"The I took out my razor blade. then I did what God forbade. Now the cops are after me. But I proved that I'm no sissy."
Is It Really Live?
Live in studio. To a crowd of friends. You can actually hear individual drunk people.
Is It Official?
Yes. It was released on Metal Blade
Where Was It Recorded?
City of New York, America, 1984.
What are the Details?
Okay, so here's my take on Slayer real quick. One of their first major tours was supporting Venom on their 1984 Combat Tour and the influence is pretty obvious if you watch old footage from the huge spikes on Kerry King's wristbands, to the pentagrams and satan-focused lyrics. One aspect of Venom was that their records all sounded like crap. Bands who emulated them intentionally made crappy sounding recordings because they sounded more "evil," or "mysterious," or something. Slayer did the same, either on purpose or more likely because production was a non-issue in their scene . Slayer went on to carve out their own path as one of the big 4 thrash bands and bigger and better things in terms of both material and production.
Now every retrospective of Slayer's career is required to mention that early Slayer recording sound bad. Yes they do. Let's move on from there.
If Slayer had only made 2 albums and disappeared, ("Haunting The Chapel," and "Show No Mercy,") these records would be regarded as underground classics. "Live Undead," is composed entirely of songs from this period. The production, again is not fabulous and it sounds like they are playing to a crowd of about 50 people which they were. The songs are, of course fast but their fastest, heavy but not their heaviest and good but not their best. It sounds like Slayer and is still 100 times better than any of the bands who try to sound like them. Check out "Decade of Aggression," which I'll get to soon which features many of these oldies alongside later classics. The old stuff generally stacks up pretty well. Tom Araya's dedication to "all the little cunts that like to spread their legs in the night," at the beginning of "Captor of Sin," and his intro to "Die By The Sword,"("They say the pen is mightier than the sword. Well fuck the pen!") are pretty funny as well.
The Set:
1. Black Magic2. Die by the Sword
3. Captor of Sin
4. The Antichrist
5. Evil Has No Boundaries
6. Show No Mercy
7. Aggressive Perfector
