SLAYER's "World Painted Blood", the band's highly-anticipated new album set for a November 3 release (American Recordings), will initially ship with four special collector's edition CD 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. (See pictures below)

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. See below for details about the bonus DVD.

Check out the 4 different covers here and all 4 joined together here.

It was only a matter of time before Slayer's lyrics leapt off the printed page and made their wanton way to the visual medium. The band's discography is gorged with tales of mass murderers, serial sadists and drooling deviants of every stripe — vicious mental cases just begging for a cinematic reception.

Enter "Metalocalypse" director and big-time Slayer fan Mark Brooks who created a 20-minute DVD titled "Playing with Dolls", a 12-episode video-graphic novel that will be included exclusively in the "World Painted Blood" deluxe edition, out November 3 in tandem with the "World Painted Blood" standard edition. Inspired by the songs on "World Painted Blood" — in particular Jeff Hanneman's "Playing With Dolls", from which the horror short takes its title — the film blends elements of animation and still-photography into a visual style similar to that of a graphic novel. A trailer for the short can be viewed here. The soundtrack for the "Playing With Dolls" short features clips from all 11 of the songs on "World Painted Blood"; in addition, the music bed for episode No. 7 is taken from "Atrocity Vendor", a new song that is not on the album.

"It's not live action and it's not animated," Brooks explains. "It's a weird hybrid of the two, and I haven't seen a lot of things done this way."

No mere music video, "Playing with Dolls" is a stark, 12-part nightmare that breathes corrupt life into Slayer's latest syllabus of stalkers, psychopaths and serial killers, merging their aberrant psyches into the supremely focused desire of a single, merciless malcontent. A methodical distillation of one man's lethal frenzy, the film follows the gruesome outbursts of a nameless protagonist. He is not an indiscriminate murder junkie, but rather a highly creative snuff-artist with a deeply personal sense of purpose — a man for whom murder is the only conceivable way forward. With a black heart hardened by tragedy, he chooses his victims carefully. His methods are as grisly and varied as they are poetic.

"It's a little weirder than your regular blood n' guts type thing," Brooks says of the storyline, "which I think is a reflection of Slayer's music."

But make no mistake: There will be blood, and plenty of it. As the real-life boyfriend of one of the film's "victims" told Brooks after a private screening, "I almost threw up while I watching that. And I think that's a compliment."

Check out the trailer right here!