Slayer - Hell Awaits
Slayer’s Hell Awaits turns 25 today, according to metal-archives.com. [Note: Apparently, metal-archives.com is wrong. See comments.]
For years, it was the hardest Slayer record for me to get into. I prefer the straight line, and Hell Awaits is all about the left turn. But I have grown to love its left turns. Every few minutes the record basically says, “You thought that was bad-ass? Well, check this out!” And then the tempo kicks up another notch, Tom Araya lets loose another amazing scream, and Dave Lombardo drops another Kali-armed fill. A big part of this record’s power is its musicianship. The Slayer of Show No Mercy couldn’t have pulled this off. The tight yet explosive chemistry of Kerry King’s rhythm guitar and Lombardo’s drums first appears here. On this record, boys became men.
“Crypts of Eternity”
[audio: SLAYER_CRYPTS.mp3]
The other big strength of this record is its atmosphere. Much has been made of its reverb, which Rick Rubin stripped away on Reign in Blood. But it doesn’t have that much reverb. The atmosphere lies in the songs. They’re long – “Crypts of Eternity” is Slayer’s longest song, edging out “Seasons in the Abyss” – and, more importantly, they’re big. The death march intro of the previous year’s “Chemical Warfare” presages the huge buildup of “Hell Awaits”. The riffs are dramatic, the arrangements are ambitious, and the lyrics are some of Slayer’s most evocative:
Running and hunting and slashing and crushing and searching and seeing and stabbing and shooting and thrashing and smashing and burning, destroying and killing and bleeding and pleading, then DEATH
Fun fact: Slayer albums mention “Satan” only when Dave Lombardo is on drums.
Interestingly, the Big Four of Thrash all wrote proggy opuses – …And Justice for All, Rust in Peace, Hell Awaits, Persistence of Time – before ditching the complexity on followup records. Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer (if you count Live Undead) all did this on their fourth records. I’m not sure what that means. Maybe there’s a theory about artistic progression in there. Or maybe it’s just more evidence that Anthrax are slow to get the memo. In any case, celebrate Hell Awaits and weep. You only wish your band could write a second full-length like this.
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