World Painted Blood

Track-by-Track

World Painted Blood

KERRY KING:  It’s the only song on the record that you listen to and it musically sounds like an intro. Plus we can use the intro live.

TOM ARAYA:  It’s one of those end-of-the-world-type songs. Jeff and I wrote the lyrics together.

Hate Worldwide

KING:  This one came together really quickly. Tom really went balls-out when he sang it. After I wrote it I didn’t know what to call it, but at the end of every chorus it says, “hate worldwide,” so I went with that.

ARAYA: I thought the title was kind of cool. It sounds like a corporation. It’s one of the faster ones on the album.

Americon

KING:  I got the title on a day off from tour. I was walking around and saw a construction company called Americon, which seemed to lend itself to a song written from the perspective of what the rest of the world thinks it’s like to be an American. Everyone has different opinions on what our agenda is.

ARAYA:  It’s a very rock-and-roll number, very upbeat. The line about liberty really sticks out for me.

LOMBARDO:  It’s an expression of the frustration with what goes on today, the evil of the people we should be trusting with our money and whatnot.

KING: It’s the only song on the album in drop D.

Beauty Through Order

KING:  That’s a song of Hanneman’s. It starts out kind of mellow, though that’s a ridiculous term for Slayer. It’s about the Countess of Bathory.

HANNEMAN:  She was basically a female serial killer who killed up to 600 people. It just seemed like a good subject to write about for Slayer. When I started writing the lyrics I took forever to get started. How am I gonna think like a girl? Can I think in her frame of mind? After a while I was like, 'Well, she’s evil and she killed a bunch of people, and sometimes women are more evil than men.'

ARAYA:  I was in the studio one day talking to Greg [Fidelman/producer], and I thought this song should start in a different way. What you hear in the beginning is what I came up with.

Human Strain

KING:  It’s groovy and heavy.

Snuff

KING:  “Industrial” was its working title because of the part at the end. This is the last one I wrote lyrics to. I was like, 'Man, I don’t know if I have any ideas left.' Then my buddy brought over this documentary on snuff films.

Not of This God

KING:  That’s my religion-bashing tune of this record. It’s about those stickers you see on car windows that say 'Not of this world.'  Religion to me is just a big cult of armchair Jesus lovers, and I was tired of looking at those stickers. So I wrote a song saying, 'If you believe in this fairy tale, then I’m not of your god.'

Playing with Dolls

KING:  That’s one Jeff wrote last October. It’s creepy and cool; it’s got an eerie vibe to it. I wrote the chorus. It’s about a person who lives in a cemetery and plays with corpses.

ARAYA:  It’s sung in the first person. The lyrics have a lot to do with how I approach a song. Even though a lot of our songs may sound the same to some people, with my intention I emphasize different parts about the songs; it depends on what the song is about. The first-person means it’s more about getting into character and trying to feel the song, a certain attitude and aggression. I’ll try different microphones when I sing and hold them differently, just trying to get the right performance.

Psychopathy Red

KING:  We released it on a 7-inch for Record Store Day, but we definitely had to have it on the album just so people can have it as part of this collection.

ARAYA:  It’s a pretty intense song. It lets people know we have chops.

Public Display of Dismemberment

KING:  The working title was 'Blast Beats' for obvious reasons. It’s probably the most intense song on the album. I wrote it suggesting that with so many of the problems in a given society, in some places they have those public displays of dismemberment to solve them. It’s just a Slayer topic. I’m not suggesting that we hack up people in the street, but the thought’s provocative.

ARAYA:  It’s a strange tune—fast and high-paced.

Unit 731

KING:  It starts out really punky.

HANNEMAN:  It’s about the Japanese holocaust.

ARAYA:  This is a pretty crazy one. Jeff came in with the title, and he only had the first verse and the chorus. I looked it up and read about it, this Japanese military unit that documented everything they did, all these medical experiments on people. They were worse than the Nazis, and a lot of them were immune to prosecution because of all the information they had.