As thrash metal legends Slayer prepare to play the historic Big Four festivals in Europe (before co-headlining the American and Canadian Carnage tours), fans in the rest of the world can see animated versions of Jeff Hanneman, Dave Lombardo, Kerry King and Tom Araya in the band's latest music video, "World Painted Blood". It's the title track and opening song on World Painted Blood, Slayer's tenth studio album, and the second video after "Beauty Through Order".

The (animated) video shows a creepy gentleman in a three-piece suit, looking over a destroyed city as he surveys the damage from the top of a temple. Tank-like vehicles leave the temple and run over some fleeing civilians, the trails of blood eventually forming (what else?) a pentagram. As the gentleman watches, a spider with a human skull for a body and the tanks at the tips of its legs trundles towards the temples. After a brief staredown, the spider leaps miles into the air and comes crashing down on the temple. There's an explosion, and from the impact crater comes an ocean of blood, which eventually covers the entire planet. Through it all, the four members of Slayer (still animated) are shown, uh, "playing" their instruments.

"World Painted Blood" is one of the better songs on a very solid album from Slayer, but its video is one of the worst I have seen in a long time. It's especially a letdown after Slayer impressed with the video for "Beauty Through Order". There, we had a model dancing in oily black treacle while flames jumped in the background. Now, we've got a poor concept for a video (a frigging spider-skull with tanks?), some guy in an Italian suit with glowing pentagram eyes, and terrible animation. Iced Earth flirted with animation in their video for "Ten Thousand Strong" - it was weak then, but Slayer take it to a whole new level of suck with "World Painted Blood". I don't know who came up with the idea, who did it or who greenlighted it, but the end result looks like a rejected episode of Metalocalypse.

There are lots of clichés that come to mind with heavy metal videos. Slayer avoided all of them and gave us something much worse instead. It shouldn't stop the juggernaut - this is Slayer we're talking about - but the only good thing about the abominably bad "World Painted Blood" video is that it will be forgotten amidst the Big Four and North American Carnage shows.