SLAYER in Moscow, Arena Moscow club

With SLAYER, the hardest thing is convincing yourself that their performances can be described in words at all. Perhaps the most concise summary is this: a bomb, after whose detonation everyone survived, satisfied, and regretful only that the blast wave was brief. This was their fourth visit to moscow; between the first and second there was a gap of ten long years, but the intervals have been shrinking steadily: November 2008 at B1 Maximum, a joint show with MEGADETH at the Olimpiysky in March 2011, and now, just over a year later, the current event at Arena moscow club — not a sellout, but comfortably packed and even hotter. SLAYER in general are a remarkable testament to the wonderful fact that headbanging, circles around the stage, and musicians in a state of frenzy are by no means an essential component of energy and charisma. On stage are four people: guitarist Kerry King, the band's leader, who for most of the time is fairly static and occasionally stands with his back to the crowd entirely; Gary Holt, standing in for Jeff Hanneman, is more mobile but still primarily focused on Jeff's impossibly fast guitar parts. For over a year Gary has been dedicated to SLAYER's live duties, even at the expense of his main band EXODUS — connected to Jeff Hanneman's illness, as he continues to recover from a spider bite to his arm. As Kerry recently stated in an interview, Jeff is entirely capable of playing and recording material in the studio but isn't yet ready for live performances, which the band has always approached with absolute perfectionism. Then the other two: Dave Lombardo — formerly the prodigal drummer and now once again an inseparable part of the quartet — and centre stage, naturally, the band's irreplaceable bassist and vocalist Tom Araya, a man of contrasts. He studied to be a respiratory therapist and worked briefly in that profession (in US medical hierarchy, the role sits much closer to a nurse than a doctor), yet became a musician. Tom is left-handed but holds his pick in his right hand. He is Catholic, as is his entire family, yet for twenty years has been performing the deeply anti-Christian songs written by Kerry King. He is the frontman of a band considered the benchmark of thrash metal — while after back surgery his head is virtually immobile and headbanging is entirely out of the question. And finally, Tom Araya has an absolutely radiant smile and fantastically kind eyes, which he turns on the audience during the instrumental passages of yet another saga about humans murdering, violating, and burning each other.

The queue outside the club was fairly long but not extreme. The band opened the concert around half past nine with their biggest hit of recent years, World Painted Blood from the album of the same name, and immediately destroyed the hall before rebuilding it from scratch — compensating for the relatively static musicians on stage. The next song from the same album was dedicated to Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo — no joke: Psychopathy Red is literally about him, and the single was even packaged as a criminal case folder with text in russian. In general, apart from the most recent album, nothing pre-1990 was played — meaning four albums were left out entirely. The anthology of the band's work began with the incomparable War Ensemble, the hall quickly picking up the magnificent maxim "The final swing is not a drill / It's how many people I can kill." A surprise entry on the programme: Die by the Sword from the very first album of 1983 — proto-thrash more than anything, closer to heavier heavy metal — yet live it sounded excellent and didn't stick out at all despite being mid-paced on average. Chemical Warfare and Hell Awaits from the single and album of 1984–85 also featured. From the latest release, the Grammy-nominated (but losing out to JUDAS PRIEST) Hate Worldwide — notable for its rather unusual structure — was also presented, along with Snuff: admittedly far from the popularity of the SLIPKNOT ballad of the same name, but this in no way diminishes the qualities of this fine composition. In general, whenever the band experiments it is always welcome — however, regardless of whether a band enjoys or regrets its own experiments, there are two approaches to handling its own catalogue. In the first, musicians stubbornly push their unconventional and divisive work, their sets are unpredictable, certain hits may be pointedly omitted. The second approach: despite all the circumstances, the band plays what its audience most wants to hear. In thrash metal there are two vivid examples of this second approach — KREATOR, who haven't played songs from four of their 1990s albums for years (except "Phobia"), and SLAYER, who likewise disregard those same 1990s albums. The hardcore-inflected songs were never popular with the main fanbase, so the band constructs its set around the albums universally recognised as genre benchmarks: Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the Abyss. Songs from precisely these albums drove the audience to frenzy once more: the sinister Dead Skin Mask, the ferocious Spirit in Black, and the majestic Seasons in the Abyss — all from the album of that name — the charging Silent Scream, which so many other metal bands love to cover, the furious Mandatory Suicide from the preceding album — and of course an entire block from Reign in Blood, universally considered the number one album in thrash: Altar of Sacrifice, Postmortem, Jesus Saves. Three songs remain unmentioned. They delivered the final blow to the sweltering arena: the main set closed with Angel of Death, a song over which SLAYER have been accused of Nazi propaganda for many years — fairly comically, considering a Latino frontman — any contemporary documentary director making films about the history of the Third Reich could face identical accusations. In any case, it is the band's number one hit, and its lyrical content recounts without any glorification the story of sadistic physician Josef Mengele — just as the already-mentioned song from the latest album is dedicated to the same Chikatilo, another deeply unpleasant individual. The encore was predictable: naturally South of Heaven, sung practically in unison by the hall, the prediction "Before you see the light — You must die" particularly audible. And to close — naturally Raining Blood — another hit, popularised alongside War Ensemble in recent years through Guitar Hero. Blood didn't rain from the ceiling, but the concert was clearly no worse for it.

In brief: an absolutely stunning concert. Particularly encouraging is the fact that the band visits us ever more frequently and still draws a respectable crowd — not record-breaking, but solid. Here's to the new album, the new tour, and above all, best wishes to Jeff Hanneman for a full recovery.

Slayer