The boys of Slayer don’t need to use holy wars, political unrest and government wiretaps as excuses to raise hell and declare the end of times – they just choose to do so anyway.
Touching on the band’s normal themes of war, religion, death, Satan, etc., “Christ Illusion” – the band’s 10th full-length album – focuses predominantly on issues surrounding terrorism and American life in the post-Sept. 11 world. Being the quartets first album since the event (its last album “God Hates Us All” was ironically released on Sept. 11, 2001) the band explores the world of religious fanaticism and government control. It is a daring and brilliant piece of thrash metal, that only Slayer could deliver. Reunited drummer Dave Lombardo is ferocious in his first recording with the band since 1990’s “Seasons in the Abyss.”
“Christ Illusion” is a reawakening of the band’s glory years of the mid-to-late-1980s. For fans of thrash this is an absolute must. Filled with anger, pain, disdain and impatience, Slayer’s newest album is a sendup of good-ol’-fashioned ass-kickery.
Starting off on a rather ho-hum note with the nihilistic war tune “Flesh Storm,” which includes such lyrics as “It’s all too f****n’ clear/ We can never coincide/ So let’s all drink/ To genocide,” the album quickly transforms into a whirlwind of aggression and angst. The song’s second track, “Catalyst,” quickly alters this album’s direction. Led by guitarist Kerry King’s amazing riffs and Lombardo’s spastic playing the album goes from mundane to epic. “Christ Illusion” kicks into full thrash mode with “Skeleton Christ” and “Eyes of the Insane.”
The highly controversial fifth track, “Jihad” – a song written from the point of view of the Sept. 11 hijackers – is a biting and critical look at religious fanaticism. With lyrics like “F*** your God erase his name/ A lady weeps insane with sorrow/ I’ll take his towers from the world/ Your f****n’ raped upon your deathbed,” it breathes with fatalistic and astonishing devotion. Guitarists King and Jeff Hanneman are brilliant as they share the song’s pace. Bassist Tom Araya’s vocals are biting and sincere. And the newly reunited Lombardo offers some of his best beats since the band’s 1988 album “South of Heaven.”
Following the brilliance of “Jihad,” the band’s anti-regime anthem “Consfearacy” carries the album to a next level. The thrashing guitar of King and the angry vocals of Araya are the calling cards of outraged men fed up with the American political system and its citizenship’s conformist society. This is Slayer at its most brutal and honest. The lyrics say it all: “But I can’t relate/ To your verbal idiocy/ No one’s in control/ When the government’s the enemy/ So light the fuse/ Impose your views/ Consfearacy/ Is anarchy.”
King’s intense playing continues through “Catatonic,” the album’s token “death” song and Hanneman picks up the demonic lead in “Black Serenade,” the album’s token Satan song. The two switch leads throughout the album’s final two tracks, “Cult” and “Supremist.” The former being an intense, guitar and drum driven anti-Christian metal masterpiece, that bares the source of the album’s title: “Through fear you’re sold into the fraud/ Revelation revolution/ I see through your Christ illusion.”
Despite its slow beginning, “Christ Illusion” builds into an epic album that is sure to go down as one of metal’s finest. Though not as technically ground breaking as the albums in Slayer’s late-80s trilogy – “Hell Awaits,” “Reign of Blood” and “South of Heaven” – “Christ Illusion’s” social significance is a sign of a band attempting to redefine the importance of metal in popular society, using savageness, barbarity and shrieking guitars. This, folks, is what metal should sound like.
