Nuke the whales for Slayer

I am tired of having 3-4 40% jobs and am ready to go back to having just one %100 one thank you. Today was one of those days where problems inherent joined forces to create a Voltron of problems.

All day today it was non-stop thundering















to pummel the pain away. It has been forever (and for a couple of these albums, never) since I've listened to Slayer. Much like how I got into straight jazz via free jazz, I came into metal through the back channels of black and doom metal of it, and in both cases, it gave me an appreciation for the foundations that I might not have had otherwise.

Has it ever been noted that Slayer vocalist Tom Araya sounds an awful lot like a sped up, grittier D. Boon from The Minutemen? Slayer were all California punks who wanted it harder, so its not that much of a stretch.

I knew I loved Slayer even in my snobbiest college dj years because once I was visiting a friend in the high-rise dorms on campus and someone has put a "Save the Whales" sticker on the elevator wall. It must have been fresh, because on my way down, it had already been x-ed out to say Nuke the whales for Jesus. A week later, someone had crossed out Jesus and replaced it with a rather elaborate Slayer mural, complete with pentagram of swords and an eagle. I want to say the eagle had a dead whale dangling from it's beak, but I think I am just wanting it to have had that. Regardless, a band that inspires that degree of defacement has always got my respect. I expect no one has rode up and down a stinky hot elevator in a dilapidated men's dorm just to add the finishing touches on their Decemberists mural.