Giving ‘Em Heck : Speed-Metal Band Slayer Has Trouble Maintaining a Credible Doomsaying Identity at L.A. Sports Arena

In a Village Voice interview, record producer Rick Rubin discussed a recent Phil Donahue show about “Kids Who Kill,” pointing out with managerial pride that all five adolescents featured mentioned his client, the speed-metal band Slayer. Rubin also chuckled about the morbidity of the group’s fans, joking about selling nooses at concession stands to “the nothing-to-live-for Slayer audience.”

That’s just terrific, you think, considering these claims as you pull into the L.A. Sports Arena parking lot and consider the gantlet of Beelzebub-friendly beer-swillers and pentangled pot smokers between you and your seat: Fifteen thousand kids who may or may not kill, and who --it’s implied by their wisecracking producer--might not mind going down in a hail of bullets afterward. Swell.

Certainly the multinational force of security guards and officers surrounding the Sports Arena on this Tuesday looks as prepared for sudden combat as the allied forces in the Persian Gulf. Perhaps some of them have heard Slayer’s songs, nearly all of which deal with homicide, a fiery afterlife in hell, or a combination of the two. Any band that aggressively mythologizes mass murderers Ed Gein and Josef Mengele alongside Lucifer is probably not destined to be the policeman’s friend.

Scary stuff, for most decent, law-abiding, God-fearing citizens.

Except a funny thing happened on the way to the Sports Arena. There were no human sacrifices in the parking lot. And disturbing as Slayer can be on record, on stage the quartet turned out to be about as frightening as the Wizard of Oz after Toto tugged on the curtain.

The band’s defense for its blood-and-guts-and-hellfire posture is the usual last refuge of artistic scoundrels in the ‘90s: It reflects the harsh, ugly realities of life. If so, Tuesday was the perfect night to prove it, being the evening of the deadline for possible hostilities in the gulf.

Potentially prophetic numbers like “War Ensemble” and “Chemical Warfare” seemed ripe for dedications to those who may be about to lose their lives in the gruesome manner warned of in the lyrics.

But such topical nods came only once, in the introduction to the anti-draft “Mandatory Suicide.” Making heavy reference to Iraq (as a better group like Metallica might’ve) would bring all this “realistic” gore over to the side of brutal reality, which--protests to the contrary--is not what Slayer is prepared to sell its fantasy-hungry fans. Better to trot out the skulls and crosses for the kids on this, just another tour stop.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the members apparently aren’t really satanists after all, but it was surprising that Slayer would have trouble maintaining a credible doomsaying identity, actual or feigned. When it came to exuding that all-important evil vibe, they came off as poseur -like as Ozzy--without the sense of humor--shaking their manes in choreographed, rock-star thrusts and putting in plugs for MTV between plugs for the devil.

Singer-growler Tom Araya would make polite comments between songs about how he was sorry the security guards were ejecting those attempting to turn the floor level into a mosh pit.

Then, as if suddenly remembering his lines, he’d switch into a rehearsed, over-enunciated song intro. And, upon the dramatic intoning of the song title, the quartet would kick into another precise, hurried white-noise whitewash of a minor-key song, the churn of guitars chiseled further into a single sound by bad arena acoustics.

During the encore, “Angel of Death,” hundreds--or thousands--of fans rushed past the army of guards and flattened the folding chairs on the front half of the floor level in a dancing frenzy that looked from afar like a dimly lit bacchanalian brawl.

This melee was an impressive sight, the kids’ mass homage to the death angel almost cinematic in its epic physicality, but finally less than cathartic. Perhaps it seemed like a pale imitation of punk’s salad days, when youngsters at least punished their bodies to the tune of bands that meant what they sang, or maybe it was just that Satan’s little slam pit seemed awfully innocuous compared to the fearsome beating of wings over the Mideast.