Top Ten Things We Learnt from Slayer’s ‘The Repentless Killogy’ Premiere
In 2015, SLAYER unleashed Repentless – their twelfth, and final, studio album. The band released three music videos to accompany the singles from the album: You Against You, Repentless and Pride in Prejudice. Fans were quick to notice the continuity between these music videos and began to speculate on the story which connects them, scouring the videos for small-yet-significant details which might reveal it. At last, all is revealed. Slayer: The Repentless Killogy is a short film, directed by BJ McDonnell and featuring Jason Trost, Danny Trejo and Jessica Pimentel: the story ties together, and expands on, the three music videos which were released for 2015’s Repentless.
“When we set out to do these initial three videos,” says McDonnell, “our intention was to continue the saga of SLAYER and Wyatt at some point down the line. But this is the band’s final album and world tour so this story, the three videos and the Repentless live concert at The Forum, is a perfect way to wrap up. This is the end of the monsters.”
The film also incorporates an interview with the band, as well as footage from their 2017 concert at the Los Angeles Forum; artfully blending SLAYER-reality with SLAYER-fiction. The film is accompanied by the complete live set, captured masterfully by Wayne Isham, which documents this final chapter in the SLAYER story. Just ahead of the release of Slayer: The Repentless Killogy on November 8th, the film was premiered in a special one-off event in cinemas worldwide on November 6th. Distorted Sound went down to witness the bloodshed; what did we learn?
1. This is SLAYER’s most conceptual project to date.
In their nearly forty-year career, SLAYER have delivered album after album of uncompromising satanic-themed thrash metal. While their peers have toyed with concept albums and unusual collaborations – sometimes making a complete handbrake-turn in style – SLAYER have remained steadfast to what made them great in the first place: crafting catchy riffs, shredding at a blistering pace, and duelling dive-bombing guitar solos. While 2015’s Repentless is absolutely no exception in that regard, The Repentless Killogy represents their first and almost certainly their last foray into more conceptual territory. The short film is not just a story based on their songs: it includes an interview with their band ahead of their final world tour, incorporates the aforementioned music videos as part of the story (making it a musical film, of sorts) and even uses footage taken from their concert at the Los Angeles Forum as one of the scenes in the story – teeing up for the presentation of the complete concert in the second half. The events of the story run alongside the concert before coming together in band’s cameo appearance in the penultimate scene (more on that later.)
2. There will be blood. Lots of blood.
We are sure almost everyone could have predicted this ahead of time, but to confirm: Slayer: The Repentless Killogy is a gory, brutally violent and blood-soaked feast for the eyes which more than earns it’s 18+ rating. Seriously. Here at Distorted Sound, we are no strangers to the more savage end of cinema – but the short film condenses a feature-length amount of gory brutality into a shorter runtime, making it all the more intense. Many of the bloodiest scenes are contained in the musical sequences, and will already be familiar to you, but believe us when we say there is much, much more where that came from. If you’re already a fan of a splatter-film, look no further for your next dose.
3. The Repentless Killogy is a former neo-Nazi revenge quest.
SLAYER have never been a band to shy away from some of the heaviest themes out there, and The Repentless Killogy is nothing new in that regard. Without wanting to give too much away beyond the content of the music videos, the film tells the story of Wyatt – a former member of a neo-Nazi gang – whose wife has been kidnapped by members of said gang. In his efforts to locate his wife, Wyatt is incarcerated and after inciting a bloody prison riot, is himself kidnapped by the neo-Nazi gang. In order to secure the safety of his wife, the gang insist that he re-initiate himself as a member of the gang by killing his fellow escapee, Danny. Unwilling to acquiesce to their demands, Wyatt sees his wife killed in front of his eyes, precipitating a murderous series of interrogations in his efforts to locate the gang’s leader – Luther. We’ll leave the rest as a surprise, but needless to say the film continues SLAYER‘s willingness to present humanity at it’s very, very worst.
4. The boys in SLAYER are not much of a loss to the world of acting.
Apart from the interview scene at the very start of the film, SLAYER – which is now comprised of Tom Araya, Kerry King, Paul Bostaph and Gary Holt – feature as themselves later in the film in, what I think it’s fair to say, is a fairly wooden performance. The penultimate scene in which they appear is among the most dramatic as the story reaches it’s climax, which makes the SLAYER cameo all the more hilarious as they appear incongruously among the other performers. We can say with confidence that their appearance is deliberately played for laughs, and lightens the tone of what has otherwise been an incredibly intense and heavy film.
5. The director deliberately shocked the members of SLAYER to elicit an authentic performance.
We have it, on rather good authority, that director BJ McDonnell used an unconventional method to get the best performance out of the SLAYER members. Without wanting to spoil the story any more, at the end of their interview at the start of the short film a gunshot is heard – source unknown. SLAYER act genuinely surprised, and glance quickly towards the door in shock. This might seem incongruous with their wooden acting reported above, and it is – they weren’t acting. The members of SLAYER were not briefed that there would be simulated gunfire to wrap up their interview, and their recorded reactions are genuine! Pretty sly, eh?
6. The art of capturing, directing and editing a live set has come a long way.
When you think about it, filming a band performing live is no mean feat. For a start, there’s really only one take: it’s not as if the director can cut, and ask Kerry King to launch into “that” dive-bombing guitar solo again, so that the camera operator can catch the intricate fretwork with a more appropriate lens. Then, there’s the editing: assembling maybe ninety minutes or so of coherent video from hours of footage captured across over ten different cameras, held at different angles at different times. Then you have the crowd to contend with, whose beer-flinging exuberance could spoil expensive equipment, irreplaceable footage or even the show itself. All of these considerations, and more, make Wayne Isham‘s directing work on the second half of Slayer: The Repentless Killogy all the more impressive: cutting together clips in quick succession to match the intensity of a SLAYER performance, making use of complimentary angles in order to give a sense of a ‘complete’ capture, and even using footage taken from within the crowd to give a real sense of presence. This is a professional job, and expertly documents SLAYER as a live phenomenon towards the end of their career.
7. This is possibly SLAYER’s most elaborate live production to date.
SLAYER are not a band which you would necessarily associate with theatricality. There’s a certain no-nonsense sensibility to their music which would not sit well with an elaborate stage set a la IRON MAIDEN or ALICE COOPER, for example. However, SLAYER certainly upped their game for this concert without reaching an uncharacteristic excess. The most eye-catching aspect of their live production here is the pyrotechnics: in addition to the increasingly popular “wall of fire” apparatus, there are dynamic flamethrowers which are capable of ‘tracing’ the pentagram of swords in their back-dropped logo and forming a brief, fiery inverted cross. The backdrops are swapped throughout, which keeps proceedings visually interesting, and the lighting guides your attention in a subtle yet appreciable way. If you want to see Slayer presented at their very best, without compromise, this is for you.
8. SLAYER have written a love song.
You would be hard-pressed to pick out any trace of sentimentality amongst SLAYER‘s war-torn lyrics, which typically centre around humanity’s evil. Yet, Tom Araya introduces this particularly superb rendition of Dead Skin Mask as a love song, specifically: “The love between a son and his mother…” – an allusion, presumably, to the gruesome antics of Ed Gein whose desire to possess the female form drove him to murderous human couture. It stands to reason that if SLAYER are going to write a love song, it’s going to be about the most barbarous, morbid and deviant form of love to exist in the popular imagination.
9. SLAYER are possibly the only band in the world to sustain a circle-pit throughout a full live set.
From the moment that Delusions of Savior fades, the curtain drops, and the band tear into Repentless, the centre of the crowd begins to open up as fans are frenzied into a circle-pit which doesn’t let up until the last note of Angel of Death. It is, frankly, difficult to remain seated throughout the screening as SLAYER‘s honed thrash metal style demands movement, as the audience at The Los Angeles Forum testify. Apart from a few very short hardcore/grindcore/powerviolence sets, we have never seen an appreciative crowd react with such sustained enthusiasm – a testament to the sheer ferocity of SLAYER as a live phenomenon.
10. There is absolutely no filler on a SLAYER setlist in 2019.
While there are a few notable absences on the setlist – particularly Die By The Sword, Jesus Saves and World Painted Blood – if you’re into what SLAYER have released in the last decade, then you’ll agree that there is absolutely no filler on this career-spanning setlist which dutifully revisits fan favourites as well as fronting fresh singles from the titular Repentless. Born of Fire gets an outing, while God Hates Us All is shelved, but there is no letting up in the lengthy set which magnificently documents their career as it draws towards it’s fiery end.
Slayer: The Repentless Killogy is set for release on November 8th via Nuclear Blast Records and Prime Zero Productions.
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