Try Not to Break Your Neck to This Doomy Version of Slayer’s “Blood Red”

Back on Halloween, we were stoked to hear the absolutely world-crushingly heavy version of Slayer‘s “War Ensemble” from doom metal supergroup SLOWER. Some of you guys hated it, others loved it. Still, regardless of how you feel about classic thrash getting slooowwweeddd the fuckkkk downnnn, the outfit ain’t backing down.

In fact, they dropped the second track from their upcoming self-titled release, “Blood Red.” Originally found on Slayer’s iconic 1009 album Seasons In The Abyss, they took a two minute and 48 second long rager into a plodding, thick six minutes and 30 seconds. This track moves like molasses and is as dense as a dying star.

Fu Manchu guitarist and project mastermind Bob Balch said he wanted to have “Blood Red” included in the project from the beginning, but initially thought it wouldn’t make the final cut.

“When I started this project I kind of had a feeling ‘Blood Red’ would find its way onto the chopping block. The groove is undeniably heavy at any speed and the arrangement is pretty straightforward. I sent Esben some scratch tracks to jam to and he killed it as usual. Then I tracked my guitars with actual amps. We sent all of that to Amy to lay down vocals. She absolutely nailed it!! After that, I used a single coil Reverend with a whammy bar for the solos. Peder’s bass was the last piece of the puzzle. He made it so much heavier! It didn’t think that was possible haha. I wanna thank all the players involved in this one. Enjoy!”

SLOWER is comprised of Monolord’s Esben Willems on drums, Lowrider’s Peder Bergstrand on bass, Year of the Cobra vocalist Amy Barrysmith, Kylesa vocalist Laura Pleasants, Kyuss bassist Scott Reeder, and Balch.

With so many personalities in one band, Balch said the collaborative nature of SLOWER really stems from an idea that was sparked a couple years ago.

“The idea for the SLOWER project started around four years ago. I was teaching a student how to play ‘South Of Heaven’ by Slayer but she was a beginner so we slowed it down. I thought that sounded cool so I tuned down to B standard and tried it. I added some drums and thought “someone in the doom community should do this and name it SLOWER.”

Along with “Blood Red,” SLOWER recorded “The Antichrist,” “War Ensemble,” “Dead Skin Mask,” and “South of Heaven” for their self-titled debut, which is due out on January 26. You can preorder your copy of Slower today.