I have always thought it would be funny to put together a musical group to perform thrash-metal anthems in a sort of feminist-folksy manner while simultaneously producing covers of Lilith Fair ballads in the style of aggressive bands such as Anthrax and Pantera. I used to joke with friends that we could call the band Slayer McLachlan.
This wouldn’t require as much of a stretch as you might expect. Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan actually wrote a somewhat Slayeresque lyric of her own in “Hold On,” from 1993’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: “Hold on to yourself, for this is gonna hurt like hell.”
It features the words “hurt” and “hell”, but McLachlan’s lyric has also got a direct, understated quality that makes it more powerful and somehow almost more threatening than most Slayer lyrics, even though it’s meant to be beautiful and dramatic, not menacing. This has happened for years now: artists keep doing Slayer better than Slayer ever could, usually by accident; Sarah McLachlan out-Slayers Slayer on an album that includes the lyric “your love is better than ice cream”.
Likewise, 4 Non Blondes produced pop music at its most accessible and least aggressive, and yet they managed to convey the effects of drug use (or perhaps simple lunacy) more convincingly than Slayer. A highlight of 1992’s Bigger, Better, Faster, More! is “Drifting,” wherein Linda Perry croons, “I reached for my hand, but it was already there.”
Compare this clever, knowing, subtle charmer of a lyric to a typically ham-fisted attempt by Slayer to describe a sense of unreality:
Close your eyes and forget your name
Step outside yourself and let your thoughts drain
As you go insane
Go insane
Again, the legendary Slayer (“loud, aggressive, and violent”, according to Rolling Stone) is not just undone, but undone by someone who was only trying to be cute; that 4 Non Blondes track also features the lyric “I fell out of a tiny raindrop that lost its way when it decided to roam.”
Though the narrative usually consists of nothing richer or more ambitious than a boy wanting to have sex with a girl, most songs manage to tell a story of sorts. If a character in a novel or film or any other kind of story is developed properly, he needn’t yell or curse in order to scare us. Lonesome Dove’s Captain Woodrow Call beats a man nearly to death, and his justification isn’t wild threats or deranged profanity, but instead this calm concession: “I hate rude behavior in a man. I won’t tolerate it.”
Similarly, anyone who followed Joss Whedon’s Firefly for its dozen or so episodes on Fox knew to expect some seriously wicked doings in the show’s big-screen continuation, Serenity. In the trailer, Captain Malcolm Reynolds doesn’t need to bathe himself in blood or brag about the size of his penis. He just says “I aim to misbehave,” and since he’s a well-developed character, we know that he means it, and we are chilled and giddy at his four quiet words. (The film’s villain is no less subtly chilling; when Mal taunts him with the angry criticism “I don’t kill children,” the villain calmly replies, “I do.”)
This admirable creative restraint comes only to those writers who take the time and who have the skill to develop their characters. Here I’m thinking of Batman in the Justice League animated series, replying to Doctor Destiny’s threat of “I’ll be able to go in your brain, even if you’re wide awake” with, “My brain’s not a nice place to be.”
I’m thinking of the Undertaker telling the Rock, “I may not dress like Satan anymore, but I’m still down with the devil.”
I’m thinking of Doyle, the villain from Sling Blade, asking simple-minded Karl, “What’cha doin’ with that lawn mower blade?” And I’m thinking of Karl’s simple, modest answer: “I aim to kill you with it.”
The problem with Slayer, lyrically, is that they have never known how to pace their meager narratives or develop the characters that inhabit them. Nothing ever escalates in a Slayer song, for the simple reason that there’s nowhere left to go when you start out by screaming “Fuck Hell Die!” at the top of your lungs. (It will become clear by the end of this essay just how minimally I have exaggerated with this parody of a sample Slayer lyric.)
Slayer’s lyrics are also staggeringly repetitive. I haven’t listened to a new Slayer album since 1996, on account of popular culture having passed me by over a decade ago (don’t tell my editors), but since this essay is a study of Slayer’s lyrics rather than their music, I simply let Google direct me to lyrics from the band’s more recent albums; for all intents and purposes, I could have simply copied and pasted the lyrics with which I was already familiar.
For example, I noticed during my research for this essay that the words “dead” or “death” appear fourteen times in the band’s debut album, Show No Mercy. You might argue that the band was in its infancy at the time (Show No Mercy was released in 1983); I would counter with this damning observation: the word “dead” or “death” appears more than 40 times in Slayer’s latest album, World Painted Blood, released in 2009. And not a single instance is as haunting or perceptive as this 1998 gem, from Beck’s decidedly non-satanic “O Maria”: “Everybody knows that death creeps in slow, ‘till you feel safe in his arms.”
I could do this all day, as could most anyone. It is no great challenge to isolate a Slayer lyric at random and compare it pretty much arbitrarily to a lyric from nearly any other musical performer and find Slayer’s words wanting, not just as quality writing but as anything approaching menacing. Here are some examples that required nothing more than a half-assed stream-of-consciousness recollection of songs from my small iTunes collection:
Slayer Lyric (from “Hardening of the Arteries”):
Convulsions take the world in hand
Paralysis destroys
Nobody’s out there to save us
Brutal seizure
Now we die
Danzig Lyric (from “Thirteen”):
I’ve got a long line of heartache
I carry it well
The list of lives I’ve broken
Reach from here to Hell
Slayer Lyric (“Dead Skin Mask”):
Incised members ornaments on my being
Adulating the skin before me
Ozzy Osbourne Lyric (“Diary of a Madman”):
Enemies fill up the pages.
Are they me?
Slayer Lyric (“New Faith”):
I won’t be force fed prophecies
From a book of untruths for the weakest mind
I keep the bible in a pool of blood
So that none of its lies can affect me
Danzig Lyric (“Bringer of Death”):
See the devil kiss the hand of God
See the devil crying tears of flame
See the devil bite the hand of Christ
And know the devil is the work of God
Slayer Lyric (“Sex, Murder, Art”):
You’re nothing
An object of animation
A subjective mannequin
Beaten into submission
Raping again and again…
The urge to take my fist
And violate every orifice
Toadies Lyric (“Tyler”):
I find a window in the kitchen, and I let myself in
Rummage through the refrigerator, find myself a beer
I can’t believe I’m really here, and she’s lying in that bed
I can almost feel her touch, and her anxious breath
I stumble in the hallway, outside the bedroom door
I hear her call out to me, I hear the fear in her voice
She pulls the covers tighter, I press against the door
I will be with her tonight!
Slayer Lyric (“Payback”):
I’m going to tear your fucking eyes out
Rip your fucking flesh off
Beat you till you’re just a fucking lifeless carcass
Danzig Lyric (“Left Hand Black”):
Gonna bring you God in the palm of a left hand black
Slayer Lyric (“Live Undead”):
Night grows cold, twilight’s near
On the edge of madness the wounds are sheared
Forms of hanging, flesh shredded carcass
No spared breath
Imprisoned in a shell, ready to explode
Dead soul
Stone cold
Out into the night
Michael Jackson Lyric (“Thriller”):
Night creatures calling, the dead start to walk in their masquerade
There’s no escaping the jaws of the alien this time
This is the end of your life
(To be fair, that “Thriller” lyric isn’t anymore menacing than a given Slayer lyric. If anything, it’s pretty much exactly as menacing as a given Slayer lyric. But that’s kind of the point: it’s a Michael Jackson lyric!)
Slayer Lyric (“Criminally Insane”):
Branded in pain
Marked criminally insane
Locked away and kept restrained
Disapprobation, but what have I done
I have yet only just begun
To take your fuckin’ lives!
Tim Rice lyric:
My teeth and ambitions are bared
Be prepared
(Tim Rice’s lyric above is from Scar’s theme, from Disney’s The Lion King. In other words, Slayer has been undone by a cartoon lion.)
Slayer Lyric (“Silent Scream”):
Silent Scream
Crucify the bastard son
Beaten and torn
Sanctify lives of scorn
Tom Waits Lyric (“We’re All Mad Here”):
Your eyes will die like fish
And the shore of your face will turn to bone
Here’s a Slayer lyric so staggeringly dumb that it comes right back around to awesome again:
Embryonic death
Embedded in your brain
Suffocation, strangulation
Death is fucking you insane
Compare it to this moody, atmospheric bit of babble from Tori Amos (who once covered Slayer’s “Raining Blood”):
Even the rain is sharp like today as you shock me sane
(Keep in mind, Tori Amos is responsible for such pulse-poundingly evil lyrics as “Hangin’ with the raisin’ girls” and “Caught a lite sneeze / Dreamed a little dream”.)
Slayer Lyric (“Mandatory Suicide”):
Lying, dying, screaming in pain
Begging, pleading, bullets drop like rain
Mines explode, pain sheers through your brain
Radical amputation, this is insane
Here is a Metallica lyric on a similar theme, from “One”:
Now that the war is through with me
I’m waking up, I cannot see
That there’s not much left of me
Slayer Lyric (“SS-3”):
Hunting
Fighting
Killing whore
Wade through blood and spill some more
Danzig Lyric (“Under Her Black Wings”):
See she comes
On the eve of dusk
In another form
With a scent of rain upon her neck
She brings the lust
Supernatural
Ceasing never
On and on and on
(You’ll notice I used several examples from Danzig, for the simple reason that Glenn Danzig is fascinated by occult themes, just like Slayer, and so it felt like a particularly apt comparison.)
After Screaming “Fuck Hell Die!”, Where Else Is There To Go?
Just as Trent Reznor’s “I wanna fuck you like an animal” is neither as subversive nor as sexy as “I wanna hold your hand” by the Beatles or “I wanna hold your little hand if I can be so bold” by the White Stripes, Slayer’s “Strangulation, mutilation, cancer of the brain / Limb dissection, amputation, from a mind deranged” isn’t half so unsettling or persuasive as Johnny Cash’s stark, mean “Folsom Prison Blues” highlight, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”
That “strangulation, mutilation” bit is from a Slayer track called “Necrophobic,” which ends in a bit of satanic haiku so comically inept I find it endearing:
Necrophobic
Can’t control the paranoia
Scared to die!
But wait, there’s more!
Here’s a lovely bit of poetry from a track called “Black Seranade,” off 2006’s Christ Illusion:
Your repulsiveness reminds me of dead flesh
Rotting corpse the smell of your putrid fucking soul…
Destroy the empty shell
Smash away the haunting fear
I hate your endless stare
Watching as I fuck your corpse
Now, think back to Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” from Murder Ballads. It’s narrated by two characters: a young woman named Elisa Day, and her first lover, who also proves to be her killer. It is a soaring, beautiful piece of music, and it’s also more chilling than Slayer’s “Black Seranade,” not least because the Elisa Day character narrates the tale in the past-tense, and yet she doesn’t seem to understand what has happened to her; each character begins a verse by detailing “the second day” of their courtship, but while the killer moves on to say “On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow,” poor Elisa says only “On the third day he took me to the river…”
Nick Cave’s murderer character doesn’t scream his triumph or spew profanities or throw an impotent tantrum. He kisses her goodbye and gives her a flower.
Compare, then:
Slayer:
Rotting corpse the smell of your putrid fucking soul… Watching as I fuck your corpse
Nick Cave:
I kissed her goodbye, said, “All beauty must die”
And I knelt down and planted a rose between her teeth
At this point, I needed a break from Slayer’s lyrics, and so I visited their website: http://www.slayer.net/us/home. And what did I see?
Something evil. Chilling. Creepy. Godless. Behold, if you dare:
Celebrate the release of Slayer: Pinball Rocks. THIS WEEK ONLY: $7.99 Slayer catalog sale on iTunes.
Slayer is about to enter the app age with the launch of Slayer: Pinball Rocks, a new pinball game app.
“As a life-size pinball player, this looks so awesome,” said Slayer’s Kerry King. “It looks really fun and entertaining, with a shot of evil, and it could definitely keep me up all night with a few shots for myself.”
Slayer: Pinball Rocks continues the rich legacy of iconic metal and rock bands making pinball tables. In Slayer: Pinball Rocks Slayer meets the king of arcade games in one loud, fast, flipper-thrashing frenzy. With hyper-realistic pinball gameplay set to a backdrop inspired by the band’s latest head-banging masterpiece, World Painted Blood, the game includes multi-ball play, and a full tap-along mini-game in a pinball environment straight out of your worst nightmare featuring spinning razor blades, guitars, amps, concert lights, and a skull that eats your ball and spits it out through its eyeball.
Yeah… let’s look at some more lyrics.
For proof of how little Slayer have matured as lyricists in nearly thirty years, I have compiled the opening lyrics from the opening track of each of Slayer’s studio albums. Here they are, in order:
“Evil Has No Boundaries” from Show No Mercy (1983):
Blasting our way through the boundaries of Hell
No one can stop us tonight
We take on the world with hatred inside
Mayhem the reason we fight
“Chemical Warfare” from Haunting the Chapel (1984):
Frantic minds are terrified
Life lies in a grave
Silent death rides high above
On the wings of revelation
“Hell Awaits” from Hell Awaits (1985):
Existing on damnation’s edge
The priest had never known
To witness such a violent show
Of power overthrown
“Angel of Death” from Reign in Blood (1986):
Auschwitz, the meaning of pain
The way that I want you to die
Slow death, immense decay
Showers that cleanse you of your life
“South of Heaven” from South of Heaven (1988):
An unforseen future nestled somewhere in time
Unsuspecting victims no warnings, no signs
Judgment day, the second coming arrives
Before you see the light, you must die
“War Ensemble” from Seasons in the Abyss (1990):
Propaganda death ensemble
Burial to be
Corpses rotting through the night
In blood laced misery
Scorched earth the policy
The reason for the siege
The pendulum it shaves the blade
The strafing air blood raid
“Killing Fields” from Divine Intervention (1994):
You know the feeling
When adrenaline takes control
Can’t beat the rush
That leaves a suicidal hold
Instinct spares no one
Destroying the human heart
The taste of blood
Can rip your soul apart
“Bitter Peace” from Dioabolos in Musica (1998):
Initiate blood purge
Coalition in massacre
Mechanized high tech
Wholesale death in effect
Mutually assured
Destruction will occur
Genocide revised
Same pain through diverse eyes
“Darkness of Christ” from God Hates Us All (2001):
Mankind in his insatiable search for divine
Knowledge has discarded all biblical teachings
Realizing that the strength of religion is the repression of knowledge
All structures of religion have collapsed
Life prays for death in the wake of the horror of these revelations
(God Hates Us All earned Slayer the tag of Loser of the Week in Entertainment Weekly for bad timing; it features a track called “God Send Death,” and it was released during the week of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. Oops.)
“Flesh Storm” from Christ Illusion (2006):
Take a deep breath
‘Cause it all starts now
When you pull the fuckin’ pin
The shrapnel burns
As it tears into the skin
Ever wonder what it takes
To be questioning your faith
This is what it’s like
When it happens every goddamn day
“Cult” from Eternal Pyre (2006):
Oppression is the Holy Law
In God I distrust
In time His monuments will fall
Like ashes to dust
Is war and creed the master plan?
The Bible’s where it all began
Its propaganda sells despair
And spreads the virus everywhere
“World Painted Blood” from World Painted Blood (2009):
Disease spreading death
Entire population dies
Dead before you’re born
Massive suicide
Vicious game of fear
It’s all extermination now
Poison in your veins
Global genocide
Clearly, just as there is no arc or escalation in a given Slayer song, there has been no arc or maturity or development or growth throughout Slayer’s career.
In scouring the band’s lyrics to tally each appearance of “dead” and “death”, I noticed other words that recur often enough to qualify the band’s entire catalog as an exercise in self-parody. In Slayer’s eleven studio albums, these are some of the words that appear most often: “decay” (appears 10 times), “evil” (appears 24 times), “soul” (84), “Satan” or “satanic” (27), “scream” (28), “god” or “lord” (50), “blood” (78), “insane” or “insanity” (35), “rot” (13), “die” or “died” (56), “hell” (55), “lie” or “lies” (47), “kill” or “killing” (58), “burn” (34), “war” (37), “night” or “tonight” (46), “eyes” (51), “fight” or “fighting” (28), and “fear” (19). Finally, “dead” or “death” appears 195 times in Slayer’s songs.
I was surprised to note that “fuck”, “fucked” and “fucking” only boast a combined 12 appearances throughout Slayer’s entire catalog.
Still, Scar the lion never had to sing it even once.