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Kerry King performs with Slayer last week at Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain.
PHOTO BY FRED ADAMS
SCRANTON — After an hour of brutal, take-no-prisoners metal by Slayer Wednesday evening, an old AC/DC song title came to mind: “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be.” Songs about the apocalypse, the holocaust and Satan’s son can be a lot of fun, especially when delivered at a breakneck pace with surgical precision, as they were during Slayer’s co-headlining performance on the local stop of the Mayhem Festival.
With no video or effects, besides flames and the band’s eagle-and-pentagram coat of arms hanging above the Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain stage, the California quartet opened with the churning “Disciple,” bassist/vocalist Tom Araya wailing the chorus, “God hates us all.” After a brief thank you to the crowd, Araya asked “Are you ready? ‘War Ensemble!,’” screaming the title of the blistering 1990 track. Drummer Dave Lombardo and Araya’s bass rumbled, and Kerry King took his first big squealing guitar solo of the show near the song’s end. The war theme continued with “Jihad,” written from the perspective of a 9-11 attacker. The song closed with a sort of terrorist’s spoken-word prayer, culminating with “When you reach ground zero you will have killed the enemy/ The great Satan.” Araya’s “Satan” rang out in the amphitheater.
Slayer charged through the new “Psychopathy Red” and “Born of Fire,” King strangulating notes from his Flying V BC Rich as flames shot from the eagle logo. The band also blasted through deep cuts like “Mandatory Suicide,” Araya whipping his hair in circles, “Chemical Warfare” and “Ghosts of War.”
Slayer is known for its almost comically fast rhythms, but the band is at its best when it takes the tempos down a notch and lets Lombardo set a deep groove. This was the case on “Dead Skin Mask,” which took on extra drama thanks to projected pentagrams and flames rising from the stacks of 30 Marshall amplifiers.
“Angel of Death,” guitarist Jeff Hanneman’s portrait of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, featured a riveting guitar battle between King and Hanneman and was one Slayer’s high points Wednesday, as was the ominous set closer “South of Heaven,” a wide-open song that built and built on Lombardo tom toms, the guitarists’ interlocking fury and Araya’s clear, powerful vocals.
Most Slayer fans knew the encore, “Raining Blood,” was coming, but that didn’t sap any of the energy from it. Bathed in red lights, Slayer galloped through the time changes with ease. “Raining blood, from a lacerated sky!” Araya bellowed.
Throughout its nearly 30-year career, the Slayer template has remained simple and steadfast: The power of The Ramones, the darkness of Black Sabbath and the fleetness of Iron Maiden. The key, though, is the intensity of that power, the depths of that darkness and the rate of that speed. Slayer’s place in heavy metal history is undisputed, and in Scranton, the band showed why. To paraphrase on of its lyrics: Hail Slayer.
Co-headliner Marilyn Manson performed last and served as a nice comedown after Slayer’s cathartic set or an opportunity to beat the traffic, hit the bathroom or buy a drink. The songs had no peaks or valleys, just repetitive industrial drones, and even the well-known selections like “Sweet Dreams” and “The Dope Show” were played without conviction — Manson’s band looked bored. Manson’s stage persona was in no way as shocking as his self-crafted reputation would indicate, and the weakness of the songs needed a jolt of showmanship to make the show connect. That jolt never came.
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