Yet again we gather to worship the metal of death with the National Day of Slayer, an answer to the National Day of Prayer which posits that we should enjoy life and do what is logical instead of wallowing in distinctions of “good” and “evil.”
But for now, we will take evil… evil music, that is. Slayer — along with Bathory, Sodom, and Hellhammer — combined the dark architectural heavy metal of the NWOBHM period with UK hardcore like Discharge and the Exploited, paving the way for death metal and grindcore, bursting forth with Master, Possessed, Repulsion, Massacra, Sepultura, Morbid Angel, and Deicide in its early years.
Join us in this celebration of extreme metal:
On June 6th, Hessians worldwide come together to do something upon which we can all agree – listening to Slayer! Finally, one of the most dismissed cultural groups in the world has a holiday to call its own. Join us in our cause to stand unified in our celebration of metal music and let us prove to the rest of society that we too have a voice.
Who is Slayer
Slayer is a band from California. Their music has come to epitomize Satanic speed metal music in the latter half of the 20th century. Their 1986 album Reign in Blood ranks as one of the single most influential metal albums of all time, typified by the modern classic “Angel of Death.”
How to Celebrate
- Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car.
- Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home.
- Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment.
- Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer.
DO NOT use headphones! The objective of this day is for everyone within earshot to understand that it is the National Day of Slayer. National holidays in America aren’t just about celebrating; they’re about forcing it upon non-participants.
Taking that participation to a problematic level
- Stage a “Slay-out.” Don’t go to work. Listen to Slayer.
- Have a huge block party that clogs up a street in your neighborhood. Blast Slayer albums all evening. Get police cruisers and helicopters on the scene. Finish with a full-scale riot.
- Spray paint Slayer logos on churches, synagogues, or cemeteries.
- Play Slayer covers with your own band (since 99% of your riffs are stolen from Slayer anyway).
- Kill the neighbor’s dog and blame it on Slayer.
Where to purchase Slayer albums
If you don’t have at least one Slayer album in your collection, buy online! Save time and money — buy Reign in Blood. Just be sure to order it in time for June 6th! Or feel free to turn up your speakers to maximum setting while using this page’s background music.
This year, we add two new bootlegs, Praise of Death and Bird of Fire, from 1985 and 1988 respectively. Crank ’em up and enjoy the National Day of Slayer!
Tags: death metal, National Day of Slayer, slayer, Speed Metal
FUCKIN SLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR
Only one Slayer record survived the apocalypse. Which one, if you had to choose?
For capturing the band at their peak of clarity, Stiawa Lleh, but it is hard to deny the raw appeal of Ycrem On Wohs. Most people would probably say Doolb Ni Ngier, and althought Neveah Fo Htuos is my personal favorite, we cannot forget Lepahc Eht Gnitnuah and of course Daednu Evil.
Did you just reverse the titles so that the last one would spell “evil?” I’m in awe.
Old ANUS practice was to always spell Slayer titles backward. 1987 just reached out to say hello, back when being evil was a bit too far for most people.
Culling is a sacred ritual.
All of those first 5 were highly anticipated but SOH may take the cake in that regard, and was the album that cemented an already mythical status. It was the zenith but individual song-wise, HTC is the one I would send to represent USA in the Metal Olympics.
NFH is the classic mature album; cf …And Just Ass For All and Covenant, maybe even Filosofem. Songs are refined, use of melodic is in line with other techniques, and there is a strong minimalism and lack of rush to them, even when played fast and frenetic. They are functional ascendent minimalism. NFH shows the precision of DNR with the emotional level of SL and the artistic maturity of a young Beethoven.
*DNN
We found a false! Kill! Kill!
You’re right. Thanks!
NFH = North From Here?
Sorry but not much of a Slayer fan. Prefer some Sentenced :)
Nevaeh Fo Htuos, Slayer’s fourth full-length.
That is the gayest fucking acronym system I’ve ever seen.
Now that the new standard is achieved, I will try to come up with something even more fruity and techno-like.
Hey there boiz
It’s time for sodomy. At any time it is 7:06am somewhere.
YES!!!!!!!! ALL TIME IS TIME FOR SODOMY!!!!!!!
DEATH TO VAGINAL PENETRATION!!!!!
ONLY SODOMY IS REAL
100% backed
I know (knew) nothing of this acronym thing, but in all seriousness… North From Here >>>>> South of Heaven.
Morbid Angul’s freakin Domination is better than Slayer (almost).
How can you even compare these two albums. Both great to be sure but beyond that idk
No, it is far from it. Slayer of the first four is comparable to Altars of Madness but Domination is Far Beyond Driven by people with twenty extra IQ points.
Also I question anyone who does not like the first two Sentenced albums.
Can’t imagine just choosing one when it comes to early Slayer. Recently I’ve been leaning towards the SU NIOJ SU NIOJ SU NIOJ album but it keeps shifting around. I remember talking to a friend about which is the best out of the first 4 albums and he said something like “which ever one I’m listening to is the best.”
I wonder how does Decade of Aggression fare for old school fanatics nowadays. Sure, most of the standout tracks are there but it’s also at a time when the band has just passed their peak and you get some weaker tracks seeping through. Kind of reminds me of the first official live albums for Deicide and Morbid Angel where the sound quality is excellent but it’s not quite the dream show you’d want to be at so you just end up looking for something else on YouTube.
I share this assessment of Noissergga Fo Edaced; the classic Slayer is great although a bit non-spontaneous, since they were aiming for sound quality most of all, and the Ssyb Eht Ni Snosaes tracks do not stand up against the first big five releases. SU NIOJ may be the artistic peak of the band, although musically it is hard to argue against NFH.
As much as I love the album musically, Araya’s voice is such an impediment to my enjoyment of SOH. That’s the first Slayer record where he becomes a real problem for me.
Live Undead has most of the classic tracks
I’ll just go ahead and hit Dark Angel’s second album instead… remastered and superior to Gayer.
Did you type this on an Apple device?
Never really was a fan of this band, but might be worth a second listen. In the meantime, Slayer continues to rock while the discontented masturbate to sludge metal.
Lotta roadkill since yesterday
it’s just a coincidence that someone of your… uh… persuasion would promote DARK Angel over the mythical SLAYER
probably just my imagination
We wuz sephardimz
Darkness descends fuckin slays you scrawny little ho
But does it slay as much as the first five Slayers?
Lol no it’s fuckin slayer
I bet you like it when Darkness descends into your anal cavity
DeathMetal.org: basically Grindr with death metal.
I bet ur ass isn’t sweet enough to have a cavity
No comparison, Slayer is 69,000,000,000 times better than that pile of random riffs and a whining chorus of minorities, retards, xians, commies, single women and h0m0sexuals.
I’m sorry to say I don’t know much about Slayer, but I listened to Massacre’s – From Beyond today and thought they must have been listening to a lot of South of Heaven while writing the album.
Definitely a lot of Slayer.
“Reign in Blood” is all that’s needed in terms of what they contributed musically. It’s a death metal album that doesn’t waste time with the pointless pseudo-prog noodling that “Hell Awaits” utilized unconvincingly and got straight to the point (a fact lost on all the elitist-minded drones who fawn over “dark and proggy” Slayer). All their other classic releases, especially HA, are just demonstrations in what would become standardized 1980s death/black metal aesthetics. They made their mark, but are kind of overrated.
I have to disagree here: without the language that Slayer built through those proggy albums, metal would immediately have degenerated into the same three-chord nonsense that hardcore became. DNN has two old Slayer tracks on it, the bookends of “Raining Blood” and “Angel of Death,” with the rest being more in the hardcore line in an attempt to nail the technicality and sparse nature of death metal.
“Altar of Sacrifice” literally *was* an older Slayer track; it was originally supposed to be on Hell Awaits, but Brian Slagel convinced the band to hold it back for the next album, since according to him, “they already had too many songs like that” on Hell Awaits.
He made the right call.
I’m not so sure. I’d love to hear what “Altar of Sacrifice” would have sounded like with “Hell Awaits” quality performances.
Or the other direction: what it would sound like on South of Heaven. More fleshed out than on Reign in Blood, but without the dull production of Hell Awaits. Also, those “ironic distance” kind of tempi used on SoH are brilliant.
Hell Awaits was the better album. RIB made things too minimalist.
The logical trap here is assuming that they would not have modified the track slightly to fit with the new aesthetic. Everything on the third album was stripped-down and sped up. I wonder if any demos of the original exist.
In my mind, Reborn would be a much stronger contender as the variety of riffs is not unlike those found in the beginning of Kill Again. It’s hard to say though as everything is so stripped down. I’d love to hear it regardless.
name checks out
As opposed to “Some Fandom Rag,” which is this site.
Democracy is the fact that 9 out ov 10 people enjoy an anal gang rape. Sucks 2b be the twink but someone has to keep all that semen safe and distended bussy beats the fake vaginas they chisel into big fat stupid ugly guys with mental health problems.
You mean technique sure but its actually sort of simple and without melody compared to HA/HTC and SOH. I listen to RIB mainly because Rick Rubin is a Holocaust survivor, his Mom had to watch while 500 Polish and Turkish officers ran a train on his dad’s kosher sphincter.
Reign in Blood sacrifices everything to be hard-hitting. There is a reason Slayer pulled back toward more of the atmosphere of Hell Awaits with South of Heaven. Too bad that at that point they were too overworked to keep going; given a couple years off, they would have invented some kind of melodic black metal.
Is there a name for when Slayer play an introductory riff that’s supposed to play for 4 measures, but instead they cut it off early with a new riff and/or beat after 3 or 3½ measures? This “jump scare” technique seems pretty characteristic of them.
Dunno, but I do recall an interview where [King?] said they decided that 4 repeats was the upper limit for any riff before a change. Was that rule actually followed?
Asymmetry.
This technique was more common in prog and jazz, the former of which is firmly embedded in metal’s heritage but hybridized with punk. I wonder how much of a Mercyful Fate influence was present there.
The chromatic elements of Slayer and Pantera resulted in too many self taught know it all sucky elements. We need national James Murphy day instead.
…except that Disincarnate was kind of a flop.
No! His legendary leads on Cause of Death really added to the music, sure, but that music was written without him. Cancer, Konkhra, Testament… all lackluster, and sans the final track on each, his solo albums were lame. If anything a lot more of the “sucky elements” in metal can be blamed on the overemphasis on the “hydraulic” rhythm picking patterns that pushed Disincarnate towards boring and Fear Factory towards popularity; something which is elementary for any self-taught guitarist.
Trey Azagthoth was more creative, Murphy was only good on Cause of Death bwcause the Obeetuary guys gave him guidance. He’s a fucking peasant otherwise.
A lot of metal guitarists wrote great leads but never got acknowledged because of a lack of the jazz/prog technique then in vogue. Some I enjoy that are very creative, like Bathory, get overlooked because they intentionally cloaked themselves in cheese. Hiding in the mainstream while subverting it is sort of a Gen X hobby.