Slayer
Show No Mercy

THE REVIEW

Since, as the proverb goes, “third time’s a charm,” I return to reviewing, this time choosing one of my all-time favorite albums: "Show No Mercy" by those fine soldiers of Christ our Lord known as Slayer. I must state that I hate Slayer with all my heart as people: four stinky drunkards dedicated to racism and the adoration of unspeakable deities: the exact opposite of my ideology.

Now I want to take you on a time jump of over two decades: go back with your mind to the distant 1983.
Good times, you might say, and rightly so: being in Los Angeles and facing evening skirmishes armed with studs, screwdrivers, and various tools against the pop stars of the era shouting: “Come on motherfuckers, face the Slayer!” must have been a unique experience. Surely, during one of these furious brawls, you must have found yourself next to at least one member of Slayer, a group inspired by the best Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Venom, which at the time regularly performed covers of Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest.
“ WHAAAT?!” you might say. Well, in 1983 playing “extreme” metal was more of a concept, an idea, of which there was only a vague impression from what had already been heard from the various Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple but especially Black Sabbath. The genre originates from the Bay Area, from where the bands that most helped to define this genre came, giving it a shape, an image, in short, something that could remove from the amorphous anonymity what would later become thrash, death, black metal.

Slayer were among the first to try, in 1983, with this “Show No Mercy” that I'm reviewing, thoroughly busting your chops. This CD is the “beginning of it all,” the start of a devastating crescendo leading to masterpieces such as “Hell Awaits,” ”Reign In Blood” and so on. The contribution to better define thrash was also brought a few months later by ‘Tallica’s “Kill 'Em All,” decidedly rawer and angrier than “Show No Mercy.”
No “Reign In Blood” speeds or chilling screams like “Angel Of Death”: we are faced with an album that, as impossible as it may seem since it's associated with the word Slayer and as I said above, recalls the sounds of classic Heavy Metal of the previous two decades, proposing a faster form of NWOBHM, slightly more technical and stuffed with clearly Nazi-Satanic inspired lyrics, played as God (or Satan ;-) ) commands by the original lineup of the Los Angeles band. We thus find Tom Araya in great form, who often uses screams and falsetto that remind us of the legendary Sabs, the two axe-men Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King who, although far from the devastating riffing that started right from the next “Haunting The Chapel,” offer a surely better performance than the flat, absolutely banal solos lacking the slightest inventiveness of the last three releases. Behind the drums, who do we find? But Dave Lombardo, obviously. The great Cuban-origin drummer here offers a slightly inferior performance to the subsequent ones, but still praiseworthy: you have to keep in mind that Dave doesn't use the double pedal on this CD, but uses the single one very well.

The CD pivots on true sound masterpieces such as “The Antichrist,” “Evil Has No Boundaries,” “Black Magic,” “The Final Command,” and the historic milestone “Die By The Sword,” perhaps the best track on the entire CD, being the most representative. Also noteworthy is “Metalstorm-Face The Slayer,” clearly inspired by “Phantom Of The Opera” by the legendary (understand dear colleague The Bassist? IRON MAIDEN LEGENDARY! ;-) ) Iron Maiden.
The lyrics range from “Hail Satan” to “Nazism reigns” to “Why don’t we wage more wars?” to “Blood and guts everywhere”: in short, the worst one can imagine. Precisely because of this, these immature and stupid lyrics and the repetition of words like “Satan,” “Death,” and “Kill” caused the first of the unfortunately numerous criticisms and accusations of Nazi-Satanism to King, Hanneman, and Araya, criticisms they still carry on their back today.

In conclusion, an excellent album, absolutely fundamental and certainly not negligible for the innovation and coordination it provided at the time. Many bands were inspired (and are still inspired today) by this album: in short, we are facing a timeless masterpiece, much like what was done for “Kill ‘Em All.”

(P.S. Guys, I wanted to make this shorter, but I just couldn't do it! Writing it concisely seemed to minimize such a great album! What do you think anyway? Tell me and rate, I put effort into it, but feel free to speak! Bye everyone!)