Slayer's Reign In Blood just turned 30 years old!

Cafe Society
1

Yep, the band has now been together for over 35 years, even surviving the death of one of it’s founders and arguably their best songwriter, Jeff Hanneman, back in 2013.

The album remains one of the best known, most loved and awesome metal albums of all time; it’s importance to thrash, hardcore, death metal and many other sub-genres cannot be overstated.

Rob Zombie famously said of metal fans (and Slayer fans in particular):

[VICE even ran an article about it:

](30 Years and Still Reigning: a Tribute to Slayer's Enduring Masterpiece, 'Reign in Blood')

So I’m calling on the board’s metalheads and headbangers to join me in praising this album. Tell us about your favorite song. Talk about what you see as the lasting impact it has had on our beloved & brutal music scene. Link us the video of that time you tried to do Aggressive Perfector at karaoke. Or whatever.

And if you haven’t heard of Slayer or just haven’t heard Slayer, this thread could serve as your gateway drug, so to speak…
I’ll go first:

I bought SOD’s Speak English Or Die the day it was released in 1985 and drove my mom, my sister and my friends crazy with how much I listened to it. It was simply the loudest, fastest, angriest, funniest thing I had ever heard and I couldn’t get enough of it.

When Reign In Blood was released months later, I was kind of amazed that these were whole non-joke songs whizzing by my ears. They didn’t have the same kind of bludgeoning sound as SOD, exactly, but they were definitely faster, darker and much, much more technically precise. They were playing at speeds that would make punk bands struggle, but they were clearly playing without the slop I was used to. This was the first time I had ever heard of the band, had ever heard the band, and the impression they made was as stark as if my skull had been cut into, the lid pulled back and a finger was poked into my brain (yeah, kinda like Derek in Bad Taste).

Suddenly the promise implicit in Metallica’s first two albums was realized! It was right here, playing on my stereo! I mean, we all thought Ride The Lightning was a freaking masterpiece (and it is) but Reign In Blood was something on a whole new level. Slayer was faster (SO much faster), louder, and seemed more committed to their music than any other band I had ever heard. They were both more raw and more polished than anyone else, too. I remember thinking that this was gonna be the end for bands like W.A.S.P. and Dokken and Poison and Cinderella, bands that wanted the bad boy image without truly being bad boys except that they drank beer and were late to class and didn’t do their homework. Slayer was fucking evil and powerful; their music sounded like someone controlling a hurricane through sheer force of will.

And it took some time, but it did work out that hair/glam metal largely went away; it’s pretty much a dead genre today. Thrash, on the other hand, is more popular than ever and the genres that have sprung up since 1986 are going strong and going in one direction: faster, louder, more brutal and more bludgeoning than ever (and I couldn’t be happier; this is a fucking fantastic time to be a metalhead!).

My favorite track, without a doubt, is Angel Of Death. It opens the album perfectly (with that insanely fast, complicated guitar riffing, a couple of drum blasts and then that blood-curdling scream as the drums begin a frantic gallop), cruises from like 110bpm to 240bpm during the solos and is just so fucking in-your-face all the time that it always ALWAYS elicits headbanging and an urgent desire to mosh (this is sometimes a problem if I happen to be driving). This was the first song I ever heard by Slayer and 30 years later it remains my favorite.

It certainly helps that Slayer hasn’t sold out or slowed down in the years since; last year’s Repentless was proof of that. Dave Mustaine has turned into a whackjob, Metallica lost their way more than 20 years ago and Anthrax has had a, um, varied career but Slayer has always been loud, always been fast, always been angry and most importantly, they’ve always been focused on being the band they wanted to be when they set out back in 1981.

I love this album and I’ve listened to it 8 times in the last 2 days. I’m hoping to get 30 listens in before the week is over!

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When I was a teen. I would wake up on Sunday mornings, turn the TV onto whatever televangelist show that was playing, mute the volume on the TV then pop in my Slayer cassette in the stereo and jam out to SoH while I smoked pot all morning.
Good times.

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By the time thrash got big, I was broadening my tastes and had fewer “music listening units” for metal. Knew Slayer but didn’t seek them out.

Years later I started seeking out Rick Rubin produced albums I hadn’t heard. Didn’t go on a buying spree, but chose those over others when on a music run. So I listened to Reign in Blood end to end and without access to the album, liner notes if any, etc. all I can say is: the album hangs together and sounds really good.

It is one I plan to go back to when I have more time and dig in a bit.

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I bought the album around 1988. Raining Blood is my favourite song but the whole album is a milestone.

What I like about this song is not just that every single of its riffs is an absolute killer but also the interplay between the ultrafast guitars and the more spaced drums. You can hear it at the very beginning and right after the repeated power chords towards the middle. The contrast between these two time planes creates a completely irresistible groove.

And like Snowboarder Bo has said, the whole thing felt real and evil in a way that was almost palpable. I was already familiar with Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Iron Maiden and probably Testament, but this reeked of malevolence and pure terror. It actually gave me some creepy nightmares at the time and I was in my mid-teens! The cover had a lot to do with them, but the noises at the beginning of Raining Blood were a perfect soundscape for it.

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I still can’t believe Jeff Hanneman is dead.

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Oh man that takes me back. I used to have all of Slayer’s albums(at that time, mid and late 80s). I haven’t listened to Slayer in a long long time. Tastes for everyday listening have changed over the years but I still like to go back every once in a great while when the Mrs. and the guestlings are out of the house and line up the old favorites like Slayer, Metal Church, SoD, Overkill etc. (who I just now learned are still around and not disbanded at all as I had been informed)

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Interesting. I’m 57 and was never into metal but your appreciation of the song was so effusive I clicked on the link and it was a first time listen for me. I get the technical appreciation the licks are ferocious, but the lyrics were more interesting so I wikied up the song.

You talk about Slayer being “authentic” but the “it was just a book about Mengele I’d read” excuses he gives for the holocaust diorama are weak, tissue paper thin lies coming from an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia. That they are throwing that in the face of the people in Europe that were in the middle of it and effectively telling them to get over it is about as juvenile and puerile as anything I can imagine.

Their musical virtuosity is great but hearing it tacked onto what sounds like the philosophical musings of a not too bright 13 year old is … interesting.

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Never mind; I’ve decided this post is irrelevant to the purpose of the thread.

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Slayer is cool, but even their “evil” or “kind of Satanic” thing is fake. I think one of the members is Catholic.

They are just a really talented metal band.

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Just for fun…scroll down for short video.

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Correct. Tom Araya is Catholic. From [his Wikipedia page:

](Tom Araya - Wikipedia)

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See, that’s the kind of thing Rob Zombie was talking about!

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I should have replied to this post earlier…

WordMan, two of Rick Rubin’s biggest and best accomplishments are this album and Danzig’s eponymous first album. Many people will also cite The Cult’s Electric, but I prefer their early work.

Rick Rubin’s strength as a producer, IMO, is that he understands the songs while ignoring all the bells and whistles. With Slayer, he saw thru the speed and the frantic solos and the lyrics and heard the basic riffs and the song structure and knew how to transfer that to a recording. Same with Danzig (and The Cult). This allows him to capture the essence of the band’s sound within the songs, never allowing the “zazz” (to borrow a term from William Murderface) to overwhelm anything.

He and Sanford Parker are my favorite music producers. They have different approaches to things, but their results are nearly always awesome.

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Reign in Blood is a fantastic album, but Hell Awaits is still my favorite.

I do wish they had used better cover art for this album. It’s decent I suppose, but not nearly as iconic or memorable as this, or this, or this.

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It’s only 29 minutes long. But it is the best 29 minutes of thrash!

The first time I saw Slayer (1993? maybe 94?) I remember as i walked into the venue, they had a disclaimer posted to the effect of “Warning! Slayer uses high powered strobe lights that may induce seizures”…And holy cow, those green strobes melted your face off when they fired em up. It was also The Loudest Thing I’ve ever attended, and it was brilliant. Oh, and they played the entire Reign in Blood album beginning to end as the encore.

When Hanneman died, they had a free tribute to him at The Hollywood Palladium. They handed out Jeff Hanneman memorial guitar picks. I still have it. But I don’t play guitar.

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Okay, now I have to figure out who Sanford Parker is!

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Sanford Parker is a musician and recording producer/engineer. He plays bass with a post-rock band called Minsk and plays guitar in his own band Buried At Sea. He is also active with a number of side projects.

I’m that weird guy who reads liner notes and insists on not just staying thru the movie credits but actually reading them.

So I noticed about 10 or 12 years ago that his name was on a lot of the albums I was buying and enjoying like Yakuza, Lair Of The Minotaur, Rwake, Gigan, The Gates Of Slumber, Coffinworm, etc., etc. Here’s his list of credits on AMG; not sure how complete that is.

Anyway, he moved up to Chicago after attending Orlando’s SAIL (ugh!) and played in bands and recorded people and now he’s pretty much a full-time producer but generally active in the metal community (which in Chicago comprises a lot of sub-genres and experimental stuff).

I’ve actually considered asking him about an internship or something because I respect his work so much and I do a bit of recording myself (mostly for myself, at the moment) but so far this “life” thing keeps getting in the way of that.

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Cool, I will have to check him out. Thanks!

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I’d put it up with Master of Puppets and Powerslave’s artwork. It’s a different style, but very fitting for the music.

Among the Living doesn’t do anything for me. Neither the art nor the album.

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Fantastic album. The production is perfect.

I saw them at Bogart’s in Cincinnati soon after Reign In Blood came out. A loud-n-fast concert.