Sorry about the long delay on this reply. I've been busy with personal bullshit.
In what sense? Slayer's lyrics and music are among the most evocative in contemporary music, particularly during the Hell Awaits - South of Heaven era. Sure, there are plenty of tracks where the lyrics simply aren't much more than functional, but then again, that's true of pretty much every musical artist (even those who sell themselves primarily as lyricists: cf Dylan, Bob).
I like Bob Dylan decently, but he's never bowled me over like the poetic genius that many hype him up to be. I'm a much bigger fan of Leonard Cohen, Kate Bush, and Peter Gabriel. In the metal world, I go for Bruce Dickinson, Scott Ian, and Chris Cornell (before the vacuous nightmare that was Audioslave).
Do you even know what 'didactic' means? Slayer have always been militantly ambivalent: their lyrics are pretty much the antithesis of didactic (contrast this with the overt sermonizing of many of peers like Metallica and Megadeth).
Militant yes, but ambivilent? Slayer are about as subtle as a flying sledgehammer. Their endorsement for the neo conservative worship of state power and military authority is a defining characteristic of their lyrics. Slayer may be on a different end of the socio-political spectrum from those bands, but they're hardly ambiguous.
There's an argument to be made for applying the savant label to Kerry King (who was always a gutter punk at heart) and maybe even Lombardo (drummer, say no more), but both Jeff Hanneman (by far the most important creative voice in Slayer) and Tom Araya are pretty intellectually sophisticated.
Tom Araya is a man who writes lyrics openly praising Satan, but defends himself as a practicing Catholic. When asked about the inherent logical contradiction, he chalks it up to a matter of using shock tactics to sell the band's image. Araya also takes the Howard Stern tactic, and tries to use the resulting controversy to position himself as an iconoclast and free speech advocate. Such a genius.
"It's all about the cool factor - that's the main point. If something we find is really cool and gory and graphic, we'll go with it."
"Kerry's written some really far-out shit. If it's a good song, I'm not one that's going to go, 'This sucks because it's contrary to my beliefs.' To me it's more like, 'This is really good stuff. You're going to piss people off with this.'
"People have these heavy issues and ask, 'Isn't this a problem for you?' and no. I'm well-rounded, I have a really strong belief system and these are just words and they'll never interfere with what I believe and how I feel.
"People are not in good shape to where they have to question their own belief system because of a book or a story somebody wrote, or a SLAYER song."
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news...will_never_interfere_with_what_i_believe.html
As for Hanneman, he's certainly a talented guitarist, but severely lacking in actual knowledge. None of the members of Slayer learned how to play a scale until Seasons in the Abyss, which explains why that album has a much more polished and accessible sound (to the chagrin of many of their fans). The Slayer formula of playing chromatic riffs and whammy bar divebombs was necessitated by their limited repertoire.
When was the last time you saw anyone but white kids playing it for irony do any of the above either? Or maybe Snoop Dawg, but he's at the William Shatner stage of his career at this point anyway. Many of his speech patterns are quite similar to what you see from a lot of white kids trying to glom a little black cool. You hardly have to be Malibu's Most Wanted to be a wigger.
I've seen several Patton interviews, and I've never noticed it. To be quite honest, he's more than a little bit of a hillbilly, though he tries to hide it. Patton came from a little podunk town in Northern California, and has a very unsophisticated background. That's probably why he goes overboard trying to gain snobish hipster cred. It can get very annoying sometimes, but I love a good chunk of his music anyway.
How so? Authenticity is merely the difference between art honestly felt and product contrived to sell.
You're creating a false dichotomy here. Sure, there are many products created disingenuously by artists who have no passion or emotional investment in the work they create, but every piece of art available for sale is calculated to do so. Every product has an angle, and every demographic is a target market, be it mass culture, subculture, or counter-culture. Think you're a non-conformist? Better buy the latest shit all the other non-conformists have, or you won't be cool.
Look, this is your straw man, not mine. No one has suggested that there's anything inherently wrong with 'musical cross pollination,' as you put it. Dock Boggs was one of the greatest interpreters of black work songs, and Lead Belly's rendition of the Appalachian folk standard "In the Pines" remains probably the definitive one. Death metal artists like Atheist and Seance have made brilliant music by incorporating rhythmic and harmonic ideas from jazz, so, for that matter, did Morbid Angel. The problem isn't looking outside one's chosen genre for influence, the problem is when those influences are applied in a superficial way to sell records or garner critical approval.
In other words, the issue with Faith No More was never "OMG! Rap!" but rather "OMG! Pander!"
Hmmm... I assumed by your stated importance of authenticity, that you were opposed to artists who deviated from the preset constraints of their genres. That's often the way in which the label is applied in underground music. There's a brilliant satire of this in the movie
Ghost World, where a set of white suburbanites try to play the most cliche-riddled and unimaginative blues possible. I often encounter this mindset myself, and it pisses me off to no end. My mistake.
What, exactly, does this have to do with anything?
Depends on the ideology, or do you honestly believe that all worldviews are interchangeable?
How so? Ultimately, all art stakes out a viewpoint, even if that viewpoint is only one of passivity and implicit fatalism. Aesthetics aren't created in a vacuum, so it would seem rather naive to ignore the 'ideological' (for lack of a better word) content of art.
On the contrary, I like ideas, but I do not buy into belief systems. Even men I consider to be geniuses were wrong about many issues, and I'm not afraid to say so. Political parties, ideologies, and ethno-cultural identities are all dead ends. They destroy individualism and promote group think. I may steal ideas and ideals from them at will, but I will never pledge fealty and loyalty to their mantras, or allow the ends to justify the means in pursuit of their goals.
How does the (rather obvious) observation that art transmits ideals, and thus, that art that aspires to achieve something beyond profit or popularity is better than the entertainment product that doesn't 'crush independent thoughts'? It seems to me that the notion that art can never be anything more than somebody's profit vector is a whole hell of a lot more likely to 'crush thoughts' (not to mention souls), than the idea that art can and should be something more than crude pacification for the mouth-breathing masses.
I certainly think we should demand that metal not serve the profiteers to the exclusion of Hessians.
Oh wow. I thought I was elitist and patronizing, but damn, you've probably exceeded my own misanthropy there. I think Peter Steele should present you with the H.L. Mencken Lifetime Berievement Award.
...clueless.
