Group also blasted through “Reborn” for the first time in a decade Tom Araya and Gary Holt perform at Riot Fest. Anthony Linh Phuong Nguyen/Courtesy of Riot Fest Close to five years since the , the band reunited for on Sunday. As any headbanger would expect, they stacked the set list with fan favorites — “South of Heaven,” “War Ensemble,” “Angel of Death” — but they also resuscitated a few surprising songs.
The concert marked the first time since 1998 that the band performed “213,” an eerie deep cut off their 1994 album, . Frontman Tom Araya wrote the song with guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who died in 2013. It opens with a spidery guitar line before settling into an aggressive groove.
At Riot Fest, green light shone from behind the musicians to turn them into silhouettes, making the song even creepier. Then Tom Araya sings: “Driving compulsion, morbid thoughts come to mind/Sexual release buried deep inside.” He wrote the lyrics about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, whose apartment number was 213.
Another welcome surprise was “Reborn,” a skull-rattling thrasher off the second side of that the band last performed a decade ago. Guitarist and Hanneman collaborated on this song, with King penning the lyrics about a “convicted witch” sentenced to death who swears to come back from beyond the grave. “Death means nothing, there’s no end/I will be reborn,” Araya sings.
At Riot Fest, King bent over and dug his guitar pick deep into his strings as pyr.
