Laying Waste to the Roughest Trails
Versatile too: While the Slayer is most at home on terrain like this—plowing over rocks, roots and chutes—it actually impressed us even more when the trail pointed uphill. It’s not often you can say that about a bike with nearly as much travel as a DH race sled.
Two years ago Rocky Mountain decided to kill off the Slayer, a bike that was used by some of the most legendary free riders (e.g., Wade Simmons, Brett Tippie and Richey Schley) to ride some of the gnarliest lines ever seen. We’re happy to announce that after a two-year hiatus, the legendary Slayer is back. It comes to the trail with a reworked design that’s lighter, slacker and carbon top to bottom but still maintains the heart and soul of the original. It’s a bike meant to shred trails—and shred them hard. Actually, it’s not meant to shred. That’s too weak. It’s meant to slay them.
WHO IS IT MADE FOR?
The Slayer has always been an aggressive bike, essentially one step down from a full-on downhill bike. The new Slayer is no different, but this version comes with a frame and components package that’s light enough that you can pedal it to the top of the hill without the use of a chairlift. Call it an enduro bike if you want, but any way you slice it, this is a long-travel bike that’s light and nimble enough to handle long trail rides and robust enough to handle laps on the black-diamond trails at any bike park.
WHAT IS IT MADE FROM?
The new Slayer is a departure from the freeride bikes of the same name. Make no mistake; this is a long-travel bike that could handle all the lines made famous in videos like Kranked and Ride to the Hills, but this bike could also be used as an enduro race bike. It can climb, thanks to full-carbon construction that keeps the weight down and the SmoothRide suspension that keeps the pedaling efficient. The Slayer also uses Boost axle spacing front and rear with a wide bar and short stem, coupled with a long top tube and short chainstays for that cool, modern enduro feel.
Clean and smooth: Internal routing with rubber ports make this bike look dapper and dialed. That internal routing also keeps the bike impressively quiet and immune to cable noise on rough terrain.
WHICH COMPONENTS STAND OUT?
The Slayer is available in four different versions, including one that doesn’t come with any parts (frame only). Our 770 MSL is one step down from the top-end 790 MSL and arguably offers more value with a parts package we can’t poke holes in. Sure, there are things you could upgrade, but you certainly don’t need to. The RockShox Lyrik fork and Super Deluxe shock are easy to set up and work to make butter out of rocky terrain. The Stan’s wheels are easily set up tubeless and offer more than enough stiffness. The Race Face bars, stem, and crank are light and work flawlessly. What really stood out to us was the sum of the parts when we put the bike on the scale. This thing is light—light enough that we had to weigh it on a different scale to verify ours wasn’t broken.
HOW DOES IT PERFORM?
Setup: The Slayer is both easy and complicated to set up. It depends how deep you want to go. On the one hand, the RockShox fork and shock are as straightforward as they come at this price, with single air valves and compression and rebound adjustments. On the other hand, the bike comes with the Ride-4 system, which allows riders to tune the suspension and geometry via a flippable chip that offers four positions. This adjusts everything from bottom bracket height to head and seat angles. We rode the bike in the lowest and slackest position for the bulk of the testing, but it’s nice to know that if that’s not your bag, you can make the bike snappier by simply moving the position of a single bolt.
Moving Out: Rocky Mountain has done a nice job keeping this bike clean-looking with crisp internal cable routing and a low-slung frame with tons of standover. Rocky Mountain even kept it Canadian with the addition of a maple leaf on the paint job.
Pedaling: The Slayer pedals with surprising efficiency, especially when you consider it’s a 7-inch-travel bike. The Ride-4 geometry adjustment can be dialed to raise or lower the bottom bracket and put the rider in a more aggressive pedaling position. We didn’t find this necessary, as the bike felt quick and nimble even in the slackest position. We rarely experienced a pedal strike, despite the relatively low bottom bracket.
Ride 4: Rocky builds their own geometry and suspension linkage adjustments into the Slayer with their Ride 4 shock mount. Riders have four choices for shock-mount positions, each with a unique geometry and suspension kinematic.
Climbing: Thanks to the impressively low weight, the Slayer also climbs remarkably well. This is a long-travel bike, so it certainly helps to use the compression adjustment on the shock to firm the suspension on long climbs. Since the lever is somewhat difficult to reach, this is not a lever you want to use often. Simply flip it when you know a long climb is coming, and don’t forget to open it up when the trail points down. For all the short and punchy climbs, simply let the bike’s lightweight feel do the work, and don’t worry about hitting the climb mode.
Cornering: The Slayer sports a modern enduro geometry with a long and low setup built around a super-short stem and relatively short rear end. The bike corners exactly as it should, with plenty of nimbleness in switchbacks, yet it’s confident when the tempo is up and the cornering speed is high. You can fine-tune this feel with the Ride-4 system as well, but again, we didn’t feel the need to tweak it.
Boost it: The Slayer comes with 148-millimeter Boost spacing, along with all the other modern amenities you’d expect from a carbon enduro bike. It also has excellent finish quality with bolts that are neatly tucked away.
Descending: This should be where the bike excels, and it does; however, the Slayer doesn’t feel quite as plush as some other bikes with this much travel. After a bit of tinkering, we landed a suspension setup with about 35 percent sag in the rear and a little less in the fork. That split the difference between glued-to-the-ground and extra flickable, unlocking this bike’s descending prowess. The suspension is very progressive, which makes it supple over small bumps and excellent at resisting bottoming out on jumps and drops. The geometry is spot-on and helps your confidence when pointing the bike down a steep chute.
SmoothLink smooths it out: With 7 inches of travel, the Slayer is not afraid to take the rough lines. The suspension is a modified four-bar-link system that Rocky calls their SmoothLink.
TRICKS, UPGRADES OR TIPS?
The cables on the Slayer are incredibly quiet and well routed, as long as the bike is set up properly. Our test bike arrived with long cables and hoses, but once they were shortened, this bike was whisper-quiet over even the rockiest sections of trail.
Pulling park laps: The Slayer would be right at home at a bike park doing lap after lap. It has enough suspension to handle nearly anything you can throw at it. It’s also fun and flickable, which makes it a blast to send airborne.
BUYING ADVICE
The Slayer is a long-travel machine that would be at home in any bike park doing laps, thanks to suspension and geometry that can handle nearly anything you can throw at it. That said, what impressed and surprised us most was how well it performed when the trail pointed uphill. It’s lightweight and snappy and floats to the top of the hill with ease. It also has the descending prowess to confidently ride down any mountain it leads you to the top of. The Slayer is welcome in our test quiver any time.
