Slayer – World Painted Blood
American / Sony Music (11/3/09)
Metal

Ten studio albums and counting into its catalogue, and it’s clear that Slayer, a living legend in the metal scene, will have few curveballs to throw at listeners. That’s not to say World Painted Blood is a boring album by any stretch—just that Slayer is one of those bands where what you get is what you get.

What World Painted Blood does manage to do, is far outshine the band’s more recent releases (2001’s God Hates Us All and the oft-overlooked 2006 release Christ Illusion), and it does so by pulling from a deep bag of tricks, strung together to craft their best offering of the new millennium.

There’s a little bit of everything on here: Tom Araya’s schizophrenic vocal delivery on the blistering “Hate Worldwide” and deliberate “Public Display of Dismemberment”; the pure thrash bliss of “Unit 731″; the punk aesthetic of “Snuff”; the chilling dirge of “Playing With Dolls”. Truth be told, the band almost seems to have taken a page out of 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss, shifting between the roles of chaotic thrash masters or slowing things down to sound like the metallic bringers of death.

To top it all off, Dave Lombardo still kills behind the drum kit, and Kerry King is… well, Kerry King, and, along with Jeff Hanneman, throws in plenty of inspired riffs and solos.

The nice mix of material is coupled with only a few missed opportunities (the uninspired title track picked to open the set, along with the plodding “Human Strain”). But for every low point, there are two or three songs that make up for it. (Check out the frantic guitar work on “Not of This God” or the go-for-the-jugular assault of “Psychopathy Red”.)

At the end of the day, there’s nothing necessarily groundbreaking to be had, but Slayer still manages to crank out one of the best metal albums of the year, while outshining their previous couple of efforts.

Rating:

Last 5 posts by Tom D'Errico

• Heavy Mental: Top Albums of 2009 - January 5th, 2010
• MGF Reviews Mudvayne - Mudvayne - December 24th, 2009
• Heavy Mental: The Great What-If - December 4th, 2009
• MGF Reviews Norah Jones - The Fall - November 20th, 2009
• Heavy Mental: Dragged into a New Age - November 19th, 2009