Album Review: Slayer, "Decade of Aggression"

Normally I don't like live albums, they tend to let the band down soundwise, and after listening to them a few times, they go to the back of the collection never to be touched again. Happily, SLAYER have bought together 21 of their best tracks spanning their career in a raw, aggressive and highly listenable live collection that demands to be played again and again. The production is superb, the sound is clean, the vocals are strong and the music is well balanced and sharp.

SLAYER are adamant the LP was recorded entirely live with absolutely no overdubbing on the recording. After the booing they got at Wembley when they were going to mime a song for a video, it really is the least you can expect. The resulting effect is excellent, better than many studio recorded LP's that are churned out today.

Included in this 'Greatest Hlts' extravaganza, are 'Hell Awaits', 'Angel Of Death'. 'War Ensemble', 'Captor Of Sin', 'Post Mortem', 'Chemical Warfare', 'South Of Heaven', 'Seasons ln The Abyss'....etc.

The recording was done in three locations over their Clash Of The Titans tour of the UK and America. There is the inclusion of some of the Wembley shows, Lakeland, Florida, and San Bernadino, California.

This collection is a celebration of SLAYER's 10 year anniversary which makes you stop and think, has it been that long!? 'Decade', adeptly demonstrates why SLAYER are at the top as a live Metal band today. Listening to this can only make you wait in anxious anticipation for their November UK Tour.

A note to vinyl collectors. When this review was written, Polygram were intending to release the vinyl format of 'Decade' as a one-off limited edition, so make sure you get it straight away or you may be out of luck.

GRADE A

Marion Garden

Riff Raff

November 1991

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!