Roba da fan. Correva l'anno 2003 ed il ventesimo anniversario degli Slayer è nell'aria (anzi, il ventunesimo). Gli squartatori losangelini sono in tiro, e pensano "dai, adesso sganciamo una bomba per i patiti che ci chiedono il successore di God Hates Us All, così li teniamo buoni per un po'". Esatto, c'è chi abbocca, in gioventù. Sperperando i primi soldi da lavoro stagionale, mi incammino verso il negozio di dischi di fiducia e mi faccio un bel regalo di Natale: l'incommensurabilmente mastodontico box-set "Soundtrack To The Apocalypse".
Sono un fan, e 90 euro (novanta euro) mi scivolano dalle mani senza neanche accorgermene, ma rimango un fan, non mi interessa. Tant'è che il commesso, al momento dell'acquisto, mi fa "ah però, un professionista". Contando che il negozio chiuderà di lì a poco, il dubbio che il furbo sia scappato con i soldi alle Maldive mi tormenta ancora oggi.
Cosa contiene questa chicca da "professionisti"? Procediamo con ordine. Un immancabile best of spalmato su due cd, un disco di rarità con esibizioni e demo varie i cui nastri probabilmente facevano da spessore sotto la gamba di un tavolo di casa Araya. Inoltre, un dvd pieno zeppo di interessanti esibizioni/interviste dai primi '80 ad oggi, un album live completo in una splendida confezione simil-sacca di sangue con teschi galleggianti. Per rifinire l'opera: un libretto contenente la storia più o meno dettagliata del gruppo, il fac-simile di un pass per il backstage, uno stendardo di stoffa con stemma dell'aquila slayeriana. Il tutto in una robusta confezione in stile cassa di munizioni da seconda guerra mondiale.
Ora, con questo ben di Dio, dovrei essere felice per tutta la vita, trastullandomi con tal feticcio fino alla vecchiaia. Perché è roba da fan. Altro che quell'insignificante confezioncina del suddetto box, scremata di tutto il contorno per essere venduta poi a venti euro come se fosse un misero greatest hits.
Guardiamo in faccia alla realtà (e scusate la frase fatta): la confezione ormai ha due dita di polvere, il best of non l'ho mai ascoltato per intero (conoscendo a memoria gli LP); il dvd, visto una volta, può rimanere lì dov'è; il libretto ha delle belle foto, ma, se non sei più un teenager non te ne può fregare di meno; lo stendardo copre da tempo immemore il piatto dei vinili, almeno assolvendo il proprio compito estetico. Il live album spacca, ma dopo la prima volta che lo tiri fuori da quella maledetta "simil-sacca di sangue con teschi galleggianti" il cd è già pieno di righe.
Però sono più fan di voi. Sono felice.
PS: a chi nota la sottile ironia tra le righe regalo l'utilissimo fac-simile di pass del backstage.
Elenco tracce testi e video
01 Angel of Death (04:50)
Auschwitz, The meaning of pain
The way that I want you to die
Slow death, immense decay
Showers that cleanse you of your life
Forced in
Like cattle
You run
Stripped of
Your life's worth
Human mice, for the Angel of Death
Four hundred thousand more to die
Angel of Death
Monarch to the kingdom of the dead
Sadistic, surgeon of demise
Sadist of the noblest blood
Destroying, Without mercy
To benefit the Aryan race
Surgery, with no anesthesia
Feel the knife pierce you intensely
Inferior, No use to mankind
Strapped down screaming out to die
Angel of Death
Monarch to the kingdom of the dead
Infamous butcher
Angel of Death
Pumped with fluid, inside your brain
Pressure in your skull begins pushing through your eyes
Burning flesh, Drips away
Test of heat burns your skin, Your mind starts to boil
Frigid cold, Cracks your limbs
How long can you last
In this frozen water burial?
Sewn together, Joining heads
Just a matter of time
'Til you rip yourselves apart
Millions laid out in their
Crowded tombs
Sickening ways to achieve
The holocaust
Seas of blood, Bury life
Smell your death as it burns
Deep inside of you
Abacinate, eyes that bleed
Praying for the end of
Your wide awake nightmare
Wings of pain, Reach out for you
His face of death staring down,
Your blood running cold
Injecting cells, Dying eyes
Feeding on the screams of
The mutants he's creating
Pathetic harmless victims
Left to die
Rancid Angel of Death
Flying free
Angel of Death
Monarch to the kingdom of the dead
Infamous butcher
Angel of Death
Angel of Death
03 Postmortem (03:27)
Funeral held for the depression of man
Holds the key to his own death
Entering a tomb of a corpse yet conceived
Tighten the tourniquet around your neck
Sifting away the debris of hated life
Cold touch of death begins to chill your spine
Seeking life beyond your perishment
Repeating words echoing through your mind
Chanting lines of blind witchery
To save yourself from extinction
Wanting to die is your reason to live
New life born from the oppressed
Taste your blood as it trickles through the air
Another casualty beyond the shadows you fall
Losing ground, the fate you feel it draws near
Fatality, reality, You await the final call
My sinful glare at nothing holds thoughts of death behind it
Skeletons in my mind commence tearing at my sanity
Vessels in my brain carry death until my birth
Come and die with me forever
Share insanity
Do you want to die!
The waves of blood are rushing near, Pounding at the walls of lies
Turning off my sanity, Reaching back into my mind
Non-rising body from the grave showing new reality
What I am, What I want, I'm only after death
04 Raining Blood (04:12)
Trapped in purgatory
A lifeless object, Alive
Awaiting reprisal
Death will be their acquittance
The sky is turning red
Return to power draws near
Fall into me, The sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone
Pierced from below, Souls of my treacherous past
Betrayed by many, Now ornaments dripping above
Awaiting the hour of reprisal
Your time slips away
Raining blood
From a lacerated sky
Bleeding its horror
Creating my structure
Now I shall reign in blood!
05 Aggressive Perfector (02:28)
Follow me, I'll lead the way, Your fears will soon overtake
Hide your infinite tears inside, It seeks your smallest break
Screaming as if nothing helps, You press on to survive
Playing out the fantasies of a force that keeps you alive
He'll have you down on your knees
You play his fatal game
He'll satisfy your every need
You'll never be the same
Take my hand, I'll show you how
You've just one life to live
The road you're on goes straight to hell
Your life is yours to give
His fantasies of all of you are much too great to see
This world your living is so unreal, Perfected just for me
He'll have you down on your knees
You play his fatal game
He'll satisfy your every need
You'll never be the same
06 South of Heaven (04:45)
An unforeseen future nestled somewhere in time
Unsuspecting victims no warnings, no signs
Judgment day the second coming arrives
Before you see the light you must die
Forgotten children, Conform a new faith
Avidity and lust controlled by hate
(The) Never ending search for your shattered sanity
Souls of Damnation in their own reality
Chaos rampant
An age of distrust
Confrontations
Impulsive habitat
Bastard sons beget your cunting daughters
Promiscuous mothers with your incestuous fathers
Engreat souls condemned for (all) eternity
Sustained by immoral observance a domineering deity
Chaos rampant
An age of distrust
Confrontations
Impulsive sabbath
On and on, South of heaven
The root of all evil is the heart of a black soul
A force that has lived all eternity
A never ending search for a truth never told.
The loss of all hope and your dignity
Chaos rampant
An age of distrust
Confrontations
Impulsive habitat
On and on, South of heaven
07 Silent Scream (03:50)
Nightmare, The persecution
A child's dream of death
Torment, Ill forgotten
A soul that will never rest
Guidance, It means nothing
In a world of brutal time
Electric, Circus, Wild
Deep in the infants mind
Silent Scream
Bury the unwanted child
Beaten and torn
Sacrifice the unborn
Shattered, Adolescent (another child)
Bearer of no name
Restrained, Insane games
Suffer the children condemned
Scattered, Remnants of life
Murder a time to die
Pain, Sufferaged toyed
Life's little fragments destroyed
Silent Scream
Crucify the bastard son
Beaten and torn
Sanctify lives of scorn
Life preordained
Humanity maintained
Extraction termination
Pain's agonizing stain
Embryonic death
Embedded in your brain
Suffocation, Strangulation
Death is fucking you insane
Nightmare, The persecution
A child's dream of death
Torment, Ill forgotten
A soul that will never rest
Innocence withdrawn in fear
Fires burning can you hear
Cries in the night
08 Live Undead (03:05)
Cascaded darkness
Walls close in on me
Nailed shut but my eyes still see
Severe anguish as my body evolves
The pain of life after death it resolves
Emptiness in twilight's rebirth
The faint sounds of shoveled earth
Madness growing as your mind dissolves
Merely secret in my dreams
Night grows cold, twilight's near
On the edge of madness the wounds are sheared
Forms of hanging, flesh shredded carcass
No spared breath
Imprisoned in a shell, ready to explode
Dead soul
Stone cold
Out into the night
Voices inside my head
Hold me under
Voices oppress
Like roaring thunder
An echo bouncing inside my brain
How much can I take of the pain
The pain!
A war raging deep inside my head
A split decision that will end with me dead
You see the agony in my eyes
Protruding aimless
I think it's time to die
A cannibal's desire feeds the fire
that burns in your head
Intense pain eats away at your brain
Thorazine pumping through your veins
Death walks inside you
Smell death around you
Hell's evil spell takes a soul
Hear the sound of the bell
Counting off death tolls
Laughing as you eternally rot
Searching for human flesh
And life's blood
Live Undead
09 Mandatory Suicide (04:04)
Murder at your every foot step
A child's toy sudden death
Sniper blazes you through your knees
Falling down can you feel the heat
Burn!
Ambushed by the spray of lead
Count the bullet holes in your head
Offspring sent out to cry
Living mandatory suicide
Suicide
Holes burn deep in your chest
Raked by machine gun fire
Screaming soul sent out to die
Living mandatory suicide
Suicide
Lying, Dying, Screaming in pain
Begging, Pleading, Bullets drop like rain
Mines explode, Pain sheers through your brain
Radical amputation, This is insane
Fly swatter stakes drive through your chest
Spikes impale you as you're forced off the crest
Soldier of misfortune
Hunting with bated breath
A vile smell, Like tasting death
Dead bodies, Dying and wounded
Litter the city streets
Shattered glass, Bits of clothing and human deceit
Dying (in) terror
Blood's cheap, It's everywhere
Mandatory suicide, Massacre on the front line
11 War Ensemble (04:51)
Propaganda death ensemble
Burial to be
Corpses rotting through the night
In blood laced misery
Scorched earth the policy
The reason for the seige
The pendulum exchange the blade
for strafing air blood raid
Infiltration push reserves
Encircle the front llines
Supreme art of strategy
Playing on the minds
Bombard till submission
Take all to their graves
Indication of triumph
The number that are dead
Sport the war, war support
The sport is war, total war
When victory's a massacre
The final swing is not a drill
It's how many people I can kill
Be dead fiend from above
When darkness falls
Descend onto my sights
Your fallen walls
Spearhead break through the lines
Flanked all around
Soldiers of attrition
Forward their ground
Strategy prophetic age
Old in its time
Flowing veins run on through
Deep in the Rhine
Center of the web
All battles scored
What is our war crime
Era forever more
War
Propaganda war ensemble
Burial to be
Bones shining bt the night
In blood laced misery
Campaign of elimination
Twisted psychology
When victory is to survive
And death is defeat
Sport the war, war support
The sport is war, total war
When this end is a slaughter
The final swing is not a drill
It's how many people I can kill
12 Dead Skin Mask (05:16)
How I've waited for you to come
I've been here all along
And now that you've arrived
Please stay a while
And I promise I wont keep you long
I'll keep you forever
Graze the skin with my finger tips
The brush of dead cold flesh pacifies the means
Prevoking images delicate features so smooth
A pleasant fragrance in the light of the moon
Dance with the dead in my dreams
Listen to their hallowed screams
The dead have taken my soul
Temptation's lost all control
Simple smiles elude psychotic eyes
Lose all mind control rationale declines
Empty eyes enslave the creations
Of placid faces and lifeless pageants
In the depths of a mind insane
Fantasy and reality are the same
Graze the skin with my finger tips
The brush of dead warm flesh pacifies the means
Incised members ornaments on my being
Adulating the skin before me
Simple smiles elude psychotic eyes
Lose all mind control rationale declines
Empty eyes enslave the creations
Of placid faces and lifeless pageants
Dance with the dead in my dreams
Listen to their hallowed screams
The dead have taken my soul
Temptation's lost all control
Dance with the dead in my dreams
Listen to their hallowed screams
The dead have taken my soul
Temptation's lost all control
13 Hallowed Point (03:24)
High velocity bullet at close range
Can damage the mind
Shattering the skull shredding the brain
Severing the spine
Bury a round of lead in the chest
It's quite an impression
Imagine the innards of your soul
The infliction
Instinctive regression
With intent to kill
No regard of human life
Or the blood spilled
Riddled convulsions
Confetti of flesh
Scattered helplessly
Losting your control of physical
Facilities
Release the slide to cleanse inside
Prepare to anoint
Snap the tongue in the groove discharge
To make my hallowed point
The power of a gun
Used with conviction
Disperesed on excursions
Randomly kills its victims
My sweet revenge
Bitter in depression
The thrilling release
Of a hatred deep persuasion
The power of a gun
Used with conviction
Diffused compulsions
Unending repercussions
Violent emotion
Screaming revolution
Spasmic convulsions
Death an empty gun
14 Born of Fire (03:07)
Join in my quest to leave life overturned
Spanning the world wave of doom
Spewing out death with the evil I've churned
Awaken the dead from their tomb
Love turns to lust the sensations I've felt
Exploring the pleasures of sin
Making the best of the cards I've been dealth
Adjusting the odds so I win
Unleash all my burning wrath
Potential killing machine
Take down all who block my path
Enjoying all that's obscene...born of fire
Prince of all darkness initiation
Ritually baptized in flames
Next to the throne my abomination
Spreads horror throughout the domain
Master the art that controls the impure
Inherit the infamous keys
Thousands of centuries I will endure
Tyrant of all the prophecies
Some have called me Satan's son
A name I cannot deny
Wielding fury that's second to none
Far too vile to confine...born of fire
All things dead must rise again
When twilight's blanket falls
Splattered red you'll find my den
Blood dripping from the walls
Dreams born of desire
Shaped and forged within the fire
Twisted, Warped, Deranged I see
The world's corrupt insanity
Dreams possess nightmarish figures
Burning can't escape the embers
Lost are those who trust the Liar
Satan's son I'm born of fire
15 Seasons in the Abyss (06:26)
Razors edge
Outlines the dead
Incisions in my head
Anticipation the stimulation
To kill the exhilaration
Close your eyes
Look deep in your soul
Step outside yourself
And let your mind go
Frozen eyes stare deep in your mind as you die
Close your eyes
And forget your name
Step outside yourself
And let your throughts drain
As you go insane...go insane
Innate seed
To watch you bleed
A demanding physical need
Desecrated eviscerated
Times perpetuated
Close your eyes
Look deep in your soul
Step outside yourself
And let your mind go
Frozen eyes stare deep in your mind as you die
Close your eyes and forget your name
Step outside yoruself and let your thoughts drain
As you go insane...go insane
Inert flesh
A bloody tomb
A decorated splatter brightens the room
An execution a sadist ritual
Mad intervals of mind residuals
Close your eyes
Look deep in your soul
Step outside yourslef
And let your mind go
Frozen eyes stare deep in your mind as you die
Close your eyes and forget your name
Step outside yoruself and let your thoughts drain
As you go insane...go insane
16 Hell Awaits (06:49)
Existing on damnation's edge
The priest had never known
To witness such a violent show
Of power overthrown
Angels fighting aimlessly
Still dying by the sword
Our legions killing all in sight
To get the one called Lord
The Gates of Hell lie waiting as you see
There's no price to pay just follow me
I can take your lost soul from the grave
Jesus knows your soul can not be saved
Crucify the so called Lord
He soon shall fall to me
Your souls are damned your God has fell
To slave for me eternally
Hell awaits...
The Reaper guard's the darkened Gates
That Satan calls his home
Demons feed the furnace where
The Dead are free to roam
Lonely children of the night
There's seven ways to go
Each leading to the burning hole
The Lucifer controls
Priests of Hades seek the sacred star
Satan sees the answer lies not far
Zombies screaming souls cry out to you
Satanic laws prevail your life is through
Pray to the moon... when it is round
Death with you shall then abound
What you seek... for can't be found
In sea or sky or underground
Now I have you deep inside my everlasting grasp
The seven bloody Gates of Hell
Is where you'll live your last
Warriors from Hell's Domain
Will bring you to your Death
The flames of Hades burning strong
Your soul shall never rest
The Gates of Hell lie waiting as you see
There's no price to pay just follow me
I can take your lost soul from the grave
Jesus knows your soul can not be saved
Sacrifice the lives of all I know they
Soon shall die
Their souls are damned to rot in Hell
and keep the fire growing deep inside
Hell awaits...
17 The Antichrist (03:11)
(Lyrics - Hanneman; Music - Hanneman, King)
Screams and nightmares
Of a life I want
Can't see living this lie no
A world I haunt
You've lost all control of my
Heart and soul
Satan holds my future
Watch it unfold
I am the Antichrist
It's what I was meant to be
Your God left me behind
And set my soul to be free
Watching disciples
Of the satanic rule
Pentagram of blood
Holds the jackal's truth
Searching for the answer
Christ hasn't come
Awaiting the final moment
The birth of Satan's son
Screams,
From a life I live
Torment,
Is what I give
Torture,
Is what I love
The down fall,
Of the heavens above
I am the Antichrist
All love is lost
Insanity is what I am
Eternally my soul will rot [rot... rot]
18 Chemical Warfare (05:25)
Frantic minds are terrified
Life lies in a grave
Silent death rides high above
On the wings of revelation
Multi death from chemicals
Arrogance has won
Annihilation must be swift
Destroy without destruction
Gods on the throne must be watching from hell
Awaiting the mass genocide
Soldiers defeated by death from a smell
Bodies lie dormant no life
Rising new souls on the lands where they fell
Demons not ready to die
Nothing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare
Artificial fucking peace
Line up in a death row
Generals in their slow defeat
Diminished from this hell
Banished from the dying world
The lords of hell await
Dogs of war are helpless prey
To immortality
Gods on the throne must be watching from hell
Awaiting the mass genocide
Soldiers defeated by death from a smell
Bodies lie dormant no life
Rising new souls on the lands where they fell
Demons not ready to die
Nothing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare!!!
Fuck it up!
Liquidate
The torture kills the troops that try to fight
Terminate
Human pesticide bring days of doom
Mist falls
The deadly gas that brings them to their knees
Sacrifice
Steal the soul and send his corpse to hell
Hahahahahaha
Mummified regions lying in dust
Fall victim to this game
Petrified corpses bathing in rust
Taken without being blamed
Falsified spirits farther they fall
Soon they will join us in hell
See the sky burning the gates are ablaze
Satan awaits eager to merge
Gods on the throne must be watching from hell
Awaiting the mass genocide
Soldiers defeated by death from a smell
Bodies lie dormant no life
Rising new souls on the lands where they fell
Demons not ready to die
Nothing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare
Warfare!
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