Slayer were one of the most important and influential metal bands of the 80s thanks to such landmark albums as Hell Awaits, Reign In Blood and South Of Heaven.
But the 1990s was a different matter. A strong start with 1990’s Seasons In The Abyss soon gave way to a run of albums that were sub-par by their exalted standards, culminating in 1998’s little-loved Diabolus In Musica – a nu metal-era misfire that even Slayer guitarist Kerry King would rather forget.
“I’ve said it a whole bunch of times before, but I just wasn’t really present on [Diabolus In Musica] because of how I felt about what was going on in heavy music at the time,” says Kerry. ‘That whole Limp Bizkit and… I can’t even think of the other ones anymore… but all of that had just got me really bored and uninspired. So I felt like I had to be me again or just stop, and I think Disciple was a big step to rediscovering that, you know? We’re doing it our way or no way at all!”
Disciple is the seething highlight of the band’s ninth album, God Hates Us All, a record that found them rediscovering the fire and fury they’d misplaced during the previous decade.
The song took aim at religion and the fanaticism it inspires, pivoting around the immortal line ‘God hates us all’. But for all its divine rage, the initial flash of inspiration came in much more prosaic circumstances.
“I remember being gridlocked in LA, where the traffic is terrible, getting angrier and more frustrated and looking up at this big billboard that said, ‘God loves you all,’” recalls Kerry. ‘And I remember thinking, ‘What? He sure as hell doesn’t love me right now!’ And it stuck with me. I already had the ‘I never said I wanted to be God’s disciple’ line, but I didn’t know it was going to link up with the ‘God hates us all’ lyric initially. They just fit together so well, though, that I knew I had to.”
With Kerry taking care of the lyrics, fellow guitarist Jeff Hanneman – who passed away in 2013 – wrote the music.
“I think it’s the last time myself and Jeff worked on a song in that way,” says Kerry. ‘I wrote the lyrics and he wrote the music, which is something we had done a lot over the years, and I don’t think it’s the last great song either of us wrote, but it’s certainly the last time we worked a song in that way.”
But the song still required a little of that special Slayer sauce. That was provided by bassist and vocalist Tom Araya, who roared his way through Disciple with the kind of venom that had been missing on the last couple of albums.
“When I write a song, I hear how I want it in my head, but I never get to actually hear whether it’s a great song or not until Tom adds his vocals to it,” says Kerry. “Ultimately, when I see Tom in the vocal booth is the first time I actually get to hear it, and I remember hearing him sing that line and a big smile just broke out across my face like, ‘That is exactly what I wanted to hear!’”
God Hates Us All was released on September 11, 2001, the day Al-Qaeda terrorists flew two planes into the Twin Towers in New York and another into the Pentagon in Washington DC. Suddenly, a lyric inspired by an LA traffic jam gained a timely new dimension.
Irrespective of real world events, Disciple did the job it needed to do and helped reset Slayer’s musical and attitudinal compass after the mis-steps of the previous decade. It rapidly became a fan favourite.
“Obviously the line ‘God hates us all’ was a big thing for the song,” says Kerry. “It’s such a brutal sentiment and fit perfectly for us. But it’s a pretty unique song for Slayer, in that we don’t really usually have these big chant-along moments. That’s not really the type of thing that we trade on. But I know people like to be stood in a festival environment and have that hook, and that groove, and Disciple has both of those things. That, along with this really grinding outro, set it apart from the rest of our back catalogue.”
Nearly a quarter of a century after it was written, and a year after Slayer made their surprise comeback following their 2019 split, Disciple remains a fixture in the band’s live set.
“I think we have to play it these days. It’s become like a South Of Heaven or a Dead Skin Mask or an Angel Of Death – people have begun to expect it. I actually took it out of the set for a while, because we now have so much material that we want to play it’s hard to get it all in, and then when we reintroduced it I remembered how much of a response it got. So I think it’s in there for good now.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 302 (