The Batlord

I was too busy thinking about their awful attempts at folk. Now I know how terrible their attempts at blues are.

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The Batlord

Today at work I inexplicably could not think about anything but Slayer. I was going about the usual Burger King kitchen bull****, barely talking to anybody for several hours straight, thinking about that one time I saw Slayer live, about when I'd get to do it again, about how ****ing awesome it would be to meet them and buy Kerry King a shot of Jager; in my mind and under my breath I was singing the lyrics to "Disciple", "Angel of Death", "Kill Again", "At Dawn They Sleep", and probably others I've forgotten about, over and over again. Several times I'd have to wipe tears from my eyes before anybody noticed and asked me what was wrong, because Slayer is just so sick that I can't even handle it. So important to me that even these words are a pale imitation of my feelings for the band. I'm not sure what brought this on, but I don't care, cause it's not often my passion for anything gets that intense, so I savour it like a crack fiend whenever I get random fits like this. And now I lay on my bed, writing this, having just listened to Hell Awaits and Live Undead, now blasting Show No Mercy, and I keep having to wipe more tears from my eyes cause I just can't handle the Slayage. So I'm just gonna ramble for a bit about Slayer, cause **** it why not?




Man, I've been listening to Slayer since I was fourteen, maybe thirteen, and they blew me away from the very first song I ever heard ("Die by the Sword"), and then again five minutes later when I listened to Reign in Blood. Like pretty much every metal fan they popped my extreme metal cherry, making a impact I can never quantify on my musical tastes for nearly two decades. I mean, they're ****ing Slayer. They're so raw, so brutal, so aggressive, so god damn fun. They sang about Satan, for God's sake. And Nazis. And serial killers. And they didn't give a **** about it all being in the poorest taste. The fantasy of it all was one of the most exciting things I've ever been introduced to.

I was a massive Metallica fan at the time, but I was on my way out and moving on to Megadeth, and so the path was open for Slayer to wreck my world. I don't even know how many times I've listened to Reign in Blood, Hell Awaits, South of Heaven, Show No Mercy, Seasons in the Abyss, and even God Hates Us All (their then current release). Those albums are basically merged with my DNA at this point, fused into my bones, and if you took a hair follicle test, it would probably morph into an inverted cross and scream, "SSSSSLLLLLAAAAAYYYYYEEEEERRRRR!!!!!!!!!!"




It helped that I didn't have money to buy many albums, or a decent internet connection suited to piracy, so those few albums I could get I wore out day and night, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and Slayer were an irreplaceable part of making me forget the hell of high school. I'm sure many of you can relate to getting home from school, unplugging from all of that trauma, and disappearing into music. There are far worse ways to immerse yourself than pressing play on Hell Awaits, I assure you. The atmosphere of that piece of work was the coolest thing since whatever Slayer album I'd heard just before. Then Reign in Blood is perfect to completely unhook your brain and lay on your bed, headbanging like a retard and pumping your fists in the air, devil horns on full display. And oh my god Show No Mercy is one of the most perfect cheese metal relics of the early 80s that turns the fun up to 11 no matter how stupid it is. Slayer is just so, so, so... SO good. And awesome. And bitchin'.

But no matter how many extreme metal albums I listened to afterward from bands who took what Slayer accomplished and ran with -- from death metal to black metal to whatever -- Slayer never lost that intensity that puts so many more brutal bands to shame. I can still listen to a million death metal albums and be bored to ****, no matter how supposedly savage they might be, while Slayer still reigns supreme, cutting the legs out from the pretenders and skull ****ing their screaming soon-to-be-corpses. There's simply a black magic to the band which can never be denied and only be bettered in theory.




Fast forward to 2006. I was now an experienced Slayer fiend. I'd overloaded on their classics, but lost some love for God Hates Us All and was well aware of their relative decline in the 90s. Enter Christ Illusion. I don't remember what I was expecting from the album, but I doubt I was thinking it would be the amazing return to form it turned out to be (I bought it at KMart for Satan's sake). As someone who'd never had the privilege of being a fan during their peak period I never thought I'd get to feel the excitement of gushing over the awesomeness of another classic Slayer album, but here I was, ****ing loving the new release and ****ting myself over the thrash godliness I was assaulted by. Probably one of the best experiences I've ever had with buying a current release, and Christ Illusion still holds up today. Mother****ing "Flesh Storm", "Skeleton Christ", "Eyes of the Insane", "Jihad", and, like, all the rest of the album, bitches. **** yeah.

Fast forward to... whenever. Mayhem Fest. The first and only time I've seen Slayer live. And with their original line-up no less. Stoked is an understatement. I'd love to tell you that it was a life changing experience, but I was in no state to enjoy anything and I'm still sad it wasn't what it should have been. I only had money for a 40oz before the show so I had a slight hangover by the time Slayer took the stage, and having been dropped on my head twice crowd surfing, I had the headache from hell. Luckily sound didn't seem to affect my cranial agony, but I couldn't even move my head without nearly blinding pain. So I sat through Bullet for My Valentine (lame), and then Killswitch Engage (awesome), and was kind of miserable. But I wanted to rest up for the real show and I'd have died before I missed it.

When "Darkness of Christ" started playing over the PA I got my wrecked ass out of my chair and gingerly headbanged for the whole show. Slayer were on point, but I was too far from the stage and too focused on not cracking my skull in half to truly enjoy it. It sucked ass but I made the best of it, cause I was never going to submit to my tribulation when mother****ing Slayer was in front of me. So it was still awesome, just not what it should have been. Next time, though, I will drink myself retarded, turn the pit out, and scream till I can't breath. Believe that. I only hope that if I ever meet Slayer and relay that story to them I will get an approving nod and not the contemptuous curb stomp that I fear.

Well, I guess I'll leave you now before the inspiration dries up and this becomes tedious to the extreme, but I couldn't end this without saying RIP Jeff Hanneman. **** spiders and cirrhosis.

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OccultHawk

The only time I listened to Zeppelin and thought to myself good god this is awful is from the embarrassing medleys on How the West Was Won.

The Batlord

Like, about a third of their songs are actually god-tier rock though. They just needed to quit stepping outside that wheelbox with a bunch of dull ****.

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Tristan_Geoff

I misread that nvmd. Disregard this

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Emo/Pop Punk Journal

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Mondo Bungle

I hate "All of my Love"

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The Batlord

lulz that's one of my favs.

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Trollheart

"When the levee breaks", man!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

It is now time to take a self-indulgent trip down memory lane to a time when Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, and Iron Maiden comprised pretty much the only metal bands I knew about that didn't suck. And Ozzy I guess. No Judas Priest, no Motorhead, no Death, no Bathory, no nuthin'. Enter the above book. Over a period of about a month when I was... 14(?), it gave me a crash course in metal and solidified my burgeoning love for the genre, which has lasted over a decade and a half now.

I'm about to reread this book, and I guess I'll do this by chapter or something, maybe by band, I don't know. I'll probably talk about bands that I find in the book that I discovered at the time, what they meant to me at the time, what they mean to me now, **** like that. Maybe review the book or some **** as I go along. We'll see. Basically this is going to be me rediscovering my earliest days as a headbanger, and hopefully dragging you along with me...


I guess as an intro to this series, I was just reading the introduction, and I could swear it had mentioned Celtic Frost and Saxon, as they were the first two bands I ever looked up from the book, but apparently I was mistaken as to where I found them. I think they were on the inside cover with a pictures of a bunch of concert tickets and other physical paraphernalia from metal history. They must have been cause I know they were the first I checked out.

I've come to like Celtic Frost a lot more over the years, but at the time, as a plebe who was still only a year or less from being a god damn Limp Bizkit fan, I wasn't too enthused. I downloaded To Mega Therion (in retrospect probably not the best introduction) and was turned off by the production, vocals, and primitive extreme metal sound (though not due to it being too much for me to take), and so I switched to Saxon's Wheels of Steel. It was an excellent choice, as it immediately began my years-long love affair with that band and album. The fun, the riffs, the vocals, and pretty much everything else instantly grabbed me by the balls and didn't let go for months. I don't know how many times I listened to "Wheels of Steel" and "Motorcycle Man" at the time, but those songs were on repeat for way, way, way long. Way long.

So having got that out of the way, let us next proceed to Sound of the Beast's introduction and first chapter... till next time.

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The Batlord

Obviously the book begins with Black Sabbath, cause how else would you introduce heavy metal? The prologue is a euphoric ode to the band that gets me pumped to listen to Sabbath regardless of the fact that I need nothing to make me listen to them besides thinking about them. ****ing Black Sabbath, dude. Chapter 1 continues with the Sabbath worship, before moving on to cover 70s hard rock and proto-metal, doing everything from Led Zeppelin to Deep Purple to Judas Priest to the Scorpions. Cause obvs. It also touches on many other acts, but those are the groups that get the most time, and Sabbath more than any of them combined. Cause obvs.

I'm surprised by just how many bands I didn't check out at the time I first read the book, but I suppose that's to be expected when reading a book while having a dial-up connection and no money. You couldn't even download whole albums at the time (2002/2003 I guess), but had to settle for single songs on P2P programs like Kazaa and Limewire. So downloading a whole album was a nearly daylong affair without any guarantee that you'd even be able to find every single song you were looking for. If I were undergoing this journey of discovery now I'd be able to download faster than I could listen to albums, but at the time I had to carefully budget my time, and so I skipped a lot.

I of course checked out Sabbath's first two albums, and god damn did I wear them out. A little later I'd buy Master of Reality, and then Heaven and Hell, but back then Black Sabbath and Paranoid were Sabbath to me. I love that my discovery of metal was from the ground up, as it was a traditional education that really gave me a feel for the genre that I wouldn't have had if I worked my way back after a few years of Lamb of God and Killswitch Engage or whatever. And there just isn't much that is more fun than discovering Black Sabbath when you're 14.

I didn't give much time to Zeppelin since I could hear so many of their songs on the radio at any given time, but Deep Purple's Machine Head I actually bought on one of the rare times I actually had money to spend. It's an indispensable album these days, but at the time I guess it was too rock, with too warm, fuzzy, and dated a production to truly wow me, although certain songs definitely rocked my world, like "Highway Star", "Smoke on the Water", and "Space Truckin'".

Rereading the book now though, I'm sad that I didn't take the time to really check out a lot of the recs that I really should have. Flower Travellin' Band, Rainbow, King Crimson, Blue Oyster Cult, Hawkwind, The Stooges, and so many more are bands that I'd come to dig over the years, but if I'd given them the time of day back then... well, who knows. They were probably too old school for me anyway, but at least my horizons would have broadened even more. There are even a few bands listed that I still haven't listened to, and some that I'm completely ignorant of at the moment, such as Asterix, Titanic, Guru Guru, May Blitz, Master's Apprentices, and Suck (I'm listing these as much for myself as you bitches).

Another thing of great note about this book is that it gives many bullet point lists of albums for beginners to check out, from Black Sabbath's early discography to seminal albums from other notables of relevance to each chapter. These lists very much informed my early metal education, and just looking back at them is giving me that old desire to explore. So, I guess till next time, when we get to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal...

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