Albums Of the Decade: Slayer – ‘God Hates Us All’
One of the decades most under-appreciated classics! Check out our previous Albums Of The Decade entries here!
It’s often said that Slayer haven’t knocked it out of the park in the way that they can since 1990’s ‘Seasons In The Abyss’ album. Around these parts, we claim this to be utter bollocks. Not only was ‘Divine Intervention’ a corker of an album (is anyone going to argue with ‘Dittohead’, ‘Serenity In Murder’ and ‘Killing Fields’? Thought not.), but ‘God Hates Us All’ has also provided this decade with one of its finest metal moments.
From the get-go, Slayer began taking risks with the album. First and foremeost, the band cut their ties with producer Rick Rubin. Rubin had fallen out of love with heavy music and, let’s face it, their aren’t many heavier than the mighty Slayer. The band used this opportunity to experiment with Matt Hyde who produced the track ‘Bloodline’ for the ‘Dracula 2000’ soundtrack. Grindingly heavy and surprisingly hooky for a Slayer track, Hyde managed to land the gig off of the back of the track and relocated the band to Vancouver to record the record.
The most amusing thing about the whole process is that the band used the studio built by none other than Bryan Adams. Not down with ‘the groover from Vancouver’s decor, Slayer set about adding a satanic head, a skull, posters with giant middle fingers on and hardcore pornography to the place to give it a distinctly more ‘Slayer’ feel to the place.
When people call Slayer ‘one-dimensional’, feel free to play them this album in its entirety. ‘Seasons In The Abyss’ aside, ‘God Hates Us All’ is Slayer’s most inventive record to date. ‘Disciple’ is probably the record’s highlight, 3:34 that sums up everything that’s great about Slayer. The chugging fury of ‘New Faith’ contains stunning tempo shifts and the immortal scream from Araya of “I keep the bible in a pool of blood so that none of its lies can affect me’, ‘Threshold’ evolves around brutal off-kilter riffing and ‘Payback’ remains the best thrash track that the band have wrote this decade.
‘GHUA’ is also the last Slayer album to feature the drumming expertise of the heavily over-looked Paul Bostaph (who now plies his trade in Testament) and also saw the thrash titans experimenting with 7-string guitars for the first time (on ‘Warzone’ and ‘Here Comes The Pain’) and straying into the use of b-tuning.
When we talk about the most underrated albums of the 00’s, there aren’t many records deserving of more credit than ‘God Hates Us All’. It’s a beast of an album and, for our money, ranks amongst the band’s best releases.
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GHUS was the worst slayer record of all time. I guess if you like your slayer mallcore style its good but other than that the albums shit. Theres hundreds of better albums that could have made this list and only because its slayer is this album on here, if another band had released it no one would know about it.
I totally agree, while Reign In Blood is the definitive slayer album God Hates Us All is my favorite due to the diversity on it and utter brutality of Disciple and New Faith. The blood line video is a classic, Kerry King in a suite! The main problem I find with the album is the lack of merchandise for it, except for a flag I cant find any, I want a God Hates Us All shirt.
i fucking wish metal hammer would stop raping slayer’s arse
while to me personally its not classic, disciple is such a tune
Oooooooh, contraversial choice here by Hammer. Great album though and Disciple/Bloodlines are both great songs. The line
“I hate everyone equaly, you cant tear that outta me, no seperation, segregation, just me in world of enemies!!!”
is brilliant, Slayer lyrics as good as they come…that said so is
“Paybacks a bitch motherf*cker!”….
“Try for peace with acts of war, the beauty of death we all adore”
One of the greatest and profound lyrics in the history of music
*most profound
COBHCJQ: agreed. it’s only slayer. classic, yes. good band, yes. still thrashing like they were in their twenties, yes. overrated, hell fething yes!
C’mon, lets see a little love for Testament, judas Priest or even a (relatively) newer act like dark tranquillity, mercenary or scar symmetry.
It’s Slayer. They’re satanic thrashers who love to repeat themselvces to exhaustion – GET OVER IT!
This is my favourite recent slayer album. Christ Illusion does not come close to this album and I doubt the new one will either……
COBHCJQ: shouldn’t that be Kerrang stop raping MCR’S arse…along with all the other emo shit out there too >:)
I’ve got one thing to say: “PAYBACK’S A BITCH MOTHERFUCKER!!!!”
Repetitive??
If they changed you’d probably all call them sell-outs. Most bands do better when they stick to their roots. St.Anger anyone? what the hell was that compared to previous metallica?
SLAYER have stayed in the same style, thus the faithfull fans who worship their greatness!
Slayer made it by writing music the way they do, they like, so do MOST of us, why change!
FLESHSTORM is a great example of why they should not change!
Long live SLAYER!
No. i have never, and will never, call a band a sell-out, for a start, no matter how well they earn it, if only because it’s used by any number of ignorant internet-obsessed people who do not, and will not understand music past ’sound change and more record sales = bad’. anyway, changing doesn’t mean becoming more commercial in the way that st anger was, it could just as much mean getting heavier or using more melodic singing etc. Change isn’t a bad thing.
Anyway, i was just saying that they have never done anything original or new to earn praise. They have never pushed their boundaries or created any songs that aren’t second nature to them – to put it simply, they have one sound that they are praised for constantly, while bands that adapt and push their boundaries are mocked by fans and the press alike – Nostradamus by Priest was a fantastic album, but it received a lot of bad coverage from the media. slayer has stayed the same and therefore avoided such ridicule, but in doing so hasn’t produced any music that i can look back on and praise for their integrity and originality. They have a very good song formula and some awesome songs (south of heaven is a work of genius), but past that one song formula, kerry king has never created anything that earns him the right to speak out with the slightest rumours and have fanatical fanboys such as yourself throwing themselves at his feet. on the other hand, bands such as dark tranquillity have morphed and changed their sound to create a slightly new-sounding album each time and earn a mutual respect from their fans, not worship. what is it about slayer that makes them so special that people like yourself must hang on king’s every word? they don’t communicate much with their fans, unlike megadeth etc., and they don’t change their sound to earn any respect. I’ll say it again – yes, they’re slayer. get over it.
And yes, I liked st. anger, before you ask. it wasn’t exactly a thrash record, but it was a great hard rock one. And I do appreciate what metallica were trying to do. yes, they failed somewhat, but at least they tried, which is more than can be said for some *cough*slayer*cough*.
Alex – *round of applause* you’ve hit the nail on the head. With a sledgehammer!
Good album… wasn’t expecting it to be picked as on of the best of the last ten years though. Personally I prefer Christ Illusion. On the subject of albums of the decade please consided:
Halford – Resurrection
Blaze- Silicon Messiah
These were two brave and brilliant records, championing real metal, at a time when nu-metal still ruled the roost!
KoЯn’s Follow The Leader just HAS to be on this list
A band’s kinda fucked whether they change their sound or not to be honest.
Stay the same for too long and people will get bored of you, and then you vanish into obscurity.
Change your sound dramatically and existing fans may be put off you completely, while you may attract a few new fans.
In other words, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I agree with Alex pretty much… but Slayer still fucking rule!!!!!
what! no brokencyde? things much better; all that remians – fall of ideals, lamb of god – sacrament, as i lay dying – ocean between us, and anything bullet is better than this. in amount of tunes per album id actually put on a playlist terms anyway. if were going for everyone say your favourite obscure artist id go devil sold his soul, theyre fucking great
Not quite a classic but still a worthy album from Slayer. I prefer it to anything else they’ve done since 1990. I hope the new album has a bit more of this sort of diversity as Christ Illusion was definitely treading water. Bloodline, New Faith and Disciple are all top drawer Slayer tracks.
as said not quite a slayer classic but still a good album compared to there 90’s work . how about Nevermores This Godless Endeavour thats a blinding album all hail Jeff Loomis
One of the worst Slayer albums. Can’t Hammer pick a decent album for a change
God Hates Us Al = Underrated Classic?
Agree.
‘Alex – *round of applause* you’ve hit the nail on the head. With a sledgehammer!,’
I Agree with this statement
I Also Like GHUA a brave bit, good to see people like it, I thought everyone wrote it off just because it came out in the nu metal era.
However I also agree that Hammer like Slayer an uncomfortable amount. I imagine you like Slayer so much it upsets the majority of Slayer fans.
I disagree, While the albums since Seasons are good they don’t compare to classic Slayer. Seasons, Reign In Blood, South of Heaven, and Hell awaits are some of the greatest metal albums ever.
@Kcp
“i imagine you like Slayer so much it upsets the majority of Slayer fans”
+1
Great band, shit album. Total snoozefest from beginning to end. Slayer’s real underappreciated masterpiece (as alluded to in the article) is Divine Intervention.
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