Thursday, July 20, 2006
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This is a saved page of I (heart) metal (Las Vegas CityLife) This is a copy we made of the page on 21-Jul-2006. The original page may or may not still be availible and pictures and text may have changed since then. Click Here to view the original page at the original website. |
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Thursday, July 20, 2006 |
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I (heart) metalSlayer is the reason extreme music is alive and will never die
Let's get this straight: Slayer is metal. No arguments. No claims Black Sabbath did it first. Or that Metallica was more popular. Or that Iron Maiden was more influential. Slayer's songs are the template for the last 20 years of heavy music. Its T-shirts are the black uniform of metalheads everywhere. Its name is the not-so-secret password to the headbanger's ball. "[We] go anywhere and someone will yell 'Slayer,'" says Randy Blythe, frontman for Richmond, Va., metal behemoth Lamb of God. "It doesn't matter where you are, someone will do it." The genre has survived -- thrived -- because of Slayer. The band damn near invented aggression. Its 1986 album Reign in Blood is widely regarded as the backbone of extreme music. Its 1988 album South of Heaven proved you could slow down and still be heavy. And its nearly 25 years of brutality show that, no matter what is popular at the moment, metal will always endure. Even during the lean years, when other linchpins like Metallica and Megadeth were hopping to alt.rock with all the glee of a groupie bedding a new rock star, Slayer stayed metal. "We never turned into something we're not," says Slayer guitarist Kerry King. "We're the same band that put out [Slayer's 1983 debut] Show No Mercy. We haven't changed. When we come to your town you know what you're going to get. When you buy an album you know what you're going to hear." And that's been the case since 1982, when four dudes from Huntington Beach, Calif., discovered Judas Priest covers wouldn't get them the same amount of attention as doom-soaked riffs and outright references to Satan. "We grew up in the Bible Belt of California," King says. "You start saying you're an atheist or a Satanist there and all these Christians are going to start keying your car because it's the biggest cult in the world and you're not one of them. We wanted people to see that." That urge to shock and destroy quickly made Slayer kings of the metal mountain. While the band's speed and aggression sucked in longhairs like a 10-story Flowbee, its lyrics scored the band plenty of airtime on conservative Christian radio. Pundits held up the quartet as an example of the declining morals of America. Guitar World held up the band as the model of mayhem. Critics even succumbed to the band's dark pull, labeling Reign in Blood the most influential metal album of all time. It's not a stretch. The fingerprints of that one disc -- a punishing 35 minutes that turn hardcore and metal into an A-bomb of aggression -- cover everything from thrash to grindcore. The group's desire to push boundaries inspired countless other bands to extremes. And the fans it spawned in turn kept metal kicking, even when the rest of the world didn't care, constantly buying up concert tickets and willingly supporting any new band Slayer endorsed with an opening slot on its tours. "Metal will always survive because of the fans," says Blythe. "It's a lifestyle. It's not like Britney Spears of the next hot thing. You live metal even when it's underground. Metal doesn't die." But Slayer isn't immortal -- at least the band itself, if not the music. After nearly 25 years, King knows that the end is sooner than later. "It's coming," he says. "When we can't sell it on stage anymore, then we'll quit." Talk like that has fueled speculation that, whether intentionally or not, this summer's Unholy Alliance Tour, which features what is generally considered metal's next generation -- bands like Lamb of God, Mastodon and Children of Bodom -- is Slayer's way of naming the successors to its throne, the bands it sees as the ones who can carry metal forward for another two decades. Blythe isn't sure about that theory -- "I don't think Slayer is ready to pack it up just yet," he says -- but he understands the symbolism of it all. "I don't think any of us on the tour see it as a passing of the torch," adds Blythe, "but more of the new breed stepping up to the arena plate." King sees it a little different: "We've been around so long now that we've kind of hit that icon status, and that means we can take out cool bands that we like. And that's great for me, because I'm the biggest metal fan at the show. Even after all these years I can't get enough of it. This is just who we are and what we love." And love is the most metal thing of all. Slayer (with Mastodon, Lamb of God, Children of Bodom, Thine Eyes Bleed) Mon., July 24, 5:45 p.m. Orleans Arena 284-7777 $38.75
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