Slayer

Slayer - Haunting the Chapel
Metal Blade Records, 1984
Genre: Thrash Metal

1. Chemical Warfare
2. Captor of Sin
3. Haunting the Chapel
4. Aggressive Perfector

When the guitar starts off in just the left speaker and then the right speaker slowly fades in under the same rhythm and then the drums kick in with a superb build up… that’s when I knew this was going to be a great album.  “Haunting the Chapel” launches itself off with one of my all time favorite Slayer songs “Chemical Warfare.”  There’s something about this guitar line that just really gets your blood flowing and if I ever decide to cover a Slayer song it’s going to be this one.  Granted, I greatly enjoyed “Show No Mercy,” but this song shows that Slayer is going to progress into something much more than even that. 

The vocal performance on this album seems akin to that of “Show No Mercy” only I think Araya spent less time using those high pitched wails.  I thought this was a pretty good change-over.  The only problem with this is that the songs don’t remain as consistently strong as “Chemical Warfare.”  “Aggressive Perfector,” for whatever reason is a bonus track, has this sort of really old school feel.  I think this is where Slayer’s punk influence showed through a little bit more than normal.  Alas, in my opinion this album didn’t end on a strong point.  The other tracks seem to be leftovers from the “Show No Mercy” album.  I think this was another case of where they had more songs than they wanted to put on their debut full-length.  I’ve noticed it can be a rather common occurrence for bands sometimes.

This is definitely an EP to check out, especially if you really enjoyed “Show No Mercy.”  “Chemical Warfare” being the strongest song on here but the other two tracks in the middle are quite solid.  I believe as of writing this review (2005) that this is now packaged with another album, so you get two for the price one.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, since most Slayer material from this era is worth owning.