Decibel

I never heard about it either, yeah.

Right? Like, you know, it was pre-Decibel, and, like, it was just, like, a weird period.

Like, I had just been done with the record store.

I probably moved downstate and started teaching in 03.

The record was also the end of an era on different levels.

Araya told Decibel Magazine ace reporter Jay Bennett, quote, To me, Seasons was the last time we all sat down and worked on a record together, as opposed to coming in with songs already done.

End quote.

When Slayer reconvened, the band was still the same four guys.

Hundreds of issues of Shindig, Classic Rock Magazine, Maximum Rock and Roll, Hit List, Gearhead.

Decibel and all kinds of other metal mags, Juxtapose, you name it.

Now, a while back for our Oxbow episode, I was digging through my box of Rockarola magazines, and Rockarola was a UK magazine that was published from 2005 to 2016, bi-monthly after the first few years, and focused on noise rock, experimental music, extreme metal, like Mike Patton was like a god to everyone who wrote for it, right? And I have most of the issues, especially after the first few years, and I thought I would go through their year-enders, although I'm missing a couple of the first few, so I'm going to be starting in 2008.

So I'm going to get your comment as we go along.

Well, I just think it's really easy to top two seconds.

Hello, this is John Rosenthal of Invisible Oranges and Decibel Magazine.

And You Suffer is great because it is the most extreme Napalm Death song in their entire discography.

You can say they go faster or they're heavier, but nothing beats just the unbridled explosion of two seconds of kinetic energy.

The gimmick paid off.

Here we are today talking about it, along with a bevy of YouTube videos, reaction videos, cover songs by you name it.

But the sickest version I actually heard was at Decibel's 100th issue celebration show in Philly in 2013.

Napalm invited Albert on stage to co-chair the vocals with Barney.

There are names that were recently crossed off the list, like Dave Prino of The Virus.

There are people who agreed to do the podcast at some point, but we just never did, like Albert from Decibel Magazine.

The funniest name on the list is Joshua Todd from Buck Cherry.

I don't know what was going on that I wanted to talk to Joshua Todd

Um, and then my last one is an EP, but the song itself ended up on an a- album later, but it's Under The Scalpel Blade by Carcass.

And the, it was a flexi disc thing on the front of a c- copy of Decibel Magazine-

Mm

... which was a cool thing that that magazine did for ages.

There is not a lot out there that details the actual making of South of Heaven.

The real definitive piece to look at is by an excellent metal writer, Chris Dick, who wrote the Decibel magazine.

You know how highly I regard that magazine, correctly, may I add.

uh decibel magazine wrote a hall of fame piece about that about the making of it and it is titled chaos rampant the making of slayers south of heaven it's from decibel it is in the march 2013 issue number 101 You can also get it in the book, The Decibel Hall of Fame Anthology Volume 2, which is available in the store at decibelmagazine.com.

It has the making of or the Hall of Fame editions of about 20 classic records, including South of Heaven, Motorhead's Ace of Spades, Venom's Welcome to Hell, Merciful Fate's Melissa, Celtic Frost's Two Megatherian, SOD's Speak English or Die, Agnostic Front's Cause for Alarm, Make a Death's Rust in Peace, lot of good stuff on there.

That is the piece you really want, but even in that, it is fairly scarce about actual details from the recording, so I will give you some extras here.

Looking back, Chris Dick wrote, "...the violent bashing and wanton destruction of yesteryear had advanced into cunning hooks, lurid thematics, and wicked songcraft.

Eerily perfect, South of Heaven was Slayer's sophisticated, yet remarkably visceral." With 10 songs, the album runs a hair under 37 minutes, about 28% longer than Rain, which also had 10 tunes.

It's not quite into the world of the, like, ridiculous obscure black metal acts like Les Leges Noires, but where they come up with, you know, entire gibberish languages.

But it's something that, according to an interview they gave to Decibel, is a synonym for apocalypse, environmental collapse and divine retribution.

The term signifies a transcendental lashing or the end of civilization, often associated with consequences of overexploiting the earth.

So, you know, you can see the kind of angle they're coming from there.