SLAYER – World Painted Blood CD review

SLAYER – World Painted Blood CD
American Recordings

There are a couple of things that have become common place with every new SLAYER release since Seasons in the Abyss. First off its SLAYER dude of course you’ll buy it or a have a friend burn it for ya. Secondly if they come close to your neck of the woods on tour you’ll go see em. In 2010 they’re touring the states with MEGADETH and TESTAMENT, unfortunately their closes show is a few hundred miles away. And if you’ve got the big bucks you could fly over to Poland and catch their Warsaw show in June where they’re sharing the bill for the first time ever with MEGADETH, ANTHRAX and METALLICA. So it’s not necessarily important on whether or not this is good because you don’t care, its SLAYER dude, throw up those horns. But in the spirit of Extreme Metal I’ll go for it.

All of the pre-release hype for World Painted Blood was essentially hype. In no way is this, the band’s return to their pre-1990 ways. Anyone who has said that should be horse whipped. On the contrary anyone who says this sucks should also get in line for a horse whipping. You’ve got to listen to this from the perspective that these guys have been around for over 25 years. Of the four kings of Thrash from back in the day only SLAYER has stayed true to a point, where as the other three fell by the waist side. Only MEGADETH has redeemed themselves and that’s only been in recent years. Say what you want with their Hot Topic bullshit but atleast they didn’t release a movie with them seeing a shrink nor did they go Grunge, record with Rap criminals or become regulars on VH-1 documentaries.

So what’s good about World Painted Blood, well not the title track that’s for sure? I’ll say it’s decent and will probably sound better live. Speaking of sound the production on here is the only thing that will remind you of their early days but I don’t care for it. Say what you want about their previous release, Christ Illusion, but the production was much better then on this one. This is not raw sounding like Reign In Blood, it’s hollow and as far as the song writing goes well you can call it paint by the numbers SLAYER riffage. But there are some standout tracks like “Psychopathy Red”, “Unit 731” and “Public Display of Dismemberment”. You could also toss in “Snuff” for good measure. As far as the others well “Hate Worldwide” is decent and will sound better if they play it live. The same can be said for “Americon” which I’m guessing will be part of their set list during the European leg of their 2010 world tour. Yeah that’s about it.


www.americanrecordings.com