Slayer - Diabolus In Musica (1998)

The world's most hateful, influential and heavyweight thrash act have naturally moved on from the days of satanic imagery and hellish album covers. 'Divine...' was a major disappointment though, lost on me with its cover, its sound, its lyrics and its general lack of bloody oomph. However, 'Diabolus...' is even more of a shambles. The riffs are surely from another band, an industrialised grind that lacks the thrashy violence of before, and now the heaviness has flown the nest, proving once again how much of an error it was to oust drum legend Dave Lombardo. With idiotic band's such as Slipknot now on the scene, it seems that Slayer have suddenly stopped being the arrogant kings of Hell and instead hung up their weapons and taken to sounding like other bands instead of leading a parade of the damned into the red waters of the River Styx.

Admittedly, the metal scene from '95 onwards was a void for me, and although I never expected another 'reign In Blood', I'm not even digging the titles here, i.e. 'Scrum', 'Wicked', 'Point' etc, although lyrically most of 'Diabolus...' (terrible album title) is lyrically superior to 'Divine..', 'Bitter peace' begins with menace, Hanneman's work of menace however is soon lost in another Slayer snowstorm that passes without effect. Worryingly, Araya only gets his hands on one track, 'Desire', the rest is King with Hanneman in-between, wouldn't be a bad thing if the tracks levelled up against the earlier works, but here you just know when the wayward solo's are going to come in, streaming and screaming into the darkness, but it's hardly thought-provoking or even vicious. 'Death's Head' raises the bar, but King's 'Stain Of Mind' only needs a rapper on it and some masked twat from Slipknot and he'll be well away.

The album fizzes by leaving one unfulfilled and realising that it'll be another handful of years before Slayer can be arsed to get in the studio. Of course, we all know by this time that another 'Reign In Blood' rip-off is due, or King will become possessed by his nu-metal friends and Slayer will end up embarrassingly supporting them on tour....oh...that did happen!!! Shocking.

Scream, spit and swear as much as you want guys, but I'm not hearing it anymore. This is Slayer's worst album.

5/10