Album Review : Slayer - Diabolus in Musica (1998)

Oct 24

Oct 24 Album Review : Slayer - Diabolus in Musica (1998)

In twenty-six years, I’ve never given Slayer's Diabolus in Musica a complete listen. It has to be a minor sin for a lifelong fan to abandon them in their lowest moment, but I refuse to let anything make Slayer less than Godlike in my mind. I would’ve continued to willfully (and geefully) ignore the existence of Diabolus in Musica, were it not for this retrospective I’m doing, but what am I if not a serious critic? So, is this record as bad as its reputation? Somewhat. It is, by any means, worse than I imagined.

Diabolus in Musica features eleven songs and forty minutes of music. It is often labeled as Slayer's nü metal record, which is both distressing and utterly understandable. The last mainstream metal movement had invaded pop culture and it's somewhat normal for a band to want to at least explore any potential synergies with their core sound, but Slayer is supposed to be the great uncompromising band. So, what Diabolus in Musica ended up really coming off like is : the hardest band in metal sounding insecure.

I would say Diabolus in Musica features one good Slayer song, two merely forgettable ons, six that are very bad and two that are downright humiliating. The opener Bitter Piece is, by far, the best song on the record and it’s not even that good. You can heard the influence of bands like KoRn in the chuggy, downtuned riffs, but you can also feel they’re trying not to sound like Coal Chamber. After the lengthy intro, Bitter Piece has fun vocal hooks and otherwise could feature on God Hates Us All without people noticing.

It really lays the foundation for what will become one of Slayer's seminal records three years later.

But it starts downhill from there. The Coal Chamber effect kicks in full gear on Death’s Head, which starts with an obnoxious (and un-Slayerlike) bassline, murky riffs and a super weird, gimmicky drums and theatrical Tom Araya performance where he's trying to be anyone, but himself. It’s really bad, but it’s nothing compared to Stain of Mind… where Tom raps? I shit you not. The riffs are corny and unappealing. I know Paul Bostaph ain’t Dave Lombardo, but that drumming performance has no soul or identity.

I think it’s the worst song in Slayer’s repertoire, no joke. It’s my favorite band impersonating B level novelty nü metal acts. It could’ve easily been an Adema song. At least you can understand what they were going for on Overt Enemy. It lays the foundation for what would eventually become Deviance on God Hates Us All (and I love that song), but the execution is so tacky and juvenile and I’m not even discussing the lyrics here: Continue lies/Then masturbate/I walk the line/I'll do no time.

WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO IMPRESS WITH MASTURBATION, TOM?

Perversion of Pain is another spin off the same idea that doesn’t quite work. It’s not as bad as Overt Enemy, but it’s not catchy or interesting. It’s just a slew of riffs that don’t really quite gel together with Tom trying his best to sound evil. Decent bridge-to-solo action. but that’s about it. Love to Hate is the only song that I had heard on the record as someone had inadvertently burned it on a mixtape CD for me as I had asked for I Hate You and it’s worse than I remember it to be although it it merely weird and bad.

It’s just not in Tom’s wheelhouse to sing the way he does on this song, almost like a hardcore punk vocalist. Tom has his thing that makes him unique and it’s why we love him. Desire features interesting ideas with the quieter intro and the adequate use of chugging riffs, but once again it’s too over the top and doesn’t features any riffs you’ll remember. It’s as if Ari Aster decided to shoot a camp movie featuring Kevin Smith in the lead role. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t have the tone that made us love them.

In The Name of God, Scrum, Screaming from the Sky and Point are more or less boilerplate Slayer songs. They’re less embarrassing than the rest of the material on Diabolus in Musica. I think that I don’t completely hate Scrum even if it features another obnoxious and unnecessary bass segment and the most by-the-numbers Slayer solo. It has more righteous anger than most of the songs on this record. Screaming from the Sky is alright too, I guess. At least it features fun riffs and dramatic songwriting.

Diabolus in Musica was a lot worse than I thought it would be. There’s one song that would’ve qualified as good enough for their other records, but otherwise it doesn’t live up to their legacy of badassery and audio evil at all. It’s formulaic, uncharacteristic of them and sometimes even embarrassing. But it served its purpose in Slayer’s discography and laid the foundation to tweaks in their sound that would allow them to thrive again only a couple years later and for that, it's impossible to completely hate.