Subject:
Slayer’s video for “You Against You”
Lifespan:
6 minutes, 50 seconds of sheer blood and thrash metal
The body:
A very bad guy slaughters a multitude of other very bad guys before he gets caught and stabbed by three more very bad guys, and then captured by the police. Intercut Slayer playing in an airplane junkyard. It’s that simple. And that brutal.
Dissection:
When a video starts off with somewhere around 50 knives sticking out of a lying corpse, you’ve got a great Slayer video. “You Against You” is ultra-violent, as the main character literally cuts his way through a swatch of other bad guys. Director B.J. McDonnell has once again captured the true essence of what Slayer is all about: madness, bloodshed, and killing and killing again. After so many years of Slayer vids that weren’t up to snuff, it’s nice to see they’ve got McDonnell to provide some continuity in awesome images to match their songs.
The video itself interests me because it’s a prequel to Slayer’s last vid for “Repentless.” We get to see how Eye Patch Guy ended up in jail, and some motivation for the slaughter he commits. Having McDonnell on board again is an asset, as he provides a similar look and editing style between the two vids, and the two pieces feel like they belong together.
As for the song, “You Against You” is about the personal betrayal between friends. And you’d have to be insane to betray Slayer, because THEY’RE FUCKING SLAYER!!!! If you value your life, be kind to Araya, King and co. There’s some hint of betrayal in the video to connect the material, but let’s face it, capturing the carnage of Slayer is much more important here than making a scene-specific tie-in.
Postmortem:
Cause of death- Knives— lots of knives— and guns— lots of guns. And that’s not even accounting for how Slayer kills this tune.
Interment instructions- If this were a Monopoly board, Eye Patch Guy goes straight to jail. Mess with Slayer, and go straight to Hell.
View the body
-Phil Fasso
