I’ll never forget the first time I heard Slayer. I was watching Headbanger’s Ball and the video for either the catchy yet sinister and atmospheric “Seasons in the Abyss” or the bulldozing face-fucker that is “War Ensemble” came on. Whichever track it was, my young mind was blown; it only took one song for me to realize Slayer was obviously waaay more evil than Metallica, Megadeth or Anthrax, whom I was already pretty familiar with and as a Catholic school kid growing up smack dab in the asshole of the Midwest, that was pretty much all it took for me to become instantly obsessed with The Big Four’s darkest, heaviest, meanest sounding band.
If memory serves, I used a Best Buy gift card that I’d gotten for Christmas to go out and buy Seasons in the Abyss and South of Heaven; I’m pretty sure that was all the old school Slayer they had. Although Seasons… is a great record that contains many classic tracks, it was South of Heaven that stuck with me and remains my favorite Slayer album to this very day.
Sure, Reign in Blood gets all the love, but let’s be honest, Reign in Blood should really be titled Angel of Death, Raining Blood and uh, Some Other Songs. I’m not saying it’s a bad record, but in terms of songwriting, atmosphere and evil-as-all-hell riffage, it absolutely pales in comparison to South of Heaven. Slayer took the template they established with “Angel of Death” and “Raining Blood” and made an entire album out of it. By slowing down and employing a more dynamic approach to their craft, the quartet unleashed a scathing yet memorable thrash attack that made many of their peers sound like Barney and Friends by comparison.
In the previous paragraph I mentioned evil-as-hell riffage and there can be no doubt much of South of Heaven‘s success lies at the feet of Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman. At this point in Slayer’s career, the duo were already working together like a well-oiled machine, throwing down with sick ‘n’ twisted riffs that propelled tracks such as “South of Heaven” “Live Undead” and “Mandatory Suicide” to instant classic status. As if the barrage of skull-smashing riffs wasn’t enough, the solos on South of Heaven are a whole other level of nasty; corrosive and utterly frenzied yet somehow still musical and more technically sound than on previous albums, ranking among the best in Slayer’s catalog.
Of course, great guitar-work needs a solid foundation and Satan blessed Slayer with a rhythm section that included metal drumming dark lord Dave Lombardo. The drums sound absolutely thunderous on South of Heaven and rightfully so, because Lombardo’s performance is fucking flawless. I can’t remember who’s interview I once read that likened a band’s drummer to the engine room of a ship, but that comparison couldn’t be more accurate here, as Lombardo powers the band through the album with a combination of ferociousness and technicality that’s off the damn charts. Tom Araya’s bass is somewhat buried in the mix, but his throat-shredding bark is a force to be reckoned with; he might not be a great singer from a technical standpoint, but his voice is instantly recognizable and he delivers the lyrics with a maniacal intensity that perfectly suits the dark subject matter.
As is no doubt the case with many other metal heads of my generation, Slayer was the ultimate gateway band for me and South of Heaven was one of the key releases that eventually set me on the path to the even darker, heavier realms of death and black metal. But the album is more than just a stepping stone, it’s a touchstone of late-eighties thrash at its most devastatingly diabolical that still manages to be catchier than COVID and a million times more deadly.
THKD 