There’s a Slayer song for every occasion. Every bad occasion, anyway. But so often have they written about war, violence, murder, Satan, religious fanaticism, death and gore in all its carrion-flecked horror that it’s easy to lose track. For every big gun like Chemical Warfare (about chemical warfare) Angel Of Death (Nazi war criminals) or War Ensemble (just plain old normal war), there’s at least one other lurking in the shadows.
So, for a band who write quite a lot about deep cuts, when compiling Slayer’s deep cuts there’s a fair bit to choose from. Truly, they were a band who turned documenting the dark side of man into a vocation, and the sheer amount of giblets that wouldn’t be your first choice for a setlist yields some fantastic forgotten gems.
In dissecting their discography in search of lost gems, you’ll note that there’s not a single song here from Reign In Blood. There are many reasons – the band played the whole thing in full numerous times, loads of the songs were in the setlist anyway – but the truth is that as the greatest thrash album ever made, if you don’t know it back to front you’re a poser and have no business here anyway.
So, onward, into the dark, shadowy crevices of Kerry King and co’s output…