Exclusive: SLAYER Members Talk About New Track 'Unit 731'; Video Available

This past summer while co-headlining the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival tour, the members of SLAYER sat down on their tour bus backstage in Camden, New Jersey and talked about the eleven tracks on their upcoming album, "World Painted Blood". In the clip below, Kerry King (guitar),Jeff Hanneman (guitar) and Tom Araya (bass, vocals) give us the backstory on "Unit 731".

Commented King: "I think that was the first song we learned from Jeff when we got back together at the end of January [to write the rest of the material for 'World Painted Blood']. It's got a very punk-y intro, I think — a punk-y vibe to it, too; chorus and everything."

Added Araya: "'Unit 731' is a pretty crazy one. It's very similar to Josef Mengele in the sense that it was a medical unit in the military, which was a Japanese military unit, actually. They did kind of the same thing; they tested the limits of the human body and recorded it for scientific purposes."

Stated Hanneman: "They would do experiments — kind of like the whole Mengele thing, except they were just doing it for the hell of it; they weren't even trying to get some kind of idea out of it or whatever. I mean, they would take pregnant women, cut them open and pull out the babies. What are you achieving by doing that? So it's just something that's little known. A friend of mine told me about it and I read a couple of books and I wrote that song about that."

The official CD-release and listening party for "World Painted Blood" will be held on Friday, October 30 at Duff's Brooklyn in Williamsburg, New York beginning at 9:00 p.m. Free "World Painted Blood" merchandise and autographed copies of the best-selling Decibel magazine to date — the SLAYER issue — will be given away at the 21-and-over event, for which there is no cover.

The address is:

Duff's Brooklyn
168 Marcy Avenue (between S 5th & Broadway)
Williamsburg, New York

For more information, visit www.duffsbrooklyn.com.

"World Painted Blood" is scheduled for release on November 3 via American Recordings. The CD will initially ship with four special collector's edition covers. Each of the four covers will display one-fourth of a provocative continental map illustrated with human skulls and bones; when placed together, the four images form a complete and grisly map of the world.

All four of the initial CD packages will include a special blood-red, see-through top panel with the map displayed beneath it.

The "World Painted Blood Deluxe Edition" will have its own special layout of the map cover art and will be in a double-digipak housed in a blood-red, see-through plastic sleeve. The "Deluxe Edition" will include the "World Painted Blood" CD, the "Playing With Dolls" DVD, a 20-minute animated graphic novel featuring music from the album (including part of a new non-album song),and an expanded booklet.

"World Painted Blood" track listing:

01. World Painted Blood
02. Unit 731
03. Snuff
04. Beauty Through Order
05. Hate Worldwide
06. Public Display Of Dismemberment
07. Human Strain
08. Americon
09. Psychopathy Red
10. Playing With Dolls
11. Not Of This God

"World Painted Blood" was recorded in Los Angeles over two time periods, during October 2008 and then between late January and March 2009. The CD was produced by Greg Fidelman, who's spent time in the studio with METALLICA, THE GOSSIP, THE (INTERNATIONAL) NOISE CONSPIRACY, SLIPKNOT and others, and executive-produced by longtime SLAYER colleague Rick Rubin, who suggested Fidelman for the project.