Review by Rexorcist for Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss (1990)

I just replayed three Slayer albums over the last two days, since I had a mystious and sudden urge to listen to them.  Believe it or not, there was a time that Seasons in the Abyss was my favorite, but has since stopped.  I noticed something in comparison to Reign in Blood.  While the melodic and songwriting construction are more diversified and improved, the album isn't as heavy as previous efforts.  Thankfully, there's a keen level of songwriting sophistication (a phrasing I often use for five-stars) that largely makes up for this.  In stark contrast to the more experimental vein of South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss fleshed all of that variety out into a more consistently jamming hole with occasional dramatic and slower bits to keep things a bit original.  Once again, as is expected, Tom Araya's crossover-style vocals lead the thematic weight of this disturbing album while the guitarists both shred like hell, and we've got some of their most well-written and awe-inspiring solos, drawing you right into the disturbing scenarios of each song even while Araya isn't singing.  There are very few albums as loud as this one, even though it's not as heavy as Slayer was before.  But this is a finer technical achievement and an album that has a lot of replay value, which is common and expected for a masterful thrash group like Slayer.  With a third five-star in a row, Slayer have cemented themselves as one of the greatest metal bands this planet has seen.