Slayer: World Painted Blood

World Painted Blood isn't a metal album, it's a thrash album. A couple songs remind me of old school D.R.I. or Agnostic Front. I have no idea how they're going to play this fast on tour. It's a lot more overtly political, but I guess you can't be all Satan all the time. It's nowhere near as good as say Reign In Blood or Seasons In The Abyss, but it's one of the best things they've done in a long time.

But... the sound suffers a bit w/o Rick Rubin producing this time around. There's quite a bit of bitching on the internets about the production quality. That would be my one big gripe as well. ( ka ching! ) The guitars for some reason spend a good bit of the album playing the exact same thing. Normally you would work hard to separate them in the mix by giving each one a different tone, for some reason this didn't happen. When there's a lead, the rhythm guitar drops way down in the mix and you loose a little momentum.

That aside, this is one hell of an album for a band that has been making loud evil music for over 20 years.