opening rise of World Painted Blood, the album’s longest song by at least a minute twenty, to the brutal closing of Not Of This God and its thrash genius fills and leads, World Painted Blood is a glorious representation of epic thrash metal. There are no finer representatives of what it is, and what is can be, than Slayer.
For fifteen years, I’ve harbored a murderous rage and un-daunting vision of all that I’d do to that man, had he ever been unfortunate enough to be found. Through the magic of online social networking, that day came…and now he is dead, although I will spare you of precise details. World Painted Blood is admittedly not as angry or powerful as some of the band’s former work, but the musicianship and quality of every note and word spoken is top notch and beyond anything they have ever done. This, their tenth studio album, is a metal machine that bleeds hardcore and proves beyond the shadow of anyone’s doubt that they have lost nothing after a thousand years at the helm of this beast we call metal. The subjects put forth haven’t changed much, and the lyrical intertwining with groovy leads and tight harmonics are all still present, but there’s something more. Something literally dying and coming to life. A man brutally murdered by his victim through a thick pressed baseball bat to the spine, and then skull, ends his pathetic existence while giving the murderer a new life. Creation through Destruction as he screams “God Did Not Do This!” still hearing Beauty Through Disorder. A well deserved massacre.
Snuff erupts fast and solo driven. We hear “ACTION!” quite a few times throughout the piece and if one isn’t letting that fist fly high on every even note and sloshing that head around like a satanic bobble-head extension, then you’ve missed something and I’d recommend a few minutes in Hell. And what is Tom’s future? Murder and Killing as he tells us repeatedly, of course. I took some time to explain to the man before that final death blow who I was and why I had done and was doing this terrible thing. He gargled a generic God Has Forgiven Me Line and I rested my size thirteen on his throat and swung that oak beast hard and fast around to the rear of his dome. Skull fragments and blood. Eyes popped out in a gooey jump and I crushed his windpipe with a solid lean on.
Human Strain, my personal favorite track on World Painted Blood, is groovy and although it remains thrash, is a bit slower than nearly every other track. A late eighties horror riff slowly builds to a sweet Anthrax style verse and gives Tom the most open lines on the album. Not very technical, but as simplistic as whiskey flowing down the body of a skinned sinner… still alive and on fire. I stood over this dead creature and pissed all over him, a dark yellow steaming flow of Wild Irish Rose and Codeine. Psycopathy Red blasted in my head. Real or imagined, I heard the fastest and most brutal jam on World Painted Blood as my urine wetted his carcass. Speed metal without a breath for intake, and then the solo drops ten thousand feet only to rise beyond the bleeding Sun getting louder and faster and more brutal. Two and a half minutes of fucking death and the unforgiving toll of murder. Playing With Dolls was a perfect follow up with, “God Can’t Help You Now!” and Dave tripping in the occasional funky beat and Tom screaming “You’re Going To Die In Front Of Me!” It seemed that I had no choice but to grab my quickly hardening cock and masturbate all over the man that only half a life ago had raped me of all that I could have ever been. “GOD CAN’T HELP YOU NOW! YOU’LL WISH YOU WERE IN HELL!” and Not Of This God ends the album. Apocalyptic and brutal. Epic and without apology, HEAVY AS SLAYER HAS EVER BEEN! Tom’s lyrical flow has never been better than this album, from his words that become animalistic growls to his syllabalistic expressions that will absolutely never be topped. Epic solos and amazing fills. Hardcore beyond the limits of anything past.
The ideology and feeling that Slayer has represented in a lifetime of music can be felt with every fiber in one’s being on this album. The standout tracks are few and far between, however nothing embodies excellence in metal more so than World Painted Blood. It is truly a phenomenal record from beginning to end. Although I’ve only been listening to Slayer for the past few years, I’ve heard it all. I’ve fucked and murdered and drank and pillaged to every second that they have ever recorded, and World Painted Blood is an absolute masterpiece in the world of Slayer. To not give homage with the legitimate purchase of such a beast should be punishable by death. It is the same as the rape of a child.
Five Guns without a shudder of doubt.
If one digs on Slayer, then I would recommend Slayer, Slayer, and Slayer.
