Some "mainstream" reviews:
Chuck Campbell Scripps Howard News Service August 07, 2006
"CHRIST ILLUSION," Slayer (American)
It's been a few years since Slayer brought us an apocalypse, but the current U.S. political/social climate has proven the perfect environment to spawn a brand new hurricane of hate from the influential thrash-metal pioneers. Slayer's originals members - including on-again/off-again drummer Dave Lombardo - work with their longtime producer Rick Rubin plus Josh Abraham to vilify the establishment on "Christ Illusion," all while sliding in some searing guitar solos by Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman. The themes and sound are familiar, though in context of a conservative-trending America, Slayer seems edgier and more daring these days than the group did in the 1990s. "Christ Illusion" may be just toxic enough to spur someone to resurrect the Parents Music Resource Center. Singer/bass player Tom Araya initially drives full-throttle into anti-war sentiments with sideswipes at government and religion. On opener "Flesh Storm," he wails that war is "psychotic devotion manipulated with no discretion." Indictments of those in power and gruesome imagery of violence carry on through the exasperated chaos of "Catalyst," the head-banging scorcher "Eyes of the Insane" and the sprawling metal of "Jihad." Eventually Slayer gets around to directly putting the "Christ" in "Christ Illusion." On the track "Skeleton Christ" Araya rides a fragmented gallop as he cries, "I've seen the ways of God/I'll take the devil any day," and on "Cult" he unleashes lines that would likely make any Christian (plus more than a few non-Christians) squirm. As always, Slayer's cynical sentiments may be genuine, if over the line, but the whole notion of guitar solos piercing into such heavy lyrics betrays that, yeah, this is still just a show. A challenging, cacophonous, hardcore show, but a show all the same.
Rating (five possible): 3-1/2
Aaron Yoxheimer The Morning Call (Penn.) August 12, 2006
SLAYER "CHRIST ILLUSION" (American)
METAL That Slayer is the heaviest metal outfit the United States has ever produced is a given. Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Pantera and a megaton bomb combined can't match the band's intensity on stage. So it should come as no surprise that "Christ Illusion's" opening track, the war-inspired "Flesh Storm," is as brutal as a typical afternoon in Baghdad. Problem is, unlike Slayer's biggest battle anthem, "War Ensemble," from 1990's "Seasons in the Abyss," the song doesn't have any riffs that are truly memorable. Even Slayer at its most supercharged always had parts that would burn like napalm in your mind well after you listened to it -- just ask any fan who ever hummed, Beavis and Butt-head-style, to "Raining Blood" or "South of Heaven." With "Christ Illusion," most songs either have plenty of velocity but little substance ("Supremist"), or are grinding, power chord-laden numbers that fall short of the legacy that Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman and crew have created for themselves ("Catatonic"). Much has been made of the fact that "Christ Illusion" is drummer Dave Lombardo's first record with Slayer since "Seasons," and his fans won't be disappointed, as he picks up right where he left off 16 years ago. Lyrically, Slayer again shows a willingness to take on challenging subject matter. "Eyes of the Insane," the disc's strongest track, is about the perils of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by Iraq war vets, while the controversial "Jihad" deals with the 9/11 attacks from the terrorists' point of view. All fine attributes, to be sure, but after a five-year wait for a new studio album, you would expect something a little more substantive than "Christ Illusion."
Darryl Sterdan The Edmonton Sun August 6, 2006
SLAYER CHRIST ILLUSION (American)
3 1/2 out of 5
You gotta love Slayer. Or you gotta hate them. Those are the only two options. No middle ground. Either you would happily let them kill you to have sex with your corpse, or you want them banned, jailed and perhaps castrated so their genes cannot be passed on to future generations. Whichever side you're on, their dozenth disc will only reinforce your belief. Christ Illusion is like virtually all these satanic speed-demons' albums - including God Hates Us All, which came out, in a suitably evil coincidence, on 9-11. Which is to say: It's a cacophonous, chaotic and controversial attack on conformity, Christianity, combat and clear hearing. The cover pictures a drugged-up, mutilated Jesus. The lyrics (that we can print) are mostly along the lines of, "Religion is hate, religion is fear, religion is war / Religion is rape, religion's obscene, religion's a whore." If that sounds familiar, it oughta - Slayer haven't changed their tune or watered down their message in 20 years, and they sure aren't gonna start now. And you gotta respect that.
Chris Campion The Observer August 13, 2006
SLAYER CHRIST ILLUSION (American)
Fomenting dissent through diabolical means for almost 25 years, Slayer have assumed a pre-eminent role in the metal scene. The south California four-piece are the Beatles forged in hell, waging ceaseless war against fundamentalist thought and doctrine. The irony being that Slayer practise their own form of fundamentalism. As apostles of apostasy, they view the devil as the ultimate safeguard of vitality against the lunatic mythology of a god that would damn us all. Their sound, too, which marries hellish imagery and blazing metal riffs with the aggression of hardcore punk, has remained true to the strict template they set for themselves in the early Eighties, after forming the band as teenagers in the Los Angeles suburb of Huntington Park.
Slayer challenge the critical notion that a band must progress to remain vital, where progression is a gradual march into the commercial mainstream marked through creative obsolescence. One need only look at the fate of Metallica, once their thrash metal peers, whose willingness to compromise has bred an overwhelming insecurity and turned them into unwitting buffoons. By comparison, Slayer's integrity is as unyielding as their music and continues to bring them new legions of devoted fans.
Christ Illusion , their tenth album, is their most rigorously conceived and focused for years. War is the prevailing theme on tracks such as 'Flesh Storm' and 'Eyes of the Insane'. The latter, a first-person narrative about a soldier whose sanity has been shredded by war, was directly inspired by an article singer Tom Araya read about a much-decorated US serviceman who returned from Iraq utterly diminished by shellshock. The suggestion is that to truly comprehend the madness of the world, one must have the capacity to invoke it.
'Jihad' takes this to the extreme. Written through the eyes of a suicide bomber on a mission to kill 'The Great Satan', it pitches marauding vocals against precise military drumming and brutally concise buzzsaw guitar riffs. This song finds its antithetical number in 'Cult', whose chorus runs 'Religion is rape, religion's obscene, religion's a whore'.
This willingness to explore diametric opposites lyrically while ploughing an unwavering musical path is what lends Slayer their strength as a band. Christ Illusion posits the idea of heresy as the last bastion of free speech for the damned. And it does so in such a convincing manner that only the foolish would dare argue with them.
Matt Elliott The Tulsa World August 12, 2006
SLAYER "CHRIST ILLUSION" (American)
Slayer's 10th studio album hit stores Tuesday, showing that while many of the thrash-metal band's fans have grown up, the 23-year-old act appears to have simply aged. "Christ Illusion" continues the band's lambasting of Christianity ad nauseam, with lyrics laced with vocalist/bassist Tom Araya's bizarre preoccupation with serial killers. In a press release accompanying the album, guitarist Kerry King, the album's main contributor, dubs it the band's best since 1990's metal classic, "Seasons in the Abyss." That doesn't appear to be the case. Although original drummer Dave Lombardo has returned to the lineup, gone are the drawn out, dual-guitar melodies and dark sense of humor that characterized past classic albums such as "Reign In Blood" and "Hell Awaits." While "Christ" starts out promisingly with "Flesh Storm" -- a thrashing, screaming ditty about violence in the media -- the cliched subject wears thin with lyrics such as: "Killing's in style and it's now the main event. The cameras are whores for the daily bloodshed. Like a junkie hungry for a fix of anything, the media devours and feasts upon the inhumane." Other songs on the 10-track, approximately 39-minute album don't stand out musically as the band's better works have. Songs like "Skeleton Christ," "Jihad" and "Eyes of the Insane" are filled with similar chords, similar riffs and the same speedy, nonsensical but technically adept guitar solos from King and fellow guitarist Jeff Hanneman. "Consfearacy" is one of the album's few bright spots and seems to be a song about politics, but the words don't come out right: "No one's in control, when the government's the enemy." The album's Christianity lyrics might seem pithy to a 14-year-old outcast growing up in suburban America, but they ring shallow and judgmental now. It closes with the standout, lightning-fast "Supremist," but the song falters over Araya's screamed lyrics, including "I will eradicate, obliterate, depopulate, divine atrocious suffering, cleansation of the weak, supremacy." I'm pretty sure "cleansation" is not a word. If they realize that, and it's meant to be ironic, any attempt at irony by now garners about as much esteem from me as a dead otter. Slayer seems to be relying more on a reputation earned from past classics and appears to be struggling to recover from a slide that began following 1994's "Divine Intervention."
Pod pick: "Flesh Storm."
D.X. Ferris Cleveland Scene August 9, 2006
SLAYER CHRIST ILLUSION (American)
Christ Illusion improves mightily on its predecessor, 2001's clunky God Hates Us All the low point of a 24-year run. The band's ninth studio album is comparable to Seasons in the Abyss but its relentless frenzy lacks the subtleties that made Reign in Blood and Seasons in the Abyss high-water marks. Even with the return to the fold of original drummer Dave Lombardo, the disc feels more like the transitional phase of an upswing.
Guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman are thrash metal's finest lyrical tag team capable of creating verses so striking that Tori Amos covered one of their songs. However, King wrote most of this album himself, dipping his quill in blood. Saving complexity for blinding guitar leads, he's content with such middle-finger missives as "You'll never see the second coming/It's all a fuckin' mockery," from "Skeleton Christ." Sixteen years after Seasons, the shredders' dizzying fretwork in "Eyes of the Insane" is a killer soundtrack for the latest Gulf war -- the times haven't changed much, and neither has the music.
Kevin Elliot The Columbus Dispatch August 10, 2006
SLAYER CHRIST ILLUSION (American)
Some might say that with what's happening in the world today, there has never been a better time for Slayer. Dave Lombardo, the band's original drummer, must agree, as his return to the fold helps Christ Illusion transcend the substandard material churned out after his departure in 1990. It's difficult to imagine Slayer any heavier, faster and angrier than on Reign in Blood (1986), but on Cult and Flesh Storm it succeeds. Most of the album's lyrics are a diatribe against war, religion and the Bush administration's sense of diplomacy, while the music provides the perfect soundtrack for Slayer's reinvigorated call for rebellion.
Jim Farber New York Daily News August 6, 2006
SLAYER "CHRIST ILLUSION"(American)
Slayer couldn't have chosen a better time to come ranting and raving back to life. Their first album in five years appears at the precise moment that the planet seems most hellbent on ending it all, whether through wars in the Middle East, a total meltdown from global warming, or the imminent release of the first CD from Paris Hilton.Into this maddening vortex now lumbers a band who, from the start, has created its own patented strain of heavy metal protest music. Though Slayer has often been either accused or admired (depending on your point of view) for being Satanists, nihilists and general no-goodniks, at heart they're as earnest as flower children.
Once again, on the speed-metal band's new album, they sincerely critique conformity, manipulation and enforced aggression, with the main culprits being the two big Gs: Government and God.The language they've chosen to advance their arguments isn't exactly pretty, subtle or always morally clear: "Visions of decapitation/my mental masturbation," goes one choice couplet.
Another verse advises: "There's no future/the world is dead/So save that last bullet/for your head." If such lyrical fancies may strike some as radical, offensive or just plain dumb, the music they're linked to couldn't be more conservative - or more skilled. Slayer hasn't tinkered a tad with the sound it helped pioneer in the early '80s, alongside bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax. While those other acts all moved on long ago (Metallica with the most range and talent), Slayer still snarls every syllable, slams every chord, and never lets its pace slacken below all-hell's-breaking-loose level.
If anything, their new album represents a further retrenchment of the style. It's Slayer's first to reunite their initial line up in 16 years, even if that only means bringing back their first drummer. Also reinstated is uber-producer Rick Rubin.Though the band's sound and approach isn't new enough to surprise, at least their refusal to change communicates an admirable sense of loyalty. And the brute minimalism of their sound still carries some residual edge.
Then there's that timing issue to consider. Slayer's last CD - the touchingly titled "God Hates Us All" - came out just two months before 9/11. The world changed at that moment. Slayer's message hasn't. But never has it sounded more true.
Ben Ratliff Metal's Harsh Message, Well Timed New York Times August 14, 2006
When Slayer first appeared in Southern California in the early 80's, its music was basically incontrovertible: it projected no guile, invited no interpretation. It just was. If you had no use for it, you knew right away. Metal always has an internal obligation to be different from the rest of rock 'n' roll, and Slayer's kind was faster, darker, leaner and less ambiguous. ''Reign in Blood,'' from 1986, the record that made Slayer's name, was recorded without studio echo; all the meaning of the music was right there in the sound.
The images of its songs, then and thereafter, were projected coldly: war, suffering, death, torture, organized religion and the connections among them all. There will always be those who seek comfort in pessimism, and there will always be war. Slayer set itself up to be around for a long time. Its newest CD is ''Christ Illusion'' (American Recordings). But the band has for a long time seemed a limited subcategory. Though the music has taken some slight side routes into slower tempos, grooves and sung-instead-of-shouted vocals, the themes of the lyrics have always been the same.
So you could age out of the relentless grimness, or grow numb to it. You could follow music and not be aware that Slayer existed anymore: the music has changed so much in 20 years, and Slayer fans tend to be the people who are invisible to the news media: immigrants, kitchen workers, unpopular teenagers. ''Christ Illusion,'' Slayer's 10th studio album, deals again with the same type of material, but more pointedly about violence and religion in the service of war. Timing is everything. The band's last album was released on Sept. 11, 2001, and only the most devoted took it in. But with religious extremism and death tolls the subject of casual daily conversations, ''Christ Illusion'' makes Slayer sound as if it has been holding the trump card all along. This is how a new record -- all right, a very good new record -- by a hoary death-metal band can feel significant.
''Violence is our way of liiiife!,'' shouts Tom Araya, assuming the generalized first-person-interior point of view in the opening song's chorus. ''The cameras are whores/for the daily bloodshed,'' he screams on, ''like a junkie/hungry for a fix of anything/the media devours/and feasts upon the inhumane.'' And later: ''Only fallen have won/because the fallen can't run/my vision's not obscure/for war there is no cure.'' Take away some of the song's asides, which editorialize against all religions, and you have to consider that this isn't metalhead horror fiction: he's not making anything up here. Mr. Araya -- as well as Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, the band's guitarists and other songwriters -- are trying to understand war from the inside, on the levels, below reason, of revenge and survival. And they are trying to shock too, but they can't out-shock the front page of a newspaper on an average day.
The album has a kind of demented gravity, and the music bears it out: it is the most concentrated, focused Slayer record in 20 years. The album's best song, arguably, is ''Jihad,'' whose fast guitar riff decelerates and bursts forward again in two-bar stretches, over Dave Lombardo's pounding, fifth-gear drumming. Its lyrics are written from the point of view of a suicide bomber, about the ecstatic madness of holy war. It is predictably tough stuff, but let's put it on a scale. It is tougher, and less reasoned, than Martin Amis's recent short story ''The Last Days of Muhammad Atta.'' It is no tougher than a taped message from Al Qaeda.
