On Immortalized, we once again measured their progress in inches rather than miles.
The Chicago metallers had always polarised audiences, due in no small part to an unshakeable nu metal tag and, more pointedly, to their broad commercial appeal – an achievement rarely celebrated in the metal community.Īcross the albums that preceded their hiatus, Disturbed scarcely tampered with their platinum-certified playbook. They even doled out first single, The Vengeful One, with the announcement. In June 2015, Disturbed ended their five-year hiatus essentially overnight, announcing that they were not simply back in business, but that they had a brand new album already in the can. Even without the war-cry of Tom Araya, it could be no one else but Slayer.Īgain: yes, Repentless really was that good.īuy a copy on Amazon (opens in new tab) 17. Each one was unmistakably Slayer, with Exodus guitarist Gary Holt fitting the band like a leaded glove, but it was Kerry King who really raised the bar here, the opening instrumental Delusions Of Saviour stating the case as much as anything. We've looked to Slayer for riffs so heavy they make your nose bleed, and Repentless had them in spades. Then again, we've never tended to look to Slayer for socio-political commentary. On songs like Implode and Vices (‘ A little violence is the ultimate drug… Let’s get high!’) they merely reflected a world, and, in particular, a country, where atrocities were commonplace. That said, Pride In Prejudice, with its ‘ Don’t give me your power bullshit’ refrain, appeared pretty straightforward. Repentless was prime fucking Slayer.Īs ever, the subject matters covered a bloody minefield of unpleasantness, but as evidenced on Jihad from 2006’s Christ Illusion, written from the point of view of a terrorist, not all lyrics were what they seemed. We were used to percussive giants Dave Lombardo and Paul Bostaph playing musical drum stools, but with the loss of such an integral player as Hanneman, this, the band’s first album without him, could so easily have been a difficult record, perhaps Slayer-by-numbers, or somehow lacking the dark magic that made them so special. It may not have come as much of a surprise but it did, however, come as a huge relief. Two years on from the tragically premature death of guitarist and founder member Jeff Hanneman – who contributed vastly to every album since the band’s inception and wrote many of the classics – the big question was can Slayer still be, well, Slayer? In short, the answer was: fuck yes! The time to embrace the genre’s modern trailblazers had come.īuy a copy on Amazon (opens in new tab) 18. It was one of the best albums of modern times – metal or otherwise. Put plainly, Sempiternal wasn’t simply the best album of BMTH’s career to date. Glorious.Ĭrooked Young slowed things back down rather lusciously to a more grinding, sprawling pace, before an echoey spoken-word segment by Oli paved the way for Hospital For Souls – a soaring, strings and synth-propelled climax that, if you were in any doubt by this stage that it hadn’t happened already, threw just about everything BMTH had left in their arsenal into a huge, slow-burning, beautifully constructed, six-minute-plus crescendo of noise.
More importantly, they acted as a perfect foil to Sleepwalking a grandiose piano, guitar and electronica-powered number that managed to nail the kind of ground that In Flames had been flirting with in the years prior. Exploding into life in defiant, uplifting fashion, Can You Feel My Heart was a stunning cascade of anthemic electronica and slow, methodical beats.īoth The House Of Wolves and Empire brought us into more familiar territory, with their barrages of crunchy, Slipknot-friendly riffs merging beautifully with delicate electronic flourishes and well-honed vocal lines (especially Oli Sykes’s venomously delivered ‘ The wolves are at my door’ line in Empire). The manner in which Sempiternal announced its arrival in was little short of breathtaking. But after emerging as arrogant kids back in 2004, by the time Sempiternal dropped in 2013, there was no doubt they'd grown into their own tattooed skins. It’s easy to be blinded by the scenester fashion aspect of a band like Bring Me The Horizon – especiallty in 2019, when their music can be described as metal adjacent at best.
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