Slayer, Nietzsche: No Apologies

I had the thought to review Slayer's infamous God Hates Us All album, and I'm increasingly glad for it. First off, what better way to start out the new year. Secondly, my scant investigations into the band's history and lyrics revealed a number of online treasures, for example, did you know there is a website called darklyrics.com? That's pretty cool. And, surprise—Slayer lyrics are posted there! (as they happen to be some of the darkest lyrics this side of Charles Manson's unpublished Moleskin.)

Also, I think it only fitting that I should touch on the very band whose promo poster hangs neatly on the wall 4 feet to the left of where I typically make these posts.

I'm not telling you this to prove that I am the ultimate Slayer fan, or even a true Slayer fan (in the more dedicated sense). On the contrary, if there's one thing I realized in my brief research, it's that Slayer has a vast history that I'm mostly not privy to, and staring glassy-eyed at the abundance of information on their Wiki page, if anything, dissuaded me from delving much further into it. Suffice it to say, they have a deep catalog and have been playing ridiculously intense music for many, many years.

Did I mention this music is fiendish? Yes. Quite fiendish. Not in the sense that they actually worship the devil, as the the band maintains they do not (that's one thing I did glean from the Wiki article), but there is a reason why legions of mothers—mothers with even the most elementary detective skills—have flipped there tops over their kids listening to Slayer. It's potent stuff. And highly amoral, even by my anemic double-standards.

Actually though, if one tries and tunes their ears to all the anger-stricken yelling of singer, Tom Araya, it's difficult not to acknowledge a resounding Nietzsche influence.* One might imagine the philosopher's hopes of a more scholarly interpretation, but take the lyrics to "Darkness Of Christ" for example:

Mankind in his insatiable search for divine
Knowledge has discarded all biblical teachings

Realizing that the strength of religion is the repression of
knowledge
All structures of religion have collapsed

Life prays for death
in the wake of the horror of these revelations

It was never imagined how graphic the reality that would
be known as the end
of creation
Would manifest itself

We believe all this chaos and atrocity can be traced
Back to one single event

We hold these truths to be painfully self-evident
All men are not created equal
Only the strong will prosper
Only the strong will conquer
Only in the darkness of Christ have I realized
God Hates Us All

Okay, so maybe Nietzsche just gasped in his grave. Really it's more a sort of turbo-Nietzsche—a hybrid—morbidly focused on the most dire aspects of Nietzsche's thought, with a modern, soothsaying twist. Still, Slayer and Nietzsche, if allowed to mingle in some magnificent extra-temporal back-stage area, would surely find common ground in their disdain for Christianity.

Moreover, Nietzsche might find Slayer refreshingly sympathetic to his late-onset insanity—though, they wouldn't coddle him. Here's some lyrics from "Cast Down" (track 5 off God Hates Us All):

No one hears you
You're society's infection
I won't judge you

...

Godless he doesn't care
How you choose to destroy yourself
In a world that feeds on hate
You're left here just to waste away
In your cardboard prison, asphalt wasteland

(read the full lyrics here)

This song is apparently about society's rejects and junkies. It acknowledges that misery exists in abundance, but that it goes largely ignored. And despite what we tell ourselves, and those living on the margins of society to comfort them, there's no case to be made for why this misery is allowed to persist, or how the miserable might come to experience any redemption when all is said and done.

Slayer and Nietzsche believe in this cold reality, and see that there is no supernatural entity handing out blankets. They accept these as our circumstances, and then, perhaps, diverge from there. Neither, however would deny that religion does possess consoling powers, it's just that both see these as unfit delusions. And it angers them.

Quoting from Nietzsche's, The Anti-Christ:

In Christianity neither morality nor religion has even a single point of contact with reality. Nothing but imaginary causes ("God," "soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will"—for that matter, "unfree will"), nothing but imaginary effects ("sin," "redemption," "grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary beings ("God," "spirits," "souls,"); an imaginary natural science (anthropocentric; no trace of any concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (nothing but self-misunderstanding, interpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings... "repentance," "pangs of conscience," "temptation by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary teleology ("the kingdom of God," "the Last Judgement," "eternal life").

This world of pure fiction is vastly inferior to the world of dreams insofar as the latter mirrors reality, whereas the former falsifies, devalues, and negates reality.

One could easily take Nietzsche to task on the finer points of this tirade, but his passion is downright contagious.

For Slayer fans, Araya's passion too is contagious. It's amazing how many albums a single band has devoted to cursing Christianity; it's akin to standing outside the courthouse every day with a bold-faced sign until the laws change. Or like continuing to pummel someone who has long been knocked unconscious.

In no song [does Araya sound more confused in his anger] than on "Threshold" (track 6, God Hates Us All:

Never wanted bliss never wanted you
Never needed anyone I've polluted
Everything you feel everything you are
Everything you'll ever be you repulse me
It's always about you always come at me
With shit I can't identify you know it makes me
Lose my fuckin' mind all the fuckin' time
Can't control the violence that's spewing from me

This isn't the sort of thing that God, LLC readily relates to, or condones. In fact, Tom Araya would likely benefit from the in-house yoga and monthly Emotional Intelligence Training vouchers I offer all my employees. Still, I marvel at the bands continued existence (see the band's discography for an impression of how much time they've put in. It reads like—well—a Slayer discography.)

In sum, my critical assessment of God Hates Us All has affirmed my feeling that Slayer is important. Aside from their genre-defining metal, they are an important historical artifact; a dark thread without which the human tapestry would be incomplete. They represent an extreme, and they speak a certain vulgar truth. One that, while masquerading as nihilistic scum in order to bolster album sales and increase publicity, cuts to the heart of the human condition.

Listen to God Hates Us All at Lala and read the lyrics.†

Also, as I mentioned, the band has a well-realized Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slayer

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* Nietzsche. Few names have that sort of economy. Few philosophers have been more twisted by history. To be fair, the ties that I've suggested with Nietzsche are tenuous, and of course one cannot always know where someone is getting their ideas from. But a mere smattering of Nietzsche is enough to pave the way to all sorts of dark trajectories, and I'd be shocked if singer, Tom Araya, hasn't read The Anti-Christ. Perhaps, the very tendency for misinterpretation and scapegoat-ism is something that Slayer and Nietzsche have closely in common. After all, a kid commits suicide and it's Slayer's fault. A ruthless dictator plumbs the very depths of human depravity and it's Nietzsche's.

† Don't hurt yourself or others in doing so. In fact, that's God LLC's new unofficial motto, so don't come asking me about any Slayer-related homicides.

†† I'm giddy over the employment of the cross-like "dagger" symbol in this of all entries.