On the other hand, ‘Perversions Of Pain’ is plodding filler and signals a permanent downturn in the album’s quality.ĭiabolus In Musica is an album that favours blood-curdling riffage to the point where there is very little melody to accompany it – the song ‘Desire’ is the only exception to this. Hanneman’s lyrics “ Sick lust for skeletal flesh / A taste for all decay” and “ Become death’s vile parade / March on, embrace the violent mind” scrutinise the diabolic nature of humanity. It begins with this slow and crude guitar riff that postulates a malevolent atmosphere before, in typical Slayer fashion, the song descends into a wild thrash-fest where Paul Bastoph’s drums are particularly prominent. The opening track ‘Bitter Peace’ is one of the better tracks this album has to offer. On songs like ‘Death’s Head’ and ‘Stain Of Mind’, Slayer apply nu-metal riffage with headbanging results but these riffs would feel more at home on a System Of A Down record (because Daron Malakian’s guitar tone). However, merely rejecting Diabolus In Musica as ‘experimental’ is very misleading, if for no other reason than the album becomes over-saturated by its second half due to the boring re-hash of devilish, tri-tonal riffs that would have seen the band members possibly executed in The Middle Ages (as playing tri-tonal notes was considered Satanic in this historical period). This didn’t necessarily mean that they were changing their formula completely, like Metallica did with ‘The Black Album’ earlier that decade, as there is thrash rudiments unneglected from the fold, but this was Slayer’s first album where Hanneman and King tuned down their guitars to C#. What happens when a popular thrash metal band from the ‘80s attempts to keep in touch with metal audiences who fell onto the nu-metal bandwagon in the ‘90s? Diabolus In Musica (or ‘The Devil In Music’) is what happens, always referred to as Slayer’s ‘experimental’ album as well as their worst – with good reason.
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