Onstage at Wembley Arena, Slayer are playing a set that will become part of their first official live album. The band had spent a decade turning thrash metal into something faster, darker and more precise, and now they were taping their first official live record for the world beyond tape traders. On October 22, 1991, that record arrived as Decade of Aggression, a double live album released on Def American Records.
The title Mötley Crüe already owned
The album almost carried a very different name. Slayer had planned to call it Decade of Decadence, a title that fit the ten-year mark they were celebrating. Then they discovered that Mötley Crüe had already registered Decade of Decadence for their own 1991 compilation. Rather than fight over a phrase, Slayer switched to Decade of Aggression, a title that said more about the band anyway.
The live set pulls most of its material from three studio albums: South of Heaven, Reign in Blood and Seasons in the Abyss. The first disc was recorded entirely at the Lakeland Civic Center in Florida on July 13, 1991, and it opens with songs like Hell Awaits, Raining Blood, Dead Skin Mask and Seasons in the Abyss. The second disc mixes a March 1991 show in San Bernardino, California with the October 1990 Wembley Arena recording.
Producer Rick Rubin shaped those three nights into a single flowing concert. There are no overdubbed guitar parts on Decade of Aggression, which means what you hear is what the band played. Rubin made the two discs sound as if one uninterrupted show had been captured, even though the recordings came from three cities and three dates during the Clash of the Titans tour in support of Seasons in the Abyss.
There are no overdubbed guitar parts on Decade of Aggression, which means what you hear is what the band played.
A tenth-anniversary statement
The timing of the release mattered as much as the sound. Slayer had put out Seasons in the Abyss in 1990, and the live album was meant to mark the band's tenth anniversary while giving the members room to decide what direction the next studio record should take. A double album of that scale was not a quick placeholder, though. It was a statement that the band could hold a stage and hold an audience without studio tricks.
Reviews were mixed but respectful. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B− and called it an accurate sonic snapshot of a Slayer concert. The album reached number 55 on the Billboard 200, climbed to 35 in Germany and spent three weeks there, and hit 29 in the UK Albums Chart. The album also reached charts in Australia, Austria, Canada and the Netherlands. The full album runs 89 minutes. Three of its tracks later appeared in the box set Soundtrack to the Apocalypse.
The lineup on the record is the classic one: Tom Araya on bass and vocals, Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King on guitars, and Dave Lombardo on drums. King later said this was the first official live Slayer experience for a wide audience, apart from the old tape-trading circles where fans had shared bootlegs for years. Decade of Aggression turned that underground ritual into a proper release, with a photo booklet whose earliest images date to 1982.
The title change turned out to be a gift. Decade of Decadence belonged to a different band and a different mood. Decade of Aggression named exactly what Slayer had built over ten years, and the live album preserved it without smoothing over the rough edges. On October 22, 1991, the band that almost lost its album title ended up with a record that sounds like one long, furious night.