Album Review : Slayer - Undisputed Attitude (1996)
Anytime an artist covers a song, they're taking a creative risk. Can they make it their own? Can they avoid being overshadowed by the intimacy and the intensity of someone who’s been singing it (and often writing it) for themselves? You need a special connection with someone else’s song to make it work. Unless you’re Slayer and you’ve been connected to the primordial source of anger of the universe all along. In 1996, Slayer released an entire record of hardcore punk covers called Undisputed Attitude.
They didn’t give a fuck what you thought about it.
A cover album is an extremely rare occurrence in metal and it is even stranger in Slayer’s career, a band that otherwise never really strayed from its own winning formula before. Undisputed Attitude features twelve covers by eight different artists and one original Slayer song at the end, Gemini. Three songs from Verbal Abuse, two from Minor Threat, D.I and Pap Smear and one from T.S.O.L, Dr. Know, D.R.I and The Stooges. It's a weird record to look back upon, because it's Slayer, but it's not at the same time.
There are many bangers on Undisputed Attitude, but none that hold a candle to Slayer's flagship songs. The cover of Verbal Abuse's I Hate You is perhaps the most anthemic number on the record. Tom Araya has a sardonic edge to his delivery and the hardcore punk structure delivers Slayer’s music of technical and precision imperatives and unleashes its sheer power. It's a great fucking song to exteriorize your bullshit to, whether you aim it at someone or at yourself. But it’s not my favorite song on Undisputed Attitude.
The most memorable moment on this record is, in my opinion, the cover of D.I's Richard Hung Himself. It's a tough song to render properly because it's about the banality of despair and you have to interpret it like you-pretend-not-to-care-about-Richard's-suicide-but-you-kind-of-do? Tom Araya knocks it out of the park with sneering vocals with just enough of a sliver of rage in them to make it shine. Given the nature of the material, he really is the star of the show on that song. The band rallies behind him.
Violent Pacification is the most "Slayerized" song on. the record, dare I say. It’s obsessive and overpowering. The cover of Minor Threat's Guilty of Being White really channeled the essence of the original while calling back to older Slayer songs like Dittohead. It unfortunately features one of their worst choices of their history at the end (which I’m sure made Ian MacKaye howl), but the band was in their Rush Limbaugh era and listened to too much talk radio on the road. I like to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Mr. Freeze, I Don’t Wanna Hear It (Slayer really does Minor Threat well) and I’m Gonna Be Your God are the other songs that call attention to themselves. The Stooges' cover has a ghoulish edge to it as the reversing of the word Dog to God irremediably alters the meaning the song. I guess Gemini is OK too. The band seems to love that song a lot more than its audience does, but it’s not bad. It has an undeniable heaviness to it and an interesting heaviness and an atmospheric performance by Paul Bostaph.
The rest of Undisputed Attitude is mid, though. It features some old, side project stuffs that should've been kept in drawers. The songs I previously mentioned all feature a very Slayeresque sound, but the others not so much. They sound like Slayer in their garage doing whatever the fuck they want. Maybe it’s the choice of songs that leaves to be desired. I heard the plan was originally to make covers of classic hard rock and metal like Judas Priest and Deep Purple. Maybe there should’ve been more thought put into the tracklist.
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Undisputed Attitude is a reflection of a band feeling the landscape of music change around them and scrambling to renew themselves. They were trying stuff and a covers record is, in hindsight, a safe and smart way to do it. What would follow would absolutely NOT be safe nor smart, but they were a band going through a major transition in their career. It Undisputed Attitude a Slayer classic? Absolutely not. Is it fun and interesting? Kind of. It’s a mandatory stop for completists like me, but not for anyone else.
7.4/10
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