Slayer’s concert at Supertoad last Thursday night brought out several thousand members of the living dead to bang their heads and bodies and shatter their bones.

The concert, which also featured Kilgore and Fear Factory, was easily the best metal concert ever held in Supertoad.

Kilgore opened the show up to tremendous response from an audience that seemed to be barely familiar with the group’s material. But despite the lack of familiarity, the group managed to put on a hell of a performance, playing material from its newest CD release, “A Search For Reason,” while drawing back from its past release as well.

But Kilgore’s performance was a little shy of perfect. During its entire set, the high end speakers kept distorting, feeding back and cutting out. This effectively reduced the sonic assault that the band could unleash (the vocalist’s screams were really hampered by the speaker glitch).

The crowd, however, kept moshing and crowd surfing with reckless abandon (especially to Kilgore’s two radio singles, “TK-421” and “Steamroller”).

It was also whipped into a frenzy by the stage chatter of the vocalist, who discussed dreams (“Look at me. I’m on tour with Slayer and played with Ozzy Osbourne at OzzFest. Could my life get any fucking better? And it’s all because I refused to let anybody talk me out of pursuing my dreams. Don’t let some pussy talk you out of pursuing yours”) and constantly alluded to Slayer’s upcoming appearance (“You hear that thunder outside?” he asked. “It’s chanting ‘Slayer, Slayer, Slayer…'”).

Fear Factory (whose vocalist, Burton Bell, helped provide screams on Kilgore’s final song, “TK-421”) followed Kilgore’s amazing performance by supplying one of its own.

Currently on tour promoting its recent release “Obsolete,” the group mainly focused on playing material from that CD while tossing in some older material from “Demanufacture” and “Remanufacture.”

Yet, while Fear Factory’s performance was extremely solid and heavy (the bass explosions that accompanied Bell’s screams were particularly nice. They shook Supertoad so hard that tidal waves of beer could be seen flowing over the rims of plastic glasses), it also left something to be desired.

The problem lied in Fear Factory’s complexity. Most of the group’s songs detail a world in which humankind has become enslaved by technology.

Its CDs mix song lyrics with a continuing CD booklet story to create a cohesive work that is part fiction, part poetry. But in concert, all of this was missing. Maybe the addition of some pyrotechnics and video screens would help convey the group’s message better.

Fear Factory played so loud and hard that the vocals were almost rendered inaudible by comparison. Even the choruses were almost nonexistent among the hurricane of noise.

The storyline was hurled into oblivion as the group alternated between older and newer songs, which destroyed the thematic timeline.

But the group did rock, and it was almost amazing that the crowd had any energy left for Slayer after thrashing so hard. Then Slayer took the stage and exhaustion no longer held any meaning for those in the mosh pit or those sitting at the bar.

Slayer rammed its death metal noise down the throats of everyone in Supertoad, making everyone swallow their medicine whether they liked it or not (and it seemed like everyone did).

Slayer opened up its set with a dynamite version of “Bitter Peace,” from the group’s latest CD, “Diabolus in Musica.” After that, the force never let up.

The group’s set spanned its entire existence, but wisely avoided most of the material from the spotty “Divine Intervention” (the group did, however, play “Sex, Murder, Art” and “Dittohead”) and the lackluster “Undisputed Attitude.”

The all-out furious assault of older material like “Hell Awaits,” “Jesus Saves,” “Mandatory Suicide,” “Postmortem” and “Chemical Warfare” was well-balanced by the newer material from “Diabolus in Musica” that the group played (“Death’s Head,” “Stain of Mind,” “Perversions of Pain,” “Love to Hate”).

Slayer also delivered furious renditions of “War Ensemble,” “Blood Red,” “Spirit In Black” and “Hallowed Point.” But the real highlights of the concert were “Dead Skin Mask” and the “South of Heaven/Raining Blood” medley, both of which ignited the entire venue into a boiling mosh pit.

Slayer closed out its set with “Angel of Death,” thanked the audience and then left the stage without playing an encore. Not that an encore was really necessary. The group played for over an hour-and-a-half, and every song was hard enough to make the devil cringe.

As the audience filtered out into a deluge of rain, steam could be seen rising from their bodies. Each and every one of them looked like they had a head-banging, teeth-shaking, good time.