Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. (36 page)

“Things were stale,” Araya explained to Gargano. “They were working on [new material], but…. There was something missing.”
^32-1

Dette wasn’t around for long, but he would be back. He would return to Testament, and later played with Bay Area metal band
Heathen
.

Even Lombardo had expressed interest in returning. But the years of bad blood were still too thick. And King, once again, had musical reasons: He had heard Lombardo’s metal band, Grip Inc., and wasn’t impressed
^32-2
.

So Bostaph was back.

Chapter 33:

Slayer’s Experimental Moment

Slayer’s reputation took more hits in the following years. The group never significantly deviated from its sound, but it wasn’t entirely trendproof.

At this point, true metal was on life support. MTV had shuttered the American
Headbanger’s Ball
in early ’95. Led by Korn and Marilyn Manson, nü metal and rap rock were now the new, popular forms of harder rock.

Slayer had two tangential rap-rock credits: King’s guitar solo in the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” and 1993’s lackluster Ice-T collaboration. During the next few years, they would dabble in nü metal. And worse.

Slayer didn’t tour at all in 1997.

That year, the group released one song. And the tune officially qualified it as a lost year. Slayer participated in one of the 1990s’ great non-movements: a much-hyped imminent electronic music boom that never materialized (until well over a decade later,
if
you want to acknowledge the EDM movement).

Slayer was a natural fit for the soundtrack album to
Spawn
, a live-action adaptation of the comic book about an avenging demon. This disc had another crossover theme.

Happy Walters, the executive who oversaw the
Judgment Night Soundtrack
, was also at the helm for the
Spawn
album. The gimmicky soundtrack featured collaborations between rock and electronic acts. King liked Nine Inch Nails, so this collaboration didn’t require too much arm-twisting.

Slayer paired with Atari Teenage Riot, a German digital hardcore act that was hot for a minute. (In that context, the term “digital hardcore” refers to aggressive electronic music, not punk.) ATR was killer. The collaboration was not.

On “No Remorse (I Wanna Die)," King, Hanneman and Araya shared a writing credit with Riot mainman Alec Empire. The song consists of aimless loops, with Slayer riffage and Araya vocals filtered through studio electronics. Slayer’s presence is all but unrecognizable.

“I didn’t know anything about [ATR’s] music,” King told
Metal Hammer
. “They sent me some CDs. It kinda sounded like techno Slayer. That combines quite a bit more. We sent them some riffs, and they went to down doing their thing.”

Without question, it is Slayer’s most experimental moment — and the band’s least memorable recording. Given the nature of its creation, you can reasonably exclude the track from the Slayer discography.

Walters’ chemistry with the rest of the team was more volatile. According to an account in industry journal
Hits Daily Double
, at the BMG label’s 2004 Grammy party at the Hollywood Avalon, Walters reportedly headbutted Prem Akkaraju, vice president of operations for Sanctuary Management, the company that Sales was attached to at the time. Sales and Iron Maiden manager Rod Smallwood were just behind the fray
^32-3
.

 As described in the
Hits Daily Double
story, Smallwood stepped in to restrain Walters, and Sales was among the parties who were sucked into the melee. According to Smallwood’s subsequent account sent to
Hits Daily Double
, he stepped in to break up the tussle. Walters was ejected from the event. And the Sanctuary crew stayed
^33-3
.

Bad blood ran between Sanctuary and Walters, who felt Akkaraju had poached executive Carl Stubner, who left Walters’ Immortal to head up Sanctuary’s management wing, prompting a lawsuit from Walters
^33-4
. Walters is currently an NBA agent and co-chief operating officer of  Relativity Media, a movie and television studio connected to movies like
The Social Network
,
The Fighter
, and
The Bourne Legacy
^33-5
.

After a formulaic album and two cross-genre collaborations that turned into farts, Slayer appeared creatively bankrupt. At that moment, it seemed the group was subject to the same gravity that lures most great artistic forces down to earth. But the next album proved Slayer could still compete in the modern metal scene.

Chapter 34:

Diabolus in Musica

Slayer’s next album didn’t smooth things over with fans who felt burnt by the punk set and the subsequent techno track.

Released in 1998,
Diabolus in Musica
is the band’s most divisive original album from the Hanneman era.

Slayer’s seventh LP came together under the working title
Violent by Design
. But when it appeared, the title had a more highbrow ring:
Diabolus in Musica
. The disc is named for one of the key elements in Slayer’s sound, a discordant musical interval whose Latin name translates to “the Devil in Music.” The ominous sounds were banned in church music from medieval times through the Renaissance.

“Play a C and an F sharp together,” musicologist Paul Baker explains on his website, Diabolus.org. “To the modern ear, it's not a nice sound. OK to produce a passing scrunch in jazz, but not something you'd want to hear repeatedly unless you were watching a horror film.”
^34-1

To make this album, Slayer stayed in California. In late ’97 and early 1998, the band returned to Hollywood Sound and did the rest of the work at L.A.’s  Oceanway, formerly Ocean Way, the self-declared “world’s most awarded studio complex.” Its various locations had hosted sessions by Neil Diamond, Frank Zappa, Toto, and Linda Ronstadt
^34-2
.

Divine
engineer Gordon returned. And Rubin spent more time in the studio. He’s once again credited as the album’s producer.

“Rick Rubin produced us one more time,” King told Daniel Oliveira of Hard Force Magazine. “I don't think that he [was involved to the degree he did was] on
Seasons in the Abyss
. He was only an executive producer in my opinion…. I think that this time he has worked more on the drum sounds, even when we were not recording. For the guitars, we played, and he came to inspect what we were doing. He has never intervened without a good reason.”
^34-3

The album was a departure for Slayer’s visual style, too.
Diabolus
’ photography-based artwork conveys the title’s theme with photos of a masked monk. Photographer extraordinaire Alesia Exum, whose portfolio includes work on Pantera’s
The Great Southern Trendkill
, contributed the thoroughly creepy pictures.

Released on American June 9, it peaked at no. 31 on the
Billboard
album chart.

At the time, especially following a career low like “No Remorse (I Wanna Die),”
Diabolus
felt like a real breath of fresh air. It’s the band’s last consistently catchy album.

Rhythm and groove define
Diabolus
. Araya had wanted to incorporate Latin rhythms into it, but that notion never took root. By Slayer standards, though, “Love to Hate” is downright funky. Bostaph’s development from The Truth About Seafood is on display, though the disc’s overall rhythmic appeal owes as much Hanneman’s riffs as its drumming, which is far looser on than Bostaph’s work on
Divine
.

Bostaph earned his keep, working under a stern taskmaster who wasn’t easy to satisfy.

“He is a work addict,” King told Oliveira. “I thought that drummers were only doing rhythm.... Paul does a lot more. He has a guitarist touch. He structures the song.”

A sizeable contingent of the fanbase hated — and still hate —
Diabolus
. The naysayers claim Slayer had done the unthinkable: watered down their sound and chased the nü metal trend.

At the time, the genre — also transcribed as “new metal” and “nu metal” — described the groovier, lighter form of metal that, at the time, was popular and spreading. In subsequent years, the genre became a punchline. But in 1998, it wasn’t synonymous with “shitty downtuned rock” yet. It was on its way, though, as credible leaders like Slipknot and System of a Down opened the door for bands like Disturbed and Drowning Pool. You can argue whether
Diabolus
is true nü metal. But denying the label takes some effort.

“Death’s  Head” is a soundtrack for a lose-your-shit moshpit, though its solo sounds a lot like King and Hanneman are playing power drills. King and Hanneman spend the bulk of the album tuned to drop-C. “Stain of Mind” features some sounds that are uncomfortably close to turntable scratching. The processed vocals in “Overt Enemy” have a bubbly underwater quality. Slayer are experimenting, and the results aren’t always promising.

Diabolus
is Hanneman’s album. He wrote the lyrics for three songs, split one with Araya, divided another with Araya and King, and collaborated with King on one, “Love to Hate.” He composed the music for ten of the eleven songs.

Araya wrote one set of lyrics solo (“Desire”) and received a third of a writing credit for “Screaming From the Sky.”  

Distracted by his growing snake-breeding business, King wrote lyrics to five songs by himself, and contributed to another two. He wrote the music for just one song, “In the Name of God.” It’s another one of King’s direct anti-God rants: “Lies in the name of God / In this world of shit I exist / Perfect world conforms / I resist.”

A thoughtful examination of mankind’s inner decay, “Stain of Mind” is one of King’s better post-trilogy lyrical efforts. The song survived in the set list after Lombardo returned. Lombardo might have made the rest of the songs even better, but the album’s elementary grooves aren’t compatible with his hyperkinetic style.

The Japanese version included two bonus tracks: “Point” plays like a superior rewrite of
Divine Intervention
’s “Serenity in Murder.” It’s a slow-build power keg with lyrics by King and music by Hanneman, in which Bostaph drums his ass off. “Wicked” is a six-minute trudge with music by Hanneman and King, and lyrics by Araya and Bostaph — and more powerful drumming to boot. The tune is the drummer’s second songwriting credit in Slayer, which amounts to two more than Lombardo ever received.

[Click here for album's full songwriting credits in Appendix B]

The 11 American songs run 40 minutes. On a technicality, the Japanese version stands as Slayer’s longest studio disc, with 13 songs clocking in at just under 51 minutes.

Diabolus
isn’t the band’s most brutal moment, but it’s far from their worst.

Writing for Blabbermouth, Borivoj Krgin later noted, “1998's
Diabolus In Musica
was at least a feeble attempt at incorporating updated elements into the group's sound, the presence of which elevated the band's efforts somewhat and offered hope that Slayer could refrain from endlessly rehashing their previous material for their future output.”
^34-5

One of the album’s bigger critics played guitar on it.

King has repeatedly criticized himself for not playing a larger role in
Diabolus
. In the documentary series
Metal Evolution
, King himself dismissed the disc as nü metal and compared it to a trendy, keyboard-damaged, glam-influenced Judas Priest album from 1986. Said King, “That’s our
Turbo
.”
^34-6

In metal parlance, that is a damning evaluation.

The rest of the group didn’t think it was
that
bad.

“I like it a lot,” Araya told
Midwest Metal Magazine
at the time. “To me it's different, but it's still Slayer. I like what I did vocally, and it's a big difference. I feel I'm singing with more passion.”
^34-5

Technically, it’s important to note what an artist has to say about his work. But all such self-evaluations should be substantially discounted until someone says, “My latest piece is mediocre, and it will disappoint even my most loyal fans.”

King didn’t seem to mind this disc when it came out.
Classic Metal Show
host Chris Akin recalled interviewing the guitarist in 1998.

“[King] was quite frustrated when I told him I didn’t like the release,” says Akin. “I believe his exact quote to me was that I ‘wasn’t mature enough to understand the band’s evolution on this album.’  I guess I’m still childish, then. I got what Slayer was trying to do with
Diabolus in Musica
. Simply put, it didn’t work. Kerry King once called this release ‘Slayer’s
Turbo
.’  That’s probably too good for this one. It’s more like their
Lulu
,
St. Anger
, and
Risk
, all rolled into one unlistenable mess of sound. In the end, this is the
only
Slayer release that isn’t available on my iPod, and with good reason.”