Slayer
Christ Illusion

The Slayer return to the track with a brutal sonic murder five years after the decent "God Hates Us All".

The return of Dave Lombardo can only make long-time fans happy. Paul Bostaph is an excellent drummer, perhaps at Dave's level, but he was missing something to make the Slayer sound 100%. The sonic journey spans just under 40 minutes of aggression. Blasphemous as always, and even more so, Slayer take on everything, religion (even getting called a whore in "Cult"), war, death, and a lot of other bullshit typical of Araya and company's lyrics.
Let's face it, Slayer are awesome because of this, they shouldn't be taken seriously. King and Hannemann, as usual, assault their six strings with brutality, with extremely violent, fast and sharp riffs, or slow and heavy as boulders. Finally, the solos return to being electrifying, direct, and numerous like on masterpieces such as "Reign In Blood" and "South Of Heaven".

The bass is as usual non-existent. Besides attempting to play the bass, Araya spits a torrent of nonsense in our face, making you want to smash the face of the first idiot you see (YOAAAA... I miss Coppino). Dave Lombardo is the usual killing machine, with breaks, breaks, and more breaks following and a powerful double bass drum as in the best episodes. It's difficult to highlight the best tracks, originality has never been a dominant feature of the Californian thrasher's sound. Certainly, the leading track "Cult" made a great impression, as did the opener "Flesh Storm", and the slower "Eyes Of The Insane" and "Catatonic", but the rest of the package has no weak points.

"Christ Illusion" is a good album, to be clear, nothing new, all already heard, but still gives us some new songs from one of the bands that has always kept the flag of Metal flying high. Rating: 6.5 *This is not a negative rating, quite the opposite. If an album like this had come out in 1986, it would have received a much higher rating. An album that in terms of importance is no more valuable than 'St. Anger' by Metallica, but at least it's well-played.