There’s really no point in getting bogged down in the finer details of Slayer’s considerable oeuvre. To fully appreciate them you must first disengage yourself from everything you know. Forget you’ve ever heard about music. Forget everything you know about heavy metal and the many exponents of it that you have already seen. Pretend you’ve never seen a band. Pretend you’ve never sipped beer, have no concept of electricity as a conduit for social change or volume a canvas on which to paint an ugly landscape.

I have no clue what songs Slayer played tonight and don’t care. Some will find this offensive or lazy, but more than any other band Slayer are to be felt. Their live performance is not to be analysed in four-minute segments but instead absorbed for what it is: a glorious two-hour blast of wooooarrrrgh. A face-ripping catharsis.

You already know that every song is about death or mayhem or bloodshed or redemption, so what difference does it make? Jaw-dropping drum fills follow shredding guitar solos before the quartet lock on together again, galloping off towards the horizon, heads nodding in motion, hitting their guitars like a circle jerk race to see who can come the quickest and the loudest - and the furthest. Spurting arcs of musical spunk is Slayer’s trade. Over and over and over until songs clatter collide like a car-crash pile-up. Soon the senses begin to solidify. In the face of volume, sentences become impossibility and begin to break down.

Then thoughts become incoherent, lost amidst more ricochet blast beats and guttural moans. A cigarette burns down to your fingers. Slayer have sucked you in, brother. Hook line and sinker. They’ve rearranged your DNA. And yet still you stand transfixed thinking: these forceful syncopated polyrhythms and symphonic constructs must have been what Hitler heard when he concocted genocide to the strains of Wagner resounding around Bavarian ballrooms. This is the sound of the bloodiest Norsemen raping and pillaging their way through the sagas of thousand years ago, beautifully doomed in their misguided notions of totalitarianism. It’s music that sears beyond heavy metal as a late-20th century American imperialist conceit. It’s the soundtrack to the cold wind and the death and decay of an autumn that blows hard outside across shitty old London town, where the rat-faced bootleggers moan “Bring out your dead…” and the Brixton sirens wail like banshees.

It’s all you can do but stop yourself from ripping your clothes and sticking your cock into the nearest hole, or biting a security guard’s nose off, or jumping head first off the 150-foot-high proscenium arch that towers above this stage of drama and tragedy. “Are you ready for WAR?” asks Tom Araya, without giving us time to answer, but I’m already leaving in order to sustain the high, to avoid the emptiness of the silence that follows. Besides Slayer have done enough tonight. More than enough.

I feel murdered.

I mean, these cunts have killed me.

It’s clear that nobody really gives a flying fuck about Thine Eyes Bleed. While a vast portion of diehards have been queuing up for ages to get into Brixton Academy early and be one of the first in the Slayer moshpit, there are also many that are lining local bars, snakebites and JD & Cokes in hand.

It’s always difficult being the first band onstage, but never more difficult than when in front of this crowd. Relentless in their praise for Slayer and unforgiving in their apparent hatred for every other band, this is the most hideously blinkered crowd in heavy metal. With their Slayer-lite heavy thrash and Tom Araya’s brother on bass, Thine Eyes Bleed probably aren’t that bad but like I said: nobody here gives a flying fuck about them.

Children Of Bodom are an entirely different proposition. Supposedly rotating third and fourth slot with Lamb Of God, they find themselves in the early position for both nights at Brixton but revel in their wonderfully bombastic power metal, already bathed in thousands of pounds' worth of lighting. Think Dragonforce but with less of the piss-taking and more natural guitar wielding. Only a Finnish band could get away with it, but still there is a feeling that this just isn’t enough for the crowd. It’s still all about Slayer.

Or is it?! With their ridiculous brand of ‘Pure American Metal’, Lamb Of God stalk the stage with the intensity and ferocious power of Pantera in their pomp, albeit with about ten times more hair. Indeed, their sound has morphed so close to Anselmo’s troupe that they have been heralded as the New Pantera. Furthermore, prior to this tour there have been many, myself included, suggesting that Lamb Of God are the natural successors to Slayer’s crown as the kings of the heavy metal kingdom.

This performance certainly suggests they are capable. Despite being part of a record label that doesn’t even know that they are a top 10 act in the US, their recent album garnered astonishingly hyperbolic praise across the music press and will doubtlessly be seen in more than one heavy metaller’s end-of-year list. Tonight they bring it all to life. There is no band tonight that looks and sounds more resoundingly and undeniably METAL. With a bass that stalks and thunders, they threaten to literally bring the roof down with every uncontrollably heavy breakdown. You can almost see the guitars galloping from their fingers and Randy Blythe’s blistering distorted vocals bring this gob-smacking metal pantomime to a head. This is one of the most staggering live shows I’ve seen this year. Absolutely amazing.

After that, the crowd struggles to recover in time for In Flames. This really is no laughing matter. In Flames are one of the heaviest and most influential metal bands of recent times, but after Lamb Of God they just sound so lame. There may be an allowance that their guitarist has gone AWOL, but I think it’s more to do with the quality that has gone before them – and what is coming after – rather than any shortcomings. Despite all their experience and quality in depth, In Flames have been rendered nearly obsolete because they have been sandwiched between two of the greatest live bands around right now. Someone had to draw the short straw.

It’s time for a band about whom a hell of a lot of people give a fuck. It's time for Slayer...

REVIEW