Riff Police! Pull Over! #81: Hatebreed Vs Slayer!

This was once a new feature for a Thursday but now #81 episodes old, we’ve been to putting together a head to head whereby one bands song is clearly *ahem* influenced by another to the point of plagiarism. That’s right folks. “This is the Riff Police. Pull over to the side of the road and remain in your vehicle”. Some old, some new, some borrowed and some blue. Just remember it’s all in fun!

It seems only right that we should go with a song that has been heavily influenced by Slayer as they reached their final show earlier this week. We know for a fact that Slayer have been an influence on Connecticut Hardcore crew Hatebreed as they covered “Ghosts Of War” and got director Kevin James Custer (36 Crazyfists, Overkill, Shadows Fall) on board for a classy video as the main single for their “For The Lions” covers album. When their fifth, self titled studio album dropped in September 2009, the first to feature guitarist Wayne Lozinak back in the fold, there was a glaring stand out moment. That moment is called “Pollution Of The Soul”.

Back in 1990, Slayer unveiled “Seasons in the Abyss” which is ironically also their fifth studio album and the last for 16 years to feature the original line up with drummer Dave Lombardo exiting the American Thrash Metallers shortly thereafter. The album is a return to the blinding Speed Metal of “Reign In Blood” and paints the picture of the political landscape in America as being one of cruelty and corruption, bubbling away like a witches cauldron. Critically acclaimed, in 2017 it appeared at #31 on Rolling Stone Magazines “100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time“. The question is, were Hatebreed’s Frank Novinec and Wayne Lozinak under the spell of a Jeff Hanneman classic? May he rest in peace.