Composition
The College Music Journal said that "the band deals almost exclusively with realism" in the album, and noted that it "shocks and splatters like a severed artery, painting crimson pictures of murders, necrophiliacs, and the ravaged, chaotic world they inhabit". Both the mixing and mastering were criticized, with guitarist Kerry King saying that the band should have "paid more attention to the mix", and Araya saying that it "is the one (if any) that he would not mind re-mastering". Tom Araya said the "album came out of the past four years of hating life".
Neil Strauss from The New York Times explained many of the album's origins. "213" was described as a "love song" by Araya, which was something they had never done before. The song was named after serial killer and sex offender Jeffrey Dahmer's old apartment number. "Dittohead", a partial tribute to Rush Limbaugh, begins by criticizing the legal system for "being too lenient on killers". The song "ended up not denouncing the system but advocating its permissiveness". "Sex, Murder, Art" was said by TheState.com to feature "roars about a maddening relationship and his 'pleasure in inflicting pain.'"
King said that the album contained origins relating to "war stories" and "explorations of madness". It is Paul Bostaph's first studio album with Slayer, resulting in Alex Henderson of Allmusic saying that it is a "positive, energizing influence on Slayer, which sounds better than ever on such dark triumphs as 'Killing Fields,' 'Serenity in Murder,' and 'Circle of Beliefs.'" Henderson also said that they "focus on the violently repressive nature of governments and the lengths to which they will go to wield power".
Read more about this topic: Divine Intervention (album)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing ... I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)