It had been a long bloody time coming, but Slayer finally managed to get their British tour on the road at the third attempt after twice being sidelined by Tom Araya’s long-standing health problems. With their frontman finally back in fighting fit shape following successful neck surgery, the tour kicked off in Leeds on May 26th, with Glasgow second on the menu the day after.

After previously having been less than impressed with their performance at a festival and being no real fan of what I had heard of their recorded output, I gave support act The Haunted a bodyswerve and showed up in decent time to see the headliner make their long-awaited return to Scottish soil.

Slayer unfortunately fall into that trap of so many long running metal acts of still being a draw based on a reputation well deserved from their past glories despite the albums they write to plug the gaps between touring being often being less than stellar efforts.

While many acts in this position perhaps wisely choose to showcase the newest album and largely ignore the few before it to fit more classic material into the set, Slayer instead filled almost the entire first half of their 90 minutes onstage with post-millennial material. Fair enough for fans of that period in their history and to the band themselves for having faith in their songs, but for audience members like myself with little time for their alt. metal dalliances and decent-but-unspectacular newer thrash songs it meant a lot of precious time eaten up by sub par material.

Opening with the new couplet of World Painted Blood’s title track and Hate Worldwide was fully expected and completely understandable, but to then continue down this path with Cult from 2006’s Christ Illusion and then Disciple, hanging around the set list like a bad smell for nearly ten years now, meant for a decidedly mixed start.

They thankfully cranked things up a few notches though with a step back to Seasons in the Abyss, playing the intense slow-burning Expendable Youth followed by no less than the mighty opening track, War Ensemble, finally injecting some full-blooded thrash in its most classic form into the set.

This seemed like a perfect lead-in to some of the less-aired material from the middle of the Slayer catalogue, but instead led to the truly horrific Jihad and, comically, unbelievably, the nu metal ridiculousness of Payback, a largely forgotten bit of nonsense typical of the God Hates Us All album.

That’s where the moaning comes to an end though, as the second half of the set was no less than a solid nine-song run of classic Slayer-style thrash. The gig more or less began anew with the title track to Seasons in the Abyss, it’s doomy opening pulling the audience in before exploding in a frenzy of thunderous drumming from Dave Lombardo and some of the strongest riffs and melodies they have ever committed to record.

Hell Awaits provided the dark intensity typical of the album it shares a name with, while a blast of early NWOBHM-influenced bluntness came from Chemical Warfare, as far back into the discography as we would be taken tonight. Keeping up this newfound relentless pace, the set proper came to a close with the legendary Raining Blood, mashed up at the halfway point with Aggressive Perfector to create a manic closing atmosphere.

The encore break gave a bit of time to reflect, and while the set from Seasons onwards had been no less than superb, the fact that the band themselves aren’t quite the power they once were couldn’t be ignored. Lombardo is still as reliable as an explosive Swiss watch, and while Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman match him for rhythmic tightness I had doubts over the latter’s desire to replicate his chaotic solos as well as possible, with more than one partially reduced to mere whammy bar tugging. Araya’s enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be lacking at all even if his movement is now a little restricted, but sadly the hard years of screaming himself hoarse have definitely worn his once-mighty voice down. The powerful barks and high-pitched screams of old have been very noticeably blunted and a lot of the power has been drained from his performance.

When they returned to the stage to blast through the malevolent doom-thrash of South of Heaven and it’s searing companion piece, Silent Scream though, these complaints hardly seemed to matter, and the mighty Angel of Death brought things to a shattering conclusion, a truly special event for any Slayer newcomers to witness one of metal’s greatest ever anthems shake the venue to its foundations.

Closing impressions were naturally mixed, as the uneven nature of the set coupled with a band no longer able to operate at peak capacity obviously meant the gig was far from perfect. Slight weaknesses in performance could be ignored on the stronger songs in the set, and considering the wall-to-wall classics the second half of the set was lined with, they definitely ended leaving a stronger impression than they began with. The nagging doubts over song selection will persist though, and for me at least will mean some agonising over whether to fork out the capital for a ticket next time Slayer roll into town.

- Posted By: Craig at 15:46 on 31/05/10

Slayer

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