I bought this album when it came out. I never got into Slayer, I think they’re just too challenging for me to enjoy listening to. Heavy and intense, but tough to enjoy.
I’ve seen them a dozen times and I always say when I’m at the show, “these guys could be heavier.” Still, they totally rock.
I didn’t realize that they are Christians so by Googling you can learn:
You’ve welcome.
Just watched the second presidential debate. Closing off with Reign In Blood. Amazing album, one of the best!
Yep, that descending riff was the Slayer gateway drug for me.
They’re heavy as hell, and were probably the first band who had solos that hold up to those kinds of heavy-ass riffs. They spin away into the stratosphere without any care for what you thought a solo should sound like, or how one should be organized. How do you play a solo that way without it being atonal wankery? I don’t know, but Slayer has two guys who can do it, and the call and response in “Angel of Death” is possibly one of their greatest moments. Curt Kirkwood once said that guitar solos should have rooster tails like dirtbikes do. Slayer’s solos always have rooster tails.
The record really did have an amazing impact, just about every metal band in DFW worked to get heavier overnight. It also had…other effects. The first incongruous jazz cover of a metal song I heard was Der Gestank’s Angel of Death. How on earth can you do a straight cover of that song? That would be amazingly difficult. It’s obviously much easier to do a jazz cover.
ETA, just because it’s an amusing anecdote to me, and kind of shows how far that record went at the time: I had a friend who worked as the local security/caretaker for a Love and Rockets show around the time Slayer was touring for this album. When they were done playing and had some time off, David J. and Daniel Ash asked who else was playing in town at the time. When they found out Slayer was playing in town, they wanted to do nothing else, and apparently were in the pit at the show.
The clearest thing Hanneman said on the subject was this:
After all, what would “authentic” mean in this context? Participating in the Holocaust himself? How much further would you want him to go than reading a book about it?
I think that Slayer’s describing the depths of just how inhuman he was to his fellow man is really the only way to address that subject in a song. He wrote a song about a subject he was personally interested in, I can’t think of anything more authentic than that.
I remember Reign in Blood was one of the few albums I had (that’s both sides of a 33.3 rpm LP) that could fit onto one side of a C-60 cassette!
Think the only other one was “Scum” by Napalm Death or something. Was neat at the time anyway!
