The metal band Slayer has learned well how to attract publicity by way of controversy, and that nothing is guaranteed to do the job better than the use of religion. Recent controversies over such movies as The DaVinci Code, and before that Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ most certainly didn't escape their notice. More to the point, they seem to have learned something from the bloody epic by Mel Gibson The Crucifixion Of Christ, that broke box office records worldwide, despite a raging controversy due to the films excessive violence, which many even in the Christian community viewed as horrific, gratuitous, and even pornographic.
This last film may have well provided some of the inspiration for Christ Illussion, or more specifically, for the cover art for the album, which is due out August 8th of this year on Rubins American Recordings/Warner Brothers Records.
The cover portrays Christ, his arms chopped off, standing in a sea of blood, surrounded by decapitated heads, and was painted by veteran Slayer album cover artist Larry Cornell, on a 4 ft. by 4 ft. slab of wood, using a combination of mediums. Kerry King, the guitarist for Slayer, was so taken with the artwork, he secured the rights to ownership of it.
It has already come under fire from some Christian groups, a month before it's due release date. If the artwork is as explicit as promised, the controversy is certain to grow, and as a result Slayers album sales.
I meant to include a link to the groups web-site, however, it's a shitty web-site, so I won't. Hopefully Slayer will make enough money fromthe proceeds of the album, in addition to their tour, they can afford to put up a decent web-site, hopefully one tht has a page that will load in under five minutes.
Failing that, I'm sure there is plenty of information to learn about the group, including their coming tour and dates and places for it. In the meantime, I will remain content to leave you with the above photo of the coming album, though I think this might be a milder version. One version was said to have been stolen from the web-site it was originally on. Personally, I think it was removed due to ISP complaints, but I could be wrong.
I know the grou8p was not satisfied with the first version, but were more than happy with the second. "It makes him look more like a drug addict" quipped one bandmember.
2 comments:
Slayer has always made their fans (hence their money) by shocking the shit out of people. I remember well when I was a leather-clad headbanger and I actually found their music discordant and atonal but never let on because Slayer was...well, it was just BAD, man. Like the REBELLION POSTERCHILD band. Anyone who listened to Slayer (Their name was said to stand for "Satan laughs as you eternally rot"- charm charm) must be a BAD MF. I wanted badly to be included in the badness, so I would scrawl "SLAYER" in it's ditinctive pointy writing all over my notebooks while secretly I thought they sucked. This was twenty years ago. Now they are bringing up a whole new generation. I think that's sweet.
I'm really not at all familiar with them, but if they were as bad as you say they are, I don't see how they made it. Hopefully they've improved over this twenty year span. Guess they must be doing something right. That name thing sounds like something somebody made up, by the way.
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