I like the new Slayer. I never thought I would, but I really like it.

Much of what Slayer did after “Divine Intervention” was sloppy. It had gotten to the point that you believed the albums were pretexts to rake in the $$$ from the inevitable tour.

I am a big Slayer fan. Read: I love what they used to do, and really like the vibe at their shows. What they’ve written in  the last 15 years sucks. Big time. It’s pedestrian, unoriginal, 100% filler to help usher the coming tour.

World Painted Blood is different. It’s a gift to the long-time fans. Melody is back–sick melody is back. The slow, crawling nastiness is back. With this album Slayer returns to the grating evil of their guitars from before the late 1990s-early 2000s.  It’s fast, slow, intense, but it never feels pointless like their previous three albums.

Some songs are fast, as it should be. Some songs are spewing notes at a slower pace. Regardless of the pace, you feel the tension. “Playing with Dolls” is exhibit A that Slayer is back, they’re paying attention, and they’re as sick and evil as ever.  But the album is solid from beginning to end.

My favorite line from the album, perhaps *my favorite line in all of metal* because of the intensity it suggests: “You’ll wish you were in Hell.” This one gives me goosebumps.

May we all burn in Hell together.

Grammy Awards, once again working hard to be irrelevant

I am still trying to recover from the fact that Mastodon is not even nominated for a Grammy.

The list is not bad, with the usual suspects: Slayer, Megadeth, Ministry, Judas Priest, with (relatively) newcomers Lamb of God.

They’re not running the risk of repeating their 1989 fiasco.

But still, one has to wonder how they arrived at the conclusion that Mastodon did not deserve to even be nominated. This is bizarre. Just plain bizarre.

Here we go again: great band [insert great band name here], vs. multi-million crap band Metallica

I really wanted Death Magnetic to be good, and I gave it a fair number of serious listens. I gave up for two reasons.

1- The songs are a collage of pointless riffs. There is no direction. If a song has to last 8 minutes, fine. If it can’t last beyond 3 minutes, fine. Metallica forgot to make the difference. The songs are a clumsy string of disjointed and rudderless riffs.

2- The album’s mixing is horrible. As Kirk Hammet conceded, “I do hear a bit of clipping here and there. It was more a Rick Rubin [producer] sort of decision rather than the band decision […].” Lars Ulrich disagrees about the quality issue, but did not lose time blaming Rick Rubin, just as Hammet did: “Listen, there’s nothing up with the audio quality. It’s 2008, and that’s how we make records. Rick Rubin’s whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers.”

Blaming Rick Rubin is not very nice. I thought Metallica was a class act. But they’re trying to shift the blame to rescue themselves.

Slayer’s Tom Araya got the best response ever in the following:

During the interview, Araya was asked if he has heard METALLICA’s new album, “Death Magnetic”, and what he thinks of it. “You don’t wanna know,” Araya replied. “I heard the album. That’s all you wanna know. I heard the album… That’s why when they [the SLAYER management] said, ‘We wanna release this [new SLAYER song], ‘Psychopathy Red’.’ And this is after listening to the [METALLICA] album. I’m like, ‘Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s release this song and give it away, because at least the fans will know what they’re getting with our album.’ [Laughs] I’m being serious. When I heard the METALLICA album, it didn’t appeal to me at all. And all I could think about was, ‘Man, what happened?’ And then they wanted to record three songs to help sell the tour, that we’re working on new material, and I’m like, I thought it was a great idea to release this song. Because people then can have something to compare something to — [show them] that Rick [Rubin, SLAYER and METALLICA producer] still has it. It wasn’t Rick. And that was kind of a way to show people, ‘Hey, it’s not Rick Rubin. It’s the band. It’s what the band brings to the table. People are always comparing albums. So now they have something that they can compare it to. And they know that this is what they’re gonna be getting with our record. You’re gonna be getting SLAYER.”

New Slayer song “Psychopathy Red” now streaming

“Psychopathy Red,” from Slayer’s forthcoming album due sometime next summer, is now streaming on Youtube.

Psychopathy Red: