The Ultimate Review of World Painted Blood

<p id="reviewText_165225">Slayer introduces World Painted Blood, a sluggish sounding track. This is particularly sad because its midpaced, not slow. Have the Slayer boys lay off the speed and they will struggle every time. Its sad really.<br />
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Tom pulls off some well executed spoken word style vocals. His performance is well done as far as vocals go and unlike most of his talk-singing in the past is actually a fairly strong showing but vocals don't make the whole song. The solo feels slow and sluggish, as if it was 'composed' from having one of the guitarists hit a string, let it ring out a little, hit another string, let it ring out a little, so on and so forth. It lays off the screech and squeal a bit which helped it come off as unique amongst Slayer's material but it still wasn't particularly great or brilliant. The riffs didn't even have enough power to carry themselves along, definitely nowhere near Slayer's strongest guitar work as it fell flat in basically every way. The bass was inaudible, a pity as I have no doubt it would have added much needed support the guitars. The drums were well done but are not enough to save it they pounded away and used as much double pedal as I guess the man felt reasonable but it couldn't save the track, it was rigged to failure from the beginning. It was only a matter of how gracefully it would fall.<br />
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My assumption here is that Kerry King (I believe he single handedly wrote this track) is running out of ideas but refuses to look back on the past for inspiration (or to plagiarize his own band). If this is the case I salute Slayer for pushing forward without getting caught up in the past and constantly trying to bring us something fresh.</p>
<p>Final Score: 10 / 100</p>