Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Zagreb / Tvornica kulture / Croatia
Concert date: 23.06.2013
Attendance: 1100
Ticket price: 220 kuna
The legendary American metallers Slayer, an institution and the bible of thrash metal rolled into one, are roaming Europe again in 2013. They’re regulars on the Old Continent and come back every year, so catching one of their shows these days is hardly an exclusive event. Still, the size of their name, even a quarter century after the golden era, is big enough that the masses make the pilgrimage to a Slayer gig. While next year will mark a full twenty years since their last headline show in Slovenia (not counting the two appearances at Metal Camp in Tolmin), our southern neighbors have been luckier: last Sunday the Americans stopped in Zagreb for the third time in as many years. Two years ago they played the Zagreb Arena with Megadeth, last year they were hosted by Močvara, and this time Slayer landed at the club Tvornica.
But things in the Slayer camp will never be the same. Until recently nobody realized that original guitarist and author of most of their hits Jeff Hanneman, after a nasty infection in his arm caused by a spider bite, would never return to the band. Just when it looked like he was getting better and his comeback was only a matter of time, the metal world was shocked in early May by the news that Hanneman had died of liver cirrhosis at just 49. But there’s simply too much money swirling around the band for that to mean the end. That goes even at the price of missing original drummer Dave Lombardo, who fell out with management over the financial details of his membership this spring, before the Australian tour, and got the boot fast. Just like in the nineties, Paul Bostaph stepped in to replace him. If Slayer were still, just three years ago, the only one of the big metal bands still running in its original lineup after three decades, in Zagreb only Tom Araya (vocals, bass) and Kerry King (guitar) remained from the original crew.
Tvornica turned out to be the ideal location for a Slayer show! Considering the band’s reputation, the small club was jam-packed at half past nine in the evening, when the show was supposed to start. The tiers climbed up to the ceiling in the slightly rounded club, and since Tvornica isn’t much bigger in capacity than our own Cvetličarna, the atmosphere was incredibly intimate. When Slayer kicked off with the opener World Painted Blood, all that energy just blew the crowd apart! The club was instantly swallowed by a hellish vibe, which the »prison-like« shape of the room amplified even more! Total chaos in the spirit of Metallica’s video for St. Anger, in other words!
Slayer remain minimalists even with their new stage look. Their Zagreb show was explosive. On stage, the guitar duo of Gary Holt (Exodus) and Kerry King pulled killer riffs out of their sleeves and kept a violent stampede going through mostly older material, trading solos back and forth. In the first half of the show Slayer served up Bloodline and Disciple back to back, two punchy tracks from »God Hates Us All« (2001), an album as important to Slayer as, say, »Brave New World« is to Iron Maiden. Paul Bostaph tortured the drums mercilessly. He returned to the lineup after a good decade and, despite the absence of the hard-to-replace Lombardo, brought some credibility with him: whatever his idiosyncratic technique, he’s the only drummer on this planet Slayer could really entrust with the job. Next to that grim trio, the only smiling member on stage remains frontman Tom Araya. His wild performances are a thing of the past; decades of constant touring have drained much of his strength and vocal form, so even at a (for a veteran) youthful 52 he’s a pale shadow of former times. Tour schedules are packed, so Araya carefully conserves his voice, and in Zagreb he didn’t tackle the aggressive lines with the charm of an enthusiastic youngster, but you can’t really blame a frontman of Chilean roots who’s getting grayer by the day.
Since this was a headline show, Slayer stretched their set by about twenty minutes compared to the day before, when they played the See Rock festival in neighboring Graz. When they strung together the eighties classics in the second half, Tvornica was boiling with excitement and sweat was spraying out of the mosh pit in streams! Postmortem, Alter of Sacrifice and Jesus Saves are all from their most famous album, »Reign in Blood« (1986), which to this day remains an inexhaustible treasure trove of ideas for every extreme metal band. Even though the late Jeff Hanneman wrote most of the Slayer material and was thus the soul of the band, the group didn’t pay tribute to him on stage with so much as a word. Fine, they don’t go in for the typical sugary American pathos, but the fallen warrior could still have been mentioned to the crowd, especially since Tom Araya said in one of his first statements after Hanneman’s death that they would play out the European tour in his memory. Dead Skin Mask, with one of the evilest metal riffs ever, sent goosebumps all over the body, which were quickly dispelled by the beating from the heated-up neighbors in the pit after Slayer bid farewell to the main set with the hard-hitting Raining Blood.
After some of the most famous riffs in thrash metal, the encore finally delivered a visual tribute to Hanneman too. For the evening’s final two songs, South of Heaven and Angel of Death, the backdrop was swapped for the famous modified Heineken logo that accompanied Jeff on his guitar for many years. The words on the banner reminded the crowd that the angel of death has reaped in the Slayer camp too, something those of us who follow older rock and metal bands, like it or not, have to slowly start getting used to…
For every Slayer fan, the Zagreb show came less than two months after the news of Jeff Hanneman’s death shocked us, so it was first and foremost a memorial. Still, almost two hours of old-school set and the hellish atmosphere of a miniature club made for another triumphant night, even though Slayer have long since said what they had to say, and brought back moments when Jeff Hanneman was still raging on the left side of the stage. May the earth rest lightly on him… south of heaven!
Setlist
1. World Painted Blood
2. Hallowed Point
3. War Ensemble
4. Hate Worldwide
5. At Dawn They Sleep
6. Bloodline
7. Disciple
8. Mandatory Suicide
9. Chemical Warfare
10. The Antichrist
11. Die by the Sword
12. Postmortem
13. Altar of Sacrifice
14. Jesus Saves
15. Payback
16. Seasons in the Abyss
17. Hell Awaits
18. Dead Skin Mask
19. Raining Blood
—encore—
20. South of Heaven
21. Angel of Death
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