This album right here: This album is THE album that can be blamed for my relationship with all things blasphemous, loud, distorted, and heavy.
The year was 1997, Grade 4, 9 years old. Before I listened to Slayer I was a hip hop kid, skated, smoked weed (come from a family where your siblings for the most part were considered "fuck ups" by societies standards an introduction to all things mind altering is bound to happen at an early age), and recorded our selves trying to imitate things seen on TV and skate videos. My memory is a bit hazy considering through my "developing years" I was using substances that killed brain cells before they were even there; anyway I think it was in a 411 video, I saw one of the many skaters wearing a Slayer shirt and that name stuck with me. I knew my older brother knew "metal" kids and traded cassettes that consisted of hip hop music for other "Alternative" stuff. Fast forward a week or two since first seeing that T shirt on some randoms back, I had this album in my possession. I remember it clearly, pushing down that play button that would change my life forever, first thing you heard was the crowd cheering and all of a sudden one guitar starts with an open note of very fast (inaudible) picking, cue drums and bass, them blasting into the very first slayer song I ever heard which was "Black Magic".
I couldn't listen to hip hop for a long time after my first encounter with Slayers music, it was too..."slow" for me. I'm not going to lie, the imagery on their first cd I ever bought scared the shit out of me (Which was the Haunting the chapel EP). This time in my life I had given up on praying to a god and not caring about a life after death. I was young, what the hell was a pentagram? Reading lyrics about the devil, priests dying, hells demons killing priests, churches burning, and everything that could possibly kill everything I ever knew was complete and total annihilation of my senses.
My love for Slayer has not gotten weaker at all through out the years, I still listen to this album from time to time and each time I do it takes me back to that first push of that play button.
