Slayer
Haunting the Chapel
[Metal Blade]
Even though it's only four songs, this is Slayer's second best
release. If only Slayer had waited and put the three new songs on
_Hell Awaits_ (and played the other songs the way they played these
songs) - they might have had something as good as _Reign in
Blood_.
Well, enough with the ranking, here's why it's so good: it is very
free-spirited, yet it has the fully-developed Slayer riffing we
have come to know and love, as well as some adventurous song writing.
They play on this one with as much energy as on _Show No Mercy_
and certainly more than on the doomier _Hell Awaits_. There is a
truly "destroying" kind of feeling to these songs. Not a human or
angry kind of destroying, but it invokes something getting torn to
nothing.
The last song on the EP, Aggressive Perfector, is a good song, but
since it was something they wrote before Show No Mercy, it is less
powerful and the least characteristic song on this EP.
The other three are the first songs to feature uniquely Slayer
song writing. Here, they start to break from the traditional riff
and song structures that they used on _Show No Mercy_ and create
songs that, although still contain some verse-chorus-verse
stuff, flow more freely and expressively. Killer rhythmic sections,
thin riffs based around tremeloing on simple but evil melodies,
and that Dave Lombardo beat all appear strongly and freshly on this
album. And for the first time, one of those insane chromatic lines
that became a Slayer trademark.
© 1999 abasmagorsulpherion