Slayer
Haunting the Chapel
[Metal Blade]


Even though it's only four songs, this is Slayer's second best release. If only Slayer had waited and put the three new songs on _Hell Awaits_ (and played the other songs the way they played these songs) - they might have had something as good as _Reign in Blood_.

Well, enough with the ranking, here's why it's so good: it is very free-spirited, yet it has the fully-developed Slayer riffing we have come to know and love, as well as some adventurous song writing.

They play on this one with as much energy as on _Show No Mercy_ and certainly more than on the doomier _Hell Awaits_. There is a truly "destroying" kind of feeling to these songs. Not a human or angry kind of destroying, but it invokes something getting torn to nothing.

The last song on the EP, Aggressive Perfector, is a good song, but since it was something they wrote before Show No Mercy, it is less powerful and the least characteristic song on this EP.

The other three are the first songs to feature uniquely Slayer song writing. Here, they start to break from the traditional riff and song structures that they used on _Show No Mercy_ and create songs that, although still contain some verse-chorus-verse stuff, flow more freely and expressively. Killer rhythmic sections, thin riffs based around tremeloing on simple but evil melodies, and that Dave Lombardo beat all appear strongly and freshly on this album. And for the first time, one of those insane chromatic lines that became a Slayer trademark.


© 1999 abasmagorsulpherion