Slayer - Repentless (LP) - Transparent Yellow Vinyl

Repentless arrived on 11 September 2015, a date etched into Slayer lore for reasons beyond the usual release-day churn. It is the band’s twelfth and final studio album, their first for Nuclear Blast after decades with Rick Rubin’s camp, and the first without founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman and drummer Dave Lombardo. In their place, Exodus lifer Gary Holt locks in beside Kerry King, and Paul Bostaph returns to the drum stool he once owned in the 90s. That context could have weighed the record down. Instead, Repentless sounds like a band refusing to shrink, spitting blood and barbs with a clarity that borders on defiant.

Terry Date produced it in Los Angeles, and you can hear his knack for weight and space from the opening seconds. Guitars bite, bass snarls, cymbals cut. The title track sets the tone: a ripping tremolo riff, Bostaph’s double kicks trampling the earth, and Tom Araya barking with that serrated authority only he can summon. The video for Repentless, directed by BJ McDonnell and set inside a prison yard riot, matched the song’s ferocity. Danny Trejo pops up in a blood soaked cameo, and the whole thing feels like a late period mission statement. The message is simple. Slayer are still Slayer.

What gives the album depth is how it pivots between speed and a nastier, slower grind. Take Cast The First Stone, which stomps like a boot through wet concrete, or When The Stillness Comes, a cold, patient creep before the trap snaps shut. King’s riffing is all elbows and spite, but Holt threads in barbed melodies that split the difference between old school Slayer menace and his own Bay Area DNA. There is a sharpness to the soloing that keeps the songs lit up. Bostaph, for his part, is a machine. His rolls and accents in Take Control and Atrocity Vendor bring an almost martial precision, but he leaves just enough grit on the toms to keep it human.

Hanneman’s presence hangs over the record, of course. Piano Wire, written by him and pulled from earlier ideas, is a jolting reminder of his particular strain of darkness. It is the one moment where memory and momentum are forced to share a room. Araya does not sentimentalise it. He sells every line like a witness statement, clipped and unsparing. That’s his approach across the album. The voice has thickened with age, but he hits words in a way that lands. When he growls “I choose to walk my path” on Repentless, it sounds like a personal oath and a raised middle finger.

The singles rollout showed the breadth. Implode arrived first, a 2014 taster the band premiered live at the Revolver Golden Gods, all scrabbling riffs and whiplash shifts. When The Stillness Comes followed for Record Store Day 2015, fittingly for crate diggers who like their horror slow burn. Then came Repentless itself. Later the band rounded the cycle with You Against You and Pride in Prejudice, both with gnarly clips that extended McDonnell’s violent little universe. It felt unusually cinematic for Slayer, without ever straying into costume.

Reception was strong. In the US, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, a career high in that market and a neat sign that the faithful had turned up. Critics were broadly on side too, acknowledging the obvious upheaval around the band while noting that the music hits hard. The artwork, by Marcelo Vasco in collaboration with Araya and King, sealed the deal. It is lurid, iconoclastic and very Slayer. The kind of cover that makes sense blown up as a jacket, which is one reason the Repentless vinyl keeps moving in and out of shop walls.

On that, this is a record that breathes on wax. The production leans bright, so a good pressing gives the low end some chew and tames the cymbal splash. If you’re hunting Slayer albums on vinyl, this one pairs neatly with World Painted Blood and Christ Illusion for a late era arc, though there is a case for shelving it next to South of Heaven as a study in power at different tempos. I’ve seen tidy copies of the Repentless vinyl come and go in more than one Melbourne record store, and it is an easy add to the pile if you like your sleeves to look as mean as the grooves. If you prefer to buy Slayer records online, check local sellers first. Shipping on heavy vinyl records Australia wide can sting, but it beats waiting months for an import.

Repentless does not reinvent the band. It does not need to. It sets its jaw and swings. For a final studio album, that feels right. There is craft in the riff shapes, bile in the right places, and just enough reflection to make the whole thing feel lived in rather than embalmed. Put it on, drop the needle, and let Bostaph’s kick drums argue with your floorboards. That is the language Slayer always spoke best.