12 Most Underrated Metal Albums

There’s a reason Slayer are Slayer. The thrash legends have never put out a bad record, stubbornly refusing to follow trends or fashions by sticking to their tried and tested formula. The sound they defined on 1986’s Reign In Blood is as close to metal perfection as is possible, so the band have rarely strayed from this particular left handed path.

On their first album without drummer Dave Lombardo, Slayer bravely push replacement Paul Bostaph’s playing to the forefront of the mix, where the tight, precise double-kick drumming becomes almost oppressive like the panicked beat of a heart ready to explode from your chest. Elsewhere, the chromatic riffs and dive-bombing solos are as punishing as ever. Tom Araya even manages to one up Slayer’s own high-standards of lyrical transgression with 213, a genuinely grim song inspired by serial killer Jeffery Dahmer.

Divine Intervention isn’t Slayer’s most fondly remembered album, perhaps because it came right after that incredible one-two punch of Reign In Blood and Seasons In The Abyss. But it more than holds its own against those two classics, and deserves to be remembered as one of this iconic band’s most accomplished works.