Diabolus In Musica

Amazon.com If, as some suspect, Beelzebub has a soft spot for hard metal, he'll be delighted with Slayer's raucous return to form on the group's eighth album. With producer Rick Rubin (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Run-DMC) back at the helm, the thrash-metal pioneers have trimmed the excess flab that weighed them down in the early '90s. Back in evidence is the clinical speed, power, and aggression that once made them metal's most revered extremists. But while their trademark breakneck riffing remains, Slayer reaches beyond the old routines to pack a greater punch. "Love to Hate" harbors a fat hip-hop groove, "In the Name of God" toys malevolently with grunge-rock flavors, and "Point" concludes the 11-song set at just under 110 miles per hour. Diabolus in Musica is an emphatic resurrection--and then some. --Steffan Chirazi Product description If, as some suspect, Beelzebub has a soft spot for hard metal, he'll be delighted with Slayer's raucous return to form on the group's eighth album. With producer Rick Rubin (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Run-DMC) back at the helm, the thrash-metal pioneers have trimmed the excess flab that weighed them down in the early '90s. Back in evidence is the clinical speed, power, and aggression that once made them metal's most revered extremists. But while their trademark breakneck riffing remains, Slayer reaches beyond the old routines to pack a greater punch. "Love to Hate" harbors a fat hip-hop groove, "In the Name of God" toys malevolently with grunge-rock flavors, and "Point" concludes the 11-song set at just under 110 miles per hour. Diabolus in Musica is an emphatic resurrection--and then some. --Steffan Chirazi Review Death metal was never one of your more flexible genres, and here it just feels dead. This is loudness without fun, blasphemy with no shades of gray. -- Spin Slayer again plumbs the depths of evil and macabre obsessions in savage (and often morbidly funny) lyrics, sinister guitar attacks and punishing rhythms. Tom Araya's animal growl has real menace, and songs like "Perversions of Pain" and "Love to Hate" don't scrimp on blasphemy and graphic aggression, yet Slayer's brand of subversion is the kaleidoscopic violence of comic books. -- USA Today