Going out in a blaze
Slayer’s stop in Toronto was everything fans wanted from the thrash kings
Slayer K (out of 4) Budweiser Stage, May 29, along with Testament, Behemoth, Anthrax and Lamb of God.
No one wants to say goodbye to Slayer forever, of course, but if this is indeed it for the living metal legends they’re going out in spectacular form.
Slayer’s Final World Tour, as it’s officially known, is not a curt farewell ges- ture by any means and will take the still-formidable quartet around the globe well into 2019 and perhaps even into 2020, so there’s still a chance we might see the lads in Toronto again after their (literally) blazing set at the Budweiser Stage on Tuesday night.
As we all know, too, if there’s been a single, common message transmitted over the years by such strange musical bedfellows as Frank Sinatra, the Who, Elton John, KISS, Cher, Garth Brooks, Nine Inch Nails and LCD Soundsystem, it’s that a florid “final goodbye” to performing and/or recording is often only as final as the most lucrative offer to hit the “reunion” or “comeback” trail to subsequently come in dictates. In the context of concerts, “farewell” is a term not to be trusted. But here’s hoping Slayer keeps it real. No real statement on why the band is calling it quits after 37 years in the business of evil has been issued, but 56-yearold bassist/singer Tom Araya did joke to Loudwire in a 2016 interview that he was partially inspired to retire by the fact that he can’t headbang anymore, “and that was a big part of why I enjoy doing what I do — singing and headbanging.”
That’s a tacit admission that age is slowly starting to hamper the very physical, downright athletic things that Slayer does if there ever was one. So while it was doubtless not an easy decision for Araya, co-founder/guitarist Kerry King, longtime drummer Paul Bostaph and guitarist Gary Holt, who stepped in for an ailing Jeff Hanneman two years before his untimely death in 2013, to shut the band down after all these years, it might be the right one. No one wants to see Slayer slowing down. Slayer is not about slowing down.
The 14,000- or 15,000-strong crowd at the Budweiser Stage certainly carried on like this was the last time, anyway.
With Slayer last on a monstrous bill that included fellow Bay Area thrash warriors Testament, Polish Satanometallers Behemoth, New York brutalists Anthrax and Richmond, Va.’s Lamb of God — arguably the most formidable, uncompromising American metal act to achieve widespread visibility since Slayer — the mob had plenty of time to get messy on a sunny school night.
And, oh, messy did they get. I wandered up to the lawn to get a taste of the vibe and narrowly missed getting sprayed with puke, and caught a drunken young fan falling to the ground within the first three minutes. Good times.
That’s what it’s all about, though. For all its musical menace and lyrical preoccupations with the occult, the horrors of war, murder, necrophilia and good ol’ Satan, Slayer is ultimately about having a good time. It’s pure, unadulterated fun to get walloped in the face with all that hammering sound and lose your mind to “Hell Awaits,” “Raining Blood” and “Seasons in the Abyss” — they played all the faves on Tuesday, including one of the most titanic versions of “South of Heaven” I’ve ever encountered — and it’s way more fun to lose your mind to those tunes when they’re coming at you through the full might of a big-venue PA system. No slouch in the “loud” department itself, Lamb of God was respectfully underpowered by comparison on Tuesday. By the time Slayer got to the expected, climactic finale “Angel of Death,” even the fish in Lake Ontario were going deaf.
Slayer is not for everyone, of course, which is what made this farewell celebration — and it was definitely a celebration, not a wake — such a riot to be a part of. Regardless of your age, creed or colour, if you’ve dialed in to Slayer for the long haul, you’re part of the tribe.
Just in my vicinity on Tuesday evening were four gents in Dockers and golf shirts with grey buzzcuts who looked like they’d just rolled in off a yacht; a mother/father/teenage son combo clad in Rob Zombie, Testament and Iron Maiden t-shirts, respectively; a pack of wasted 20-something “bros”; a woman older than my 40-ish age who’d brought her dad out; a knot of grandfatherly bikers; a guy with one of those starchy, three-foot-high mohawks that basically guarantee you’ll never find gainful employment; and a cute couple slightly younger than me that at first appeared to be a case of the beardy boyfriend dragging his sun dressed, Kinder-garten-teacher-es que gal in French br aids out to the metal show but revealed itself to be the other way around as the night wore on, as it became clear she knew the words to every single freakin’ song. What did we all have in common? We were all there for Slayer and we were all screaming “Welcome to the kingdom of the dead!” in unison until our throats were raw. That, my friends, is a tribe.
This is why it might be OK for Slayer to hang it up while it’s still got it. Slayer has never had a hit on the radio, released a power ballad, worked with Bob Rock or done any of the things that get you to the Metallica level. Slayer has just carried on being Slayer, and when it digs into “Mandatory Suicide,” “Dead Skin Mask” or “Chemical Warfare,” it still sounds every bit as threatening as it did back in the day. Cartoonishly threatening, of course, as the band has always had a healthy sense of the ridiculous.
But no one wants to see Slayer looking ridiculous onstage if the players can’t hold it down like they used to. I love Judas Priest and AC/DC to death, for instance, but their last passes through Toronto were pretty wobbly, even before they were shedding members willynilly. I don’t want Slayer doing that.
“Thank you very much,” Araya said as the last notes of “Angel of Death” faded at the end of the night and the band took a moment to bask in the roar of the crowd. “Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing and spending so much time with us. Good night.”
Lights up. No encore. Go out hard. Leave ’em wanting. There are no encores in life. Hell awaits.