“I remember looking up at this big billboard that said, ‘God loves you all.’ I thought, ‘He sure as hell doesn’t like me right now!’”: The prophetic Slayer song that marked the end of one of thrash metal’s greatest songwriting partnerships

Slayer posing for a photograph in the late 1990s.

Slayer were one of the most important and influential metal bands of the 80s thanks to such landmark albums as Hell Awaits, Reign In Blood and South Of Heaven.

But the 1990s was a different matter. A strong start with 1990’s Seasons In The Abyss soon gave way to a run of albums that were sub-par by their exalted standards, culminating in 1998’s little-loved Diabolus In Musica – a nu metal-era misfire that even Slayer guitarist Kerry King would rather forget.