A SCIENTIFIC MEASURE OF SLAYER ALBUMS’ LEVELS OF EVILNESS

We can argue ’round the campfire ’til the sun comes up about this burning question, or we can just consult the scientific study sent in by MS reader Liam [via Ian Christe’s Twitter]: which Slayer album is the most evil???

By looking at the lyrics of each Slayer album and counting occurrences of the words “blood,” “evil,” death,” “hell,” “kill,” “satan” and “war” relative to the number of lines in each song (so longer songs don’t have an advantage), the folks at Hirschkraft.com have done their study and the results are in: Hell Awaits is the most evil! Unsurprisingly, the band’s evil quotient trends downward as their career progresses (although World Painted Blood makes a nice showing). I remember seeing a similar study done for Metallica lyrics a couple of years back but I can’t find it; post it in the comments if you have it.

The Hirschkraft study also looks at evilness as measured by who wrote the music and who wrote the lyrics. What I’d really like to see is some sort of measure of evilness based on the music itself: numbers of tri-tones, chromatic riffs, some function of evilness as speed, etc. I have faith in you, Internutz, it can be done!

Now I ask you, oh faithful MS reader: which Slayer album is the most evil?? Tell us in the comments, natch.

-VN