I wouldn't mind seeing of DiGiorgio can conjure another half-decent Sadus album before replacing anyone in current bands - He's the Gene Hoglan of bass though, so he'll always be doing something.

No you're wrong, that's not the Metallica of today, that's just the Metallica of 2003. They blew out all their internal issues during the writing & recording of St.Anger and now they get along great.

Exactly. He's made a career out of being a hell of a session player across several genres through the years. Even with Testament's new wave of popularity, it probably wouldn't be nearly as lucrative for him considering he's never written anything in Testament before and in turn doesn't get played live (speaking in relation to his initial stint at the turn of the century,) whereas Greg Christian was fairly prominent in helping to write their early material and setlist staples. Besides, part of their appeal over the past few years is that this is 4/5 of the original lineup back together. Unless Greg simply didn't want to be involved anymore for good, replacing him outright hurts their marketability and arguably their chemistry, too.

On topic, I don't think we'll know for sure until there's a definitive statement after the Australia shows whether that's from Dave himself or the band's PR squad. As nauseating it is to have seen this blow up across the media over the past couple of days, all could still get worked out by the conclusion of the tour and this becomes water under a slightly scorched but still functional bridge. I sincerely doubt that, but stranger things have happened. Slayer have yet to actually record their new album and the more prudent course of action would be for Kerry to finish demoing with Dave and eventually get it finished assuming Jeff continues to be absent from the entire process. If he doesn't stay on afterward, so be it, but that's not unexpected at this point. I honestly wouldn't mind Jon Dette taking on the drum throne again in a more permanent position. He's always been known as a solid live sit-in but has been getting great reviews from those who've seen him filling in for Anthrax recently. It would be a feather in his cap to finally record on something high profile like new Slayer and whatever issues there were in the past could be non-existent now. As far as Dave goes, it's not like the man's got a shortage of bands and artists he could work with or start new relations with. And yes, I also wouldn't mind getting him on a plane to Birmingham right now to let Brad Wilk know "It's alright. I got this." This has yet to reach the breaking point, folks, so we've got to keep that in mind.

With any luck Slayer is dead. I don't say that with any sort of real contempt, but come on now. They created like, what, 4 good albums and one EP from '83-'90, Hanneman has been out so long I don't think he wants to come back, King's being a cockmunch, Lombardo always deserved better, and Araya hasn't sounded DECENT since Seasons In The Abyss. Fuck the garbage these guys have been tossing at the fans since the 90's; it's time to fold guys, people will still remember "Angel of Death" and "South of Heaven".

So I'm a trendy kid because I didn't say RiB or SitA. Nice logic there, buddy.

What in the world was wrong with Divine Intervention?

Not a god damn thing.

But if memory serve me right, I remember the initial complaint was the production at the time of release due to the band using a new producer who had never worked with a metal band. Personally, I liked it. It was a lot better than the stale sound on Seasons and South, imho. And adding Bostaph doesn't hurt either

Haven't got anything from them since Seasons, to me they lost their spark after that. I agree with others about Hanneman and Lombardo being hardest to replace in whole band and
they should start another one. Funny thing is that person (King) who seems to run the show, is the most replaceable.
Maybe problems in personal level are reason for their crappy output, all material past 91 sounds forced and soulless.
Somehow all this makes me sad as they were my favorite thrash band in 80's, i still listen early cd's quite often.

Hilarious.

^ Nice.

Agreed on Divine. I actually find it superior to Reign because while the latter has more significance to the genre's development, the former has actual songwriting throughout the entire album, not just the bookends. It pick up right where Seasons left off and has some strange, almost technical (for Slayer) riffs here and there. The tapped rhythm riff under the leads and noises in Fictional Reality, that one riff after the clean intro and chord crunches (played by Jeff, I think) in 213 that sounds almost devoid of melody, and so forth. Too bad many don't give it the chance simply because it says "Paul Bostaph - Drums" in the liner notes. The production hurts it overall, yes, but they had to pack up and relocate to three different studios over the course of recording it because of some shit between Rubin and the label if I'm not mistaken. Toby Wright was brought in last minute to salvage what they had already done.

Eh, do we really need to rehash the "Lombardo vs. Bostaph" thing again for the n-teenth time, anyway?

Umm...Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRsZmGYcbSo Wait till about 3:00 onwards.

king needs more cash for coke.

Typical Trunk kissing ass. King just said he hated Hanneman and Trunk wizzed by to his next fan-man question. WTF? Call him out on what he just said! There's no unity!

I get that you're joking, but King was always just a beer drinker. Hanneman and Araya were the cokeheads (and according to them, they smoked 'rat poison' too) in the old days.

I have not found much information on it myself, just rumors. I sure hope he isn't him being one of my favorite drummers.

People, read. I posted Slayer's statement a page ago.

this bit of info is quite new though...

I don't know if Divine Intervention is better than Reign In Blood, but it's definitely a close contender.

Also, who's the guy next to Lombardo?

-> who's missing in Black Sabbath's reunion line-up?

uhu

Holy shit, that is a cool picture. Don't really know what I think of it given the circumstances, but those are two legendary drummers right there.

Bill Ward.

I'm pretty sure that, with those two guys in the same room, all drum kits in the immediate vicinity blew up.

Come on, people, hold it together, will you. Saying 'Divine Intervention' beats 'Reign in Blood' is akin to saying the black album beats 'Master of Puppets'. Granted, DI was more of a grey album à la 'Countdown to Extinction' than a full-blown black album, but it was definitely their "the classic era is behind us, now" album. Seasons was already a mixed bag, with a couple of songs among the very best the band did in their post-Show no Mercy incarnation, but others that clearly signaled the fan-hitting shit that was about to come. This includes the two King-penned "Harvester of Sorrow" wannabes I already cited, but also much more (oh, hey! "Temptation", how have you been?) and beyond; even most of the good tracks ("War Ensemble", "Spirit in Black", "Hallowed Point", "Blood Red"...) are rehashed, microwave re-heated leftovers and you can fucking feel it. 'Divine Intervention' was all that and more (or, more accurately, less), only without a "Seasons in the Abyss" or a "Dead Skin Mask" to redeem it. Sure, compare it to the even less sincere or good or relevant lackluster material that follows, and it may seem solid, but compared to the classics... 'Divine Intervention' is hard not to forget altogether.

There's something wrong with this?

Divine Intervention is awesome. It was the closest Slayer came to a Reign In Blood part deux. The title track owns.

It also had Dittohead, probably my favorite underrated Slayer song.

All I said was that DI was their best. Keep in mind that people have different (than your own) opinions. I've always seen DI as Seasons 2.0 because it features all the elements of the previous album; a thrashing opener (Killing Fields), short blistering tracks a la Reign (Sex. Murder. Art., Dittohead), the slow, creepy tracks a la South (213, Serenity in Murder), etc. Add in the closer, Mind Control, and you've got a masterpiece of a thrash album, imo.


Edit: MY 666th POST!!!

am I kvlt now?

I'll have to completely fucking disagree here man. Of the big four thrash bands, or even for a lot of metal bands in general, Slayer managed to stay prominent for way longer than the other guys. For example, you can see the obvious trailing of quality and slow commercialization through Metallicas records with the simplified rhythm guitars, clean production and safer lyrics. Now I'll admit, Seasons reflects a lot of those things too, but it was still a powerful riff-monster, and it was still a little ahead of its time regarding the mind-blowing shredding stuff on the album. One would have suspected that given the quality of metal coming out around 90, that Seasons would be their last good record, but honestly, DI took it a step back again and released a fucking killer album. There were some small elements of thrashy punk and angry grung-ish attitude that made their way in, but all in all, DI had and still has the darkest production of any Slayer album, a mix of crazy riffs chopped up in a really spontaneous and more ballsy way than on Seasons. It was eclectic in the sense that it had slower songs, but that didn't make them accessible like the ones on Seasons, they were more eerie and dark like South of Heavens tracks. Same can be said with the clean vocals, there was nothing new about that, and they were executed perfectly. Not to mention you can't forget they still had blistering fast thrashy shit in there too like Dittohead and Sex. Murder. Art... Divine Intervention is arguably the best Slayer album despite the importance and influence of RiB and Show No Mercy.

Regardless of how well you see DI to be, I will NEVER understand how people can see it as a Seasons 2.0, like wtf?

Don't really know why this turned into a discussion over the legitimacy of Divine Intervention. I really like the album but it's hardly Reign in Blood pt. 2, in fact it seems pretty obvious to me that Slayer were going in a different direction with that one, what with the mid pace of much of the album. I always figured Seasons was their attempt at making RiB pt. 2.

I actually think the title track off Divine Intervention is one of their best songs. Top ten, anyway. Dittohead and Killing Fields are also awesome.

I just gave Divine Intervention another listen and while I like it better than I did when I first heard it, it still kinda rubs me the wrong way in some spots. The faster tracks feel somewhat thrown together to me and there's not much in the ways of memorability. That said, the title track and 213 are pretty good songs.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/lich-kin ... 0637134813

Have I mentioned yet that I love Lich King?

Those guys always had an awesome sense of humor.

well that lich king thing totally made my day, to say at least

I really dont wanna touch the whole Divine Intervention vs Reign In Blood issue here, mostly because I (for some reason) dont even have Divine Intervention on cd yet and I certainly dont wanna address the whole "SEASONS IN THE ABYSS SUCKS BECAUSE ALL SONGS AREN'T 200 BPM LIKE REIGN IN BLOOD!" mentality that I see here to some extent...I'll just say that the first 6 and last 2 Slayer albums kick ass, rehashed or not doesnt matter because at least they rehash the better stuff

And I really hope Jeff and Dave will both be back in the band some day even if that doesnt seem very realistic right now

Interesting to think of Mike Smith playing drums for them, for some reason the last thing I could ever imagine is Slayer playing with a black guy even though they aren't for racism.

The only amusement this whole drama created, in my opinion, is this.

I wish Anthrax would replace their longtime drummer with Dave Lombardo now that he's available.

Divine Intervention was a fine effort by Slayer but there is something seriously fucking wrong with putting it in the vicinity of Reign In Blood, one of the best metal albums of all time.

You must be extremely new to say that with any sincerity.

Yeah, RiB is one of the worst metal albums of all time, totally not influential and it's also not a classic.

Nhor, yeah, you're a very poor poster with an extremely shitty attitude.