User:CrowzRSA/Sandbox/Sandbox 2/Slayer/Seasons in the Abyss

Seasons in the Abyss (also known as Seasons) is the fifth studio album by the thrash metal band Slayer. It was released on October 9, 1990 through Def American Records, and later through American Recordings after the company changed its name. "Temptation" (track #8) featured an overdub of lead vocalist Tom Araya's singing, because the first vocal track was not erased between the takes. Within its first few years, the album was not available in many stores, solely because of the band's "extreme sound." As an experimental album full of several elements, it "fuses its two predecessors," South of Heaven and Reign in Blood.

The album's reception was generally positive, with Allmusic rewarding the album with a nearly perfect rating of four and a half out of five stars. Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+, saying it is "a soundtrack for 14-year-olds mulling over life, death, and angst in the family basemen." It peaked number eighteen in the UK, as well as number fourty in the US. The album features a total of ten tracks and features the same member line-up as when the band formed.

Background
The vocal arrangement on the track "Temptation" was unintentional. Tom Araya sang the song twice: once the way he thought it fit and the second time on the insistence of Kerry King the way he thought it should be sung. The end result came to be because the first vocal track was not erased between the takes. When the producer played the track and heard both vocal renditions simultaneously on the instrumental background, he liked it so much that both vocal tracks were used on the album.

Slayer released Seasons in the Abyss on October 9, 1990 through Def American Records. Later that year it was released again through Warner Music Group. It was re-released in 1994 through American Recordings. Although it was "unwelcome" to music shows and rock–radio outlets, it got substantial airplay on MTV's "Headbangers Ball", a show which is now defunct. Seasons in the Abyss features the first music video by Slayer.

Lyric and musical themes
Entertainment Weekly's music critic David Browne said that the album "has all the elements of a laughable self-parody, especially with the band's fondness for rhymes like 'Inert flesh/A bloody tomb/A decorated splatter brightens the room,'" and noted that it "piles on the grim vocals, the frenetic guitar work, and the gore on Seasons in the Abyss." In the fourth edition of The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, it was proposed that Seasons in the Abyss "continued the band's relentless will to power by displaying everything in the skill set, from blinding speed to complex riffs to mid-tempo heft. Moving away from fantasy and into the hells here on Earth, this is music to conquer nations by (or atleast play while you mow the lawn)." Blabbermouth.net said that the album is "considered to be among the genre's all-time classics." "War Ensemble", "Dead Skin Mask", and "Seasons In The Abyss" were described as "the preeminent list of metal standards that [Seasons in the Abyss] spawned has rarely been matched by others."

Allmusic said that it "fuses its two predecessors, periodically kicking up the mid-tempo grooves of South of Heaven with manic bursts of aggression," and later said "the band is refining rather than progressing or experimenting, Seasons doesn't have quite the freshness of its predecessors, but aside from that drawback, it's strong almost all the way from top to bottom (with perhaps one or two exceptions)." Allmusic also said that when writing the album's lyrics, Slayer "rarely turns to demonic visions of the afterlife anymore, preferring instead to find tangible horror in real life — war, murder, [and] human weakness. There's even full-fledged social criticism, which should convince any doubters that Slayer aren't trying to promote the subjects they sing about."

Reception
Seasons in the Abyss received generally positive reviews by critics. The College Music Journal said that the album cover was "a culinary goof on the veteran metal band." The Allmusic employee Steve Huey said that it "brought back some of the pounding speed of Reign in Blood for their third major-label album," and addressed it to be "their most accessible album, displaying the full range of their abilities all in one place, with sharp, clean production." Huey later wrote that the album "paints Reagan-era America as a cesspool of corruption and cruelty, and the music is as devilishly effective as ever." Entertainment Weekly rewarded the album with a B+, with reviewer David Browne saying it was "like listening to a single speed-metal song — the world's longest."

J. D. Considine disliked the album, specifically criticizing "War Ensemble", noting "it's not a pretty song by any means. An aural blitzkrieg whose chorus climaxes with the lines, 'The final swing is not a drill/It's how many people I can kill,' it is filled with brutal images and blaring guitars, all propelled at the breathless pace of thrash metal." Considine would later say that the album's music "accurately sums up the controlled panic of combat that the Army itself has been using Slayer songs to psych its troops for military maneuvers in the Saudi desert."

The album peaked number eighteen on the United Kingdom Albums Chart, and debuted at number forty in America. The album was certified a gold in both the United States and Canada. The title track and "War Ensemble" earned Slayer its heaviest airplay on MTV to date. In an October 2007 interview, Evile frontman Matt Drake described Seasons in the Abyss as "the perfect mix" between the two styles ("speed" and "slow material") showcased on Reign in Blood and South of Heaven respectively. Children of Bodom bassist Henkka T. Blacksmith hailed Seasons in the Abyss as "the best metal album ever".