Band: Forever in Terror
Band: Disarmonia Mundi
Band: Dead Man in Reno
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, based heavy metal outfit Dead Man in Reno came together in 2003. Comprised of vocalist Samuel Conyers, bassist Drew Shellnutt, drummer-vocalist George Edmondon, and guitarists Justin Sansom and Chris Penuel, the quintet took advantage of every show opportunity they could muster, while putting several online social networking sites to good use and amassing a notable following. Their activity eventually caught the attention of the Candlelight Records imprint Abstract Sounds, and they signed a three-album deal with the label in May 2006. Dead Man in Reno recorded their self-titled debut with Jamie King (Between the Buried and Me, Through the Eyes of the Dead) and toured throughout the summer preceding their album's September release.
Band: The Mercury Arc
Band: Slayer
After staking out new territory with the underrated South of Heaven, Slayer brought back some of the pounding speed of Reign in Blood for their third major label album, Seasons in the Abyss. Essentially, Seasons fuses its two predecessors, periodically kicking up the mid tempo grooves of South of Heaven with manic bursts of aggression. "War Ensemble" and the title track each represented opposite sides of the coin, and they both earned Slayer their heaviest MTV airplay to date. In fact, Seasons in the Abyss is probably their most accessible album, displaying the full range of their abilities all in one place, with sharp, clean production. Since the band is refining rather than progressing or experimenting, Seasons doesn't have quite the freshness of its predecessors, but aside from that drawback, it's strong almost all the way from top to bottom (with perhaps one or two exceptions). Lyrically, the band rarely turns to demonic visions of the afterlife anymore, preferring instead to find tangible horror in real life, war, murder, human weakness. There even full fledged social criticism, which should convince any doubters that Slayer aren't trying to promote the subjects they sing about. Like Metallica Master of Puppets or Megadeth Peace Sells...but Who's Buying, Seasons in the Abyss paints Reagan era America as a cesspool of corruption and cruelty, and the music is as devilishly effective as ever.
Band: The Rasmus
Band: The Rasmus
Band: The Rasmus
Band: Shai Hulud
Band: Shai Hulud
Band: Shai Hulud
In strictly musical terms, this album is pretty impressive. Shai Hulud may not have invented the juxtaposition of tuneless, roaring vocals with intricate and sophisticated chord progressions, call it "Hard Emo Mathcore," or maybe "Metal Screamo," but on That Within Blood Ill Tempered it pretty much sets the gold standard for this particular brand of aggro rock. Despite the lack of anything approaching a vocal melody, songs like "Scornful of the Motives and Virtue of Others" and "This Song: For the True and Passionate Lovers of Music" generate enough interest with their alternately cascading and crunching guitar parts and their college, calculus rhythmic shifts that they end up holding your attention despite the sameness of the vocals. However, as you have surely gathered by now, the band's lyrical pretensions are a serious problem. The album title, the syntax of which is so affected and twisted as to render it meaningless, is fair warning: The guys in Shai Hulud appear to be suffering from a terminal case of Freshman Creative Writing Seminar, and they can't seem to tell the difference between pretentious syntax and actual intellectual content. The result is a lyrical disaster: The songs are all crawling (or perhaps "rife"? "fraught"?) with cringe inducing and often downright nonsensical pronouncements like "And man will continue to suffer unto itself Until some stand to rally the fray by firm example" or "Could any being bask in malevolence? As if its indifference might pardon it." They seem to be sincere (or so they claim, explicitly, in both the booklet design and the opening lines of the first song), but sincerity isn't enough: They need to be sincere about something in particular, and they need to be coherent in their expression of whatever it is they're sincere about. That won't happen until at least one of them figures out how to use a predicate.
Band: Shai Hulud/Another Victim
A positively themed metalcore band with some straight edge and Christian leanings, the influential Shai Hulud has maintained a strong band identity since their original formation in the mid of 90's, even though their apparent inability to stick with one lineup, label, hometown, or even band name has left them with a convoluted history.
Band: Shai Hulud
When it comes to death metal, no band is more convincing than Slayer. For other bands, focusing on death, Satanism, the supernatural, and the occult became a cliché; but Slayer controversial reflections on evil always came across as honest and heartfelt. The group sincerity is the thing that makes South of Heaven so disturbing and powerful. when the influential thrashers rip into such morbid fare as "Spill the Blood," "Mandatory Suicide," and "Ghosts of War," they are frighteningly convincing. With their fourth album, Slayer began to slow their tempos without sacrificing an iota of heaviness or incorporating any pop elements.
Widely considered the pinnacle of speed metal, Reign in Blood is Slayer undisputed masterpiece, a brief (under half an hour) but relentless onslaught that instantly obliterates anything in its path and clears out just as quickly. Producer Rick Rubin gives the band a clear, punchy sound for the first time in its career, and they largely discard the extended pieces of Hell Awaits in favor of lean assaults somewhat reminiscent of hardcore punk (though distinctly metallic and much more technically demanding). Reign in Blood opens and closes with slightly longer tracks (the classics "Angel of Death" and "Raining Blood") whose slower riffs offer most of the album few hints of melody. Sandwiched in between are eight short (all under three minutes), lightning, fast bursts of aggression that change tempo or feel without warning, producing a disjointed, barely controlled effect. The album is actually more precise than it sounds, and not without a sense of groove, but even in the brief slowdowns, the intensity never lets up. There may not be much variation, but it's a unified vision, and a horrific one at that. The riffs are built on atonal chromaticism that sounds as sickening as the graphic violence depicted in many of the lyrics, and Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman demented soloing often mimics the screams of the songs victims. It's monstrously, terrifyingly evocative, in a way that transcends Reign in Blood metal origins. The album almost single, handedly inspired the entire death metal genre (at least on the American side of the Atlantic), and unlike many of its imitators, it never crosses the line into self parodic overkill. Reign in Blood was a stone cold classic upon its release, and it hasn't lost an ounce of its power today.
Recorded and released as a follow up to the Haunting the Chapel EP, specifically during the tour for that effort (though apparently actually in a studio with a few hypercharged fans in audible attendance), Live Undead shows the band still coming together in ways. Hell Awaits was around the corner and Reign in Blood further off yet, so the set relies on their earliest material, sometimes striking but formative nonetheless. But if nothing else Tom Araya part snarling and part merry way around death, doom, and destruction was already nearly settled, only one or two Rob Halford level shrieks sneak through here and there ("The Antichrist" cartoonishly so) while the full quartet's Judas Priest-Iron Maiden in absolute overdrive approach was already paying off. Dave Lombardo's drumming handled the steadier stomp of songs like "Die by the Sword" solidly while going to town on "Captor of Sin" and particularly "Evil Has No Boundaries," the best performance of the seven songs. Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King — the latter featuring a slightly unfortunate hairdo on the back cover, strike just enough of a balance, however unexpectedly, between technical skill and flailing chaos. Hell Awaits eventually brought all the newer changes out in fuller force, even with subpar production, so Live Undead isn't really necessary except for the hardest of hardcore fans in the end, especially in comparison to Decade of Aggression. Still, it does have its "it could only be Slayer" moments, including Araya almost casual way of rudely introducing "Captor of Sin." [Some early CD versions include the original version of "Chemical Warfare" from Haunting the Chapel as a mighty fine bonus.]
Band: Destrophy 
