Your favourite bands choose their gREATEST 25 SLAYER SONgS.
Picking the 25 best Slayer songs of all time? An impossible task. Which is why we decided to get some of metal’s biggest and brightest names to pick them for us. We’re mean like that
25 CHEMICAL WARFARE (HAUNTING THE CHAPEL, 1984)
A gruesome barrage of violent filth, Chemical
Warfare kicked off Slayer’s Haunting The Chapel EP in fine, ferocious style; like Venom on glue, with extra Satan.
picked by: pepper keenan,
corrosion of conformity
“Jesus Christ, man! The best Slayer song? What a question! I would have to say Chemical
Warfare. I guess it’s because I did a stagedive in an arena off of a balcony from about 18 feet in the air when it was playing a few years ago. I jumped over, and it was that riff going around in my head; the red lights went off and they’re still flashing to this day!”
24 SKELETONS OF SOCIETY (SEASONS IN THE ABYSS, 1990)
A scathing, post-apocalyptic nightmare set to some of Slayer’s nastiest riffs, this Seasons… highlight hammered home the band’s mastery of sonic unease.
picked by: Hanno klänHardt,
mantar
“With this song, you really can tell that Seasons In The Abyss was Slayer´s step into the 90s. I always liked how simple it is compared to other Slayer compositions. The intro beat and riffing is almost industrial-like, as well as the spoken-word parts during the hook. Very 90s. If this tune doesn’t make your head bang, you probably don’t have a head.”
23 DEAD SKIN MASK (SEASONS IN THE ABYSS, 1990)
A perennial live favourite, usually preceded by Tom Araya relishing the lyrics: ‘Dance with the dead in my dreams…’ The perfect musical salute to skin-suit serial killer Ed Gein.
picked by: James Monteith, tesseract “The melodic guitar work combined with huge, stomping riffs makes this one of my firm favourites. The haunting call-and-return guitar intro and tag-team solo section are great examples of the wonderful Hanneman-King guitar partnership. Their combined fluidity and abrasion on the guitar is, for me, the essence of Slayer.”
22 METAL STORM / FACE THE SLAYER (SHOW NO MERCY, 1983)
The longest track on Slayer’s debut was also the band’s most sophisticated at that point; a two-part expansion of the band’s feral attack.
picked by: ben Ward,
orange goblin
“Show No Mercy is my favourite Slayer album and I could have chosen Black Magic, The Antichrist, Evil Has No Boundaries, Fight Till Death
– any of them! What I love about this song is that you can hear their obvious love of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, yet it still has that evil, underlying
menace that Slayer are the masters of. It’s just shy of five minutes with about a million amazing riffs all crammed into one song. It’s the definition of evil heavy metal, and I fucking love it!”
21 ALTAR OF SACRIFICE (REIGN IN BLOOD, 1986)
Before it morphs into the equally vicious Jesus Saves, this evil blitzkrieg reaches peak
Slayer when Tom bellows, ‘Enter to the realm of SAY-TAAAN!’
picked by: Jessica pimentel, ACTRESS/ALEKHINE’s gun
“I’ll never forget the first time I got my hands on a copy of Reign In Blood.
I remember listening to it and thinking, ‘This is the heaviest shit, unlike anything I’ve ever heard in my life.’ My brain couldn’t quite wrap around its brutality. I was completely unfamiliar with this style of singing, and I was not really able to understand everything Tom Araya was saying at first, but I kept catching certain words that sparked my curiosity and I wanted to figure it out. Then I got to the track Altar Of Sacrifice. The opening immediately got my attention more than any other song so far. I remember sitting in my room with headphones on, rewinding the song over and over and writing down the lyrics as I was able to decipher them. ‘Enter to the realm of…’
My blood went cold. Now I’ve done it. I’m going to hell.”
20 HELL AWAITS (HELL AWAITS, 1985)
An immortal thrash metal classic, Hell Awaits proclaimed the refining of Slayer’s sound while sounding exactly like music belched from Satan’s twisted throat.
picked by: alissa WHite-gluz,
arcH enemy
“Hell Awaits has the same birth year as I do. It has back-masked messages in the intro and dark, thrashy, voluble lyrics… once the vocals finally kick in after more than three minutes of instrumental build, this song is extremely satisfying for those who love fast, angry, evil metal. Those signature Hanneman and King leads, although in their infancy here, are unmistakeable. It’s hard for me to imagine a band having released something this heavy before I was even born, which makes it even cooler to share the stage with them now in the present day – something I’ve had the honour of doing on multiple occasions. Always raw and inspiring, pioneers and true legends!”
19 REBORN
(REIGN IN BLOOD, 1986)
We all know every song on Reign In Blood is a total face-flayer, but Reborn is even more intense than most. It’s 130 seconds of raging terror that will definitely
‘leave you ripped and torn!’
picked by: dani filtH,
cradle of filtH
“For some strange reason, Reborn was always my favourite track on the Reign In Blood album, sandwiched somewhere between the album’s megalithic opener and closer. I love the hyperactive groove of the song, the tempestuous gear changes and, above all, the lyrics about a pact with the Devil and a witch’s retribution against the church for being tortured and burnt at the stake. It’s fast as fuck and
Tom Araya is venomous in his delivery. Reborn is just classic
Slayer, and a song that really deserves far more attention than it gets, hence my appreciative waffling.”