‘From Hell I Rise’ is a fairly unique solo debut situation for an established metal guitarist in that it is basically an extension of Kerry King’s old band, rather than a vehicle for something he couldn’t express with his main band. Now that Slayer isn’t recording anymore, everybody expected King’s solo debut ‘From Hell I Rise’ to sound like Slayer. And it does, don’t get me wrong, but I’m a bit astounded as to where all this quality material was in the last two or so decades of Slayer’s career. ‘From Hell I Rise’ is a surprisingly solid slab of aggressive thrash metal.

Since the better Slayer songs, in my opinion, were generally written or co-written by Jeff Hanneman, I’m actually kind of surprised how much I enjoy ‘From Hell I Rise’. Because on the surface, the album does sound a lot like King’s old band. There is an abundance of fairly chord-heavy thrash metal riffs that hardly ever go too far up the neck, Death Angel’s Mark Osegueda even sings like a young Tom Araya on some tracks, and the lyrics have all the edginess of a teenager that doesn’t really have anything to rebel against. So far, not much new, one would say.

However, it took hearing ‘From Hell I Rise’ for me to realize how much of Slayer’s sound was in the details. The fact that the album’s rhythm guitar sound has a crisp bite rather than the weird, muddy sound some of Slayer’s recent albums had does wonders for the overall viciousness of the faster tracks. Phil Demmel is likely the best lead guitarist King has ever recorded with and the fact that his solos make sense melodically contrasts with King’s noisy, chaotic leads wonderfully. Osegueda yelling, shouting and screaming like a man half his age – and possessed – elevates the songs to a higher level, and hearing Paul Bostaph play the drums is always a pleasure.

The uptempo material is where ‘From Hell I Rise’ is at its best. ‘Crucifixation’ is probably my favorite of the bunch because of the unbridled pulsation that the higher chords create, but also because its grinding middle section is probably the best slower part on the album. ‘Everything I Hate About You’ is the shortest original song King ever tracked and it’s an annihilating full-speed monster. Opening track ‘Where I Reign’, the self-explanatory ‘Rage’ and particularly the closing title track are all vicious pieces of uptempo thrash that should please any fan of the genre. First single ‘Idle Hands’ is slightly less intense tempo-wise, but every bit as enjoyable.

King still isn’t an expert at writing slower tracks – only the short, ominous ‘Tension’ is a truly great example of that style here – and ‘Two Fists’ is pretty much a punk song that fails to captivate me. But apart from that, ‘From Hell I Rise’ is significantly better than I expected it to be. It would have been easy to slap something together with a minimum of effort and let the names of the people involved do all the heavy lifting promotionally. Instead, King released the best set of songs he has been a part of since Slayer’s 2006 release ‘Christ Illusion’.

Recommended tracks: ‘Crucifixation’, ‘From Hell I Rise’, ‘Idle Hands’, ‘Rage’