First off, I’m a huge fan of the site, and this article made me laugh. Secondly, I’m the guy who recorded, mixed, and played bass on this sacrilege (at least according to some of you) of a cover. So here’s the real back story…

My name’s Josh. I used to be the bassist in In This Moment way back in 2005; I think I technically count as the original bassist. At the time this cover was recorded (2005), we were unsigned and still just playing around LA. Mediaskare Records was putting together a Slayer tribute album, and they asked us to contribute a song.

I work(ed) at a recording studio so I managed to get a few free days of studio time, and we tracked the song. Now, I read the “I’m sure Pro Tools helped a lot” comment, and that’s what made me want to defend this song. Everything on that song was performed. The drums were not sound-replaced or edited to be exactly on the beat (if only some of you knew the studio cheats that get used on the albums you’re listening to). Jeff may not be Dave Lombardo, but he’s one of the best drummers I’ve ever played with. There are no drum samples, etc. That’s all him really playing.

There is no Pro Tools editing on the any of the guitars or bass. We did takes and punches to make sure it was tight, but there was no editing work in post to clean anything up. I don’t know how many of these “You butchered Slayer!” comments are coming from people who actually play, but Slayer’s not the easiest band to cover. Let’s see you guys do better.

As for Maria’s vocals. Again, no cheats; that’s all her. I realize a lot of people don’t like her vocals, but whatever. I thought the ideas we came up with made for a pretty interesting take on it. And yeah, she’s no Tom Araya so we didn’t try to match his vocals exactly. We let her do it her way. The point of the album was to do Slayer covers in the bands’ involved style, not replicate the originals exactly. We all changed parts a little bit.

We were towards the end of mixing it when we found out the album had been cancelled. The version that got posted is actually one of the rough mixes I had sent to everyone while I was working on it. We never finished the mix completely. A few years later, when the band decided to posting it on their page, they were nice enough to first ask me if I was okay with the unfinished version being posted.

Granted, ITM’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Hell, I’m not in the band anymore because I decided it wasn’t the type of music I wanted to play for a living. To be honest, I always said we started out as a Killswitch Engage-ish band with a female singer. I’m sure some people will get offended by that analogy, but that was my take.

Anyway, end of the day, if you were an up-and-coming local band who was offered the chance to do a track on a tribute album to one of your favorite bands, you would do it, wouldn’t you? Maybe you can’t tell based on ITM’s original music, but we all were/are big Slayer fans, and it was something we were excited to do. We weren’t paid a cent to do it, and there was no big-name producer attached. We did it ourselves because we thought it would be good exposure and we liked the song.

You may not like it (or any of ITM’s music), but there’s certainly no need slag the band members, their playing abilities, or Maria’s looks. I mean, c’mon, it could be worse. At least it’s not a crabcore/screamo version of “Post Mortem,” right?

Again, huge fan of the site, and this article is really fucking funny, but some of the feedback’s a bit excessive. Just thought I’d take up for my friends/myself. Keep up the good work!

And yes, come to think of it I WAS using “pathetic swine” in reference to something else. Your dumbass! pahaha.

Hope to be seeing you later :)
Cheerio.

There are about 5 million Latino-Slayer kids in LA who just sharpened up their blades for disparaging the good name of Tom Araya’s vocal abilities, sir. :)

Back OT; when are inferior bands going to realize that you don’t cover classic tunes you take ones that were kinda ‘off’ but might have had potential and rip the shit out of those?

Also, a lot of ‘lead’ guitarists nowadays really eat donkey cock. They know 3 arpeggio shapes and sweep as fast as possible thinking that is what qualifies as competent shredding.

If you can’t rip the shit out of much less competently handle aping Dime’s (or anyone elses solos) don’t cover the song. That is one of my biggest pet peeves about bands covering Randy Rhoads era Ozzy tunes. C’mon.

This isn’t a horrible cover, instrumentally, they did a pretty decent job. Im sure Pro Tools helped a lot…but still…if the attempt to limit people covering their influences is what you are aiming for…thats just simply lame.

I didn’t hear the Pantera cover. Does anyone have that handy?

Btw, does it do any justice to you for the utter fact they didn’t cover a Slayer song that a hundred other bands have covered?

Anywho.

I’ve heard worse, ‘sides, covers from extremely awesome bands are usually so ambitious that even if the band covering them is very talented they still have way too much to live up to and usually end up failing miserably.