How Long Is Slayer Concert?
Slayer is an American metal band that originated in 1981 and together with Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax, was a pioneer of the thrash metal movement in the 1980s. Slayer, a band that played aggressive, heavy metal music with lightning-fast guitar solos and aggressive lyrics, started their hiatus in 2018 and broke up in 2019.
When going for a Slayer band performance, particularly in their heyday, the fans could always expect a high-energy event. From mosh pits to head banging and great performances, their concerts were nothing less than rowdy and spirited. But just how long could fans expect to rage during a typical Slayer concert?
Source Lengths over the years
In the early days, Slayer’s concerts usually lasted from thirty minutes to an hour at such clubs and as warm-up bands. When bands started doing their own tours in middle of eighties, set lengths ranged from 60 to 90 minutes. By the 1990s, their sets averaged 90 minutes to two hours at own headlining shows. Slayer were also noted for delivering lengthy performances of 75–120 minutes at festivals.
During their last world tour, starting from 2018 to 2019, the majority of Slayer performances ranged between 100 and 120 minutes. Its shows had ramped up the production, pyros and career-encompassing setlists since it would be the fans’ final opportunity to catch them live. As a result, the farewell tour shows were usually longer or more time-consuming than an average Slayer concert in the past four decades.
Setlist Structure
The composition of Slayer’s sets tended to have a specific structure as the band evolved over the years. One of them would be to start off with a thrash number so as to get the crowd going as soon as possible. Some of the songs regularly performed at the beginning of the concert include “World Painted Blood,” “Disciple,” “War Ensemble,” and “Repentless. ”
The next five or six songs are generally a mix of songs that have been around for a while and some new songs. In total, there are 12 studio albums that Slayer has recorded, so the setlist is constantly changing. Tom Araya would also occasionally engage in brief conversation with the audience in between songs.
Half way through the concert, Slayer perform ballads to allow the audience take a short breathe. They depend on groovy songs such as “Seasons in the Abyss”, “Mandatory Suicide,” and “Dead Skin Mask” here. However, it again comes back to that breathtaking speed until the end.
Encores may vary from one to three songs, depending on the curfew time of the hall. Slayer usually ends their set with ‘Raining Blood’ and ‘Angel of Death. ’ These are classic Slayer songs and the riffs and solos most fans would pay their hard-earned money to hear from Kerry King and the late Jeff Hanneman.
Set Variations
Slayer’s general approach to structuring a live set remained consistent across the decades, but the band did shuffle things up from time to time. When the two bands were still in their club phase, the young Slayer was particularly metal, with emphasis on music from their first two albums. As the discography accumulated, they gained the ability to bring out extra songs and switch the atmosphere and timbre during concerts.
The band also supported new album releases by incorporating a greater proportion from the new material. For instance, during a concert in 1986, majority of the songs performed were from the revolutionary “Reign in Blood” album. And the 2015–2016 tours included more songs from “Repentless” combined with old hits.
COVID-19 also added a special flavor to the band’s final tour as Slayer. The government guidelines for social distancing led to formats where musicians could not perform extended sets or take an encore at many venues. Yet, they made it a memorable experience for the fans, even though they had less time.
Still, whether it was in the early ’80s or in the late ’90s, one could be sure that Slayer delivered at least 90 minutes of relentless thrash metal on the road. Having released so much punishing music in nearly 40 years, they certainly had enough material to create a ferocious headline set. For multiple generations of metalheads, Slayer concerts provided an outlet to release energy with one of the most impactful bands of the extreme music scene.
This is the end of the most common Slayer set list and concert format, long established in four transformative decades. The founding bands of thrash may be inactive today, but their influence and backlog of albums ensure that thrash’s energetic and aggressive presentation will be disclosed to newer listeners and witnessed in live performances timelessly.
