Band:	Slower
Album:	Rage And Ruin
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	November 01, 2024
A review by:	AndyMetalFreak

01. Hellfire
02. Chemical Warfare [Slayer cover]
03. Gates Of Hell
04. Sins Of The Dead
05. Haunting The Chapel [Slayer cover]
06. Rage And Ruin

This isn't just a Slower, doomy sludge version of Slayer, is it?

Slower are a US supergroup formed in 2022, featuring members of Kylesa, Kyuss, Year Of The Cobra, Monolord, and Fu Manchu. They released their self-titled full-length debut Slower earlier in 2024, which was striking for the fact that Slower ambitiously covered 5 classic Slayer songs in a mid-to-slow doomy sludge fashion, and for many it turned out to be quite a remarkable hit. Now, the band return later in the same year to present their sophomore Rage And Ruin. The band's intentions for this record were to cover Slayer's EP Haunting The Chapel in its entirety; however, they decided against that idea in the end, instead taking the route of releasing some of their own original material, a necessary and hopefully wise decision.

The result of Rage And Ruin is 6 tracks totalling a 42-minute runtime, combining original material with two Slayer covers, "Chemical Warfare" and "Haunting The Chapel". The album doesn't necessarily start in a convincing manner with "Hellfire", though. This is more-or-less a typical sludge/doom opener; nothing bad about that of course, as it's actually quite catchy and reasonably well crafted, mostly consisting of heavy Black Sabbath-worshipping riffs with a typical but effective fuzzy guitar tone. The remaining 3 songs that the band have written themselves aren't much different, either with the structure behind each mainly consisting of Amy Tung Barrysmith's (Year Of The Cobra) haunting wails echoing behind Bob Balch's (Fu Manchu) heavy doomy slogs and traditional solos, whilst drummer Esben Willems (Monolord) pounds away at a steady mid-tempo pace.

Following on from the debut, Slower once again make classic Slayer songs their own, firstly covering "Chemical Warfare", turning it into 11 minutes of total doomy sludge that makes for a polar opposite of Slayer's 6-minute ferocious thrash original, and likewise for "Haunting The Chapel". These Slayer cover songs are in fact the highlights of the album for me, despite the band writing their own material being a step in the right direction. Throwing in a few more Slayer cover songs is always a welcome addition, especially going on what we've heard so far from this band, but becoming an alternative Slayer tribute act could be a step too far in the long run. The songwriting of their newly written material is reasonably catchy, well performed, and the fuzzy distorted sound is great and all, but it's nothing that hasn't been heard or done countless times before, and only leaves the feeling like there's more in the tank for what musicians of this calibre can truly offer.

Is Rage And Ruin a worthy follow-up to a reasonably solid debut? Well for me not quite, it's certainly refreshing to hear classic Slayer songs played remarkably well in another style of metal, but where their original material will take us from here is what intrigues me most of all. Still, this is early stages for the project; the participating musicians have certainly proved capable of producing some fine quality music with their respective bands, so I still believe there's still huge potential to be made.