First up, I bloody love Slayer and I’m still sad that they called it a day. I completely get why, I don’t argue that they did it at the right time, but still… no more Slayer. So what do we do? Rely on listening to the old albums, watch the new guard of thrash bands come up, and pass our ears over the many cover versions kicking around. The latter is what makes up Forever Reigning, a dozen covers by eight different bands.
Unsurprisingly each brings their own style, staying moderately faithful to the original while chucking their own subgenre influences over the top. I’d not heard of any of the bands before, which also made listening to the album interesting and a chance to find some new bands. Always a good thing.
The selection of songs isn’t quite as predictable as you would expect. There are some obvious choices on there (“Raining Blood”, “South of Heaven”, “Dead Skin Mask” and so on), but the inclusion of “Delusions of Savior”, “Divine Intervention” and “Disorder” (itself a cover, or more precisely a medley of three covers!) are pleasantly surprising.
As is not uncommon with these independent compilation albums, the production varies somewhat from artist to artist as each has their own style, budget and so on. Frustratingly our downloaded version of the album wasn’t as “meaty” as stream we had access to, which really affected the songs by Skrog the most. A shame as they actually sounded pretty damn good on the stream, whereas the downloaded versions sound like they’d been wrapped in tin foil or a rustling plastic bag. However, I’m sure it’s safe to say that the retail version will do their covers of “South of Heaven” and “Divine Intervention” justice.
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Let’s face it, you probably know all the songs, so I’ll focus on the styles. Skrog are quite thrashy with an edge of death more noticeable in the vocal style. Disinter play “Show No Mercy” so fast that they reduce the 3:04 runtime of the original to 2:30, while making the bass pound even more. It’s like the Reader’s Digest version of the song, if Reader’s Digest wanted you to die in the most brutal pit ever created. It’s a shame they only feature once on the album!
Distal Descent have three songs – “Expendable Youth”, “Delusions of Savior” and “Mandatory Suicide”. They tackle the songs with downtuned guitars, but vocals which are closer to classic rock… except where there are dual vocals where the secondary is harsh. It’s an interesting approach and works well. “Delusions” is obviously an instrumental and they’ve added an orchestral undertone to it. I like it, it works.
Skull Fuckers Incorporated tackle “Dead Skin Mask” and “Raining Blood”, possibly two of Slayers best-known songs and long-time live staples. Harsh vocals are the only real change to the sound of the original, with the addition of the recordings sounding “live” rather than studio. The overall tone is pretty raw, and works well.
Eulogy in Blood cover “Bloodline”, and it’s a downtuned death-filled version. Psychostick once told us that there’s no such not as “H”. Well, I think Eulogy in Blood found it with this recording. When I say downtuned, I mean downtuned. Overt Enemy perform a pretty faithful rendition of “At Dawn They Sleep” with some extra “chug” on the rhythm and lo-fi production which makes the song sound that bit closer to the original.
The wonderfully-named Bloat Toad present their crushing take on “Spill The Blood”, sounding like it was recorded in a reverberating concert hall. It sounds huge (and again, better on our stream than the downloaded version).
The final band to point out are SloKill who take on the oddball “Disorder”, originally recorded with Ice-T for the Judgement Night soundtrack. Incidentally you should a) see the film and b) get the soundtrack album, as well as the lesser-known second album. “Disorder” actually rams together three songs by The Exploited, and SloKill manage to get over the punk origins well. The vocals aren’t as strong as the original cover (if that makes sense), but come on… Ice-T. How do you compete? They’re damn good, though.
Overall? Not bad. The fact that it’s a bunch of bands with slightly different styles helps, as does the choice of songs not being as obvious as it could have been. It must be difficult choosing which song(s) to put forward… and it’s amazing (or perhaps agreed upon in advance) that nobody did “Angel of Death”!
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Forever Reigning is out now via Satyrn Studios, or stream on Spotify
