Slayer at the Hammersmith Apollo

Slayer at the Hammersmith Apollo

10 November, 2008
by: Shainhouse

The crowd at the Apollo is younger than I would have predicted- teenagers flock through the main foyer, eagerly elbowing each other out of the way in order to buy a t-shirt, badge or tote bag.  Yet, the headliner tonight is a band of blokes in their late 40s, a group who practically invented elements of metal.  They didn't brand it.

Slayer has grown into this scene, just as much as the scene has grown into Slayer.  And the support and subsequent merchandising is proof of this.  On one hand, Mastodon present straight-edged, loud and technically proficient sludge metal, creating something that is directly inspired and influenced by the headliner.  Trivium, on the other hand, adds glitz and needless stage antics to a hairier, younger and more theatrical metal.  It's off-beaten, hilarious and absent of Slayer's dark, divisive influence.  But it looks great illustrated on a t-shirt.

Mastodon's set is brutal, fierce and piercingly loud.  Armed with a twelve-string guitarist, the band wields through tracks off the previous corker, Blood Mountain, with aplomb, rarely acknowledging or conversing with the audience.  It's fast, concise and drenched in distortion.  And as such, it's brilliant.  There are no tricks in Mastodon, as there should be no tricks in dark, sludge-drunk metal.  Plug in, turn it up and attack the audience.  That's it.

Trivium, on the other hand, create the metal equivalent of cabaret throughout their thirty minute set.  It's significantly lighter touched, so the band curses with ardour and screams at the audience between songs to make up for their mediocre music.  Risers to run across and strike stereotypical metal poses are placed on stage, along with smoke screens and fireworks.  And despite it being devoid of anything Slayer engendered in metal, the crowd laps it up.  But it's all smoke and mirrors.  Soulless, commercial theatre metal, for those too fearful to dive into the heart buried within.

So thank god for Slayer.  The set is simple.  No props, no lights, no nothing.  Instead, the band has a wall of amps that could redefine Berlin, a drummer perched above it all and Kerry King in front, shouting bloody murder over loud and maniacal guitar rips.  It's a greatest hits collection tonight, as 'Raining Blood' is aired with ten others, each more brutal than the next.  But their brutality lies in each song's honestly, something Mastodon understood and Trivium ignored.  King thanks the audience between songs, but assumes his dark, devilish persona within tracks.  Neither does he reference, nor laud metal. Instead, he knows this is metal.  Everything else, for the most part, played catch-up, or got made into a t-shirt.

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Shainhouse