In accordance with the March 10 for 10 write-off, and since it’s a while since I’ve poked my head out in these grounds, I’ve decided to take a short break from classics and pretty much have a month of metal. LET IT ALL OUT!

It’s interesting looking back on Slayer’s Reign in Blood now, what with last year’s Christ Illusion now in the works. For some, it’s their watershed album, the one which really put on the map as the meanest and fastest of thrash metal’s “big four” myself, I think that the Slayer of today are more focused and their potential more fully realized than the Slayer of 1986. Still, if you are even vaguely into the wide scope of music called heavy metal, you would be aware that Reign in Blood, with its twenty-eight minutes of straightforward anger, paved the way for absolutely everything more extreme that’s come since.

That introduction is probably already enough to turn away anyone looking for a pleasant, life-affirming album, and in a way that’s good, as now we’re able to get deep into the disc’s gory, mutilated core. It is still most notable for its attitude – Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth could all happily write songs about killing stuff, but Reign in Blood makes no effort whatsoever to censor its themes, and is thus full of songs depicting (and I must emphasize this) dissection, amputation, asphyxiation, internal bleeding, the works of infamous Nazi doctors (which, in turn, made the band infamous), and yes, the occasional anti-Christian bombshell. What’s more, it’s the recording that really broke them out of the underground, and lead singer Tom Araya (who doubles on bass guitar), unlike on the band’s first few albums, is a clearly heard shout thanks to Rick Rubin’s production, meaning it’s actually possible to get the gist of many a ghastly one-liner.

Other than that, Reign in Blood is about speed. It’s the best album about speed that I’ve ever heard, but it’s still about speed. All observations aside, however, it does have two generally recognized ‘classic’s (I used the word) that cement its reputation. One is ‘Angel of Death,’ which contains some of the most down-tuned, evil guitars and tortured atmospherics ever, ever to be heard, all vomited out at unbelievable pace thanks to the sticks of drumming maestoso Dave Lombardo. Bookend that with ‘Raining Blood’ and the rest is history. Kicking off with the sound of an explosion and slower, creepy apocalypse-style drum rolls, it soon accelerates so fast that the cymbals hiss and the guitars combine into one headbangable heck of a pre-chorus hammer. ‘Awaiting the hour of reprisal / Your time slips awaaaaay!’ shrieks Araya.

Sandwiched between is a series of two-minute songs without, I suppose, much purpose. Finding fault with the lyrics during this saga is not hard; they are often exceedingly poor. Still, you get the feeling that to criticize them because of that is to miss the point – it’s not really that kind of record. All of them are bearable because they’re not too long: one riff pummels us directly after another from twin guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, sometimes coming to a RAPID STOP, before REVVING INTO MOTION again, and before you know it, the cut is essentially over. The chorus to ‘Piece by Piece’:

‘Modulistic terror
A vast sadistic feast
There’s only one way out of here
Piece by piece’

Believe me, when it’s delivered at 1000 miles an hour, it is scary. ‘Do you want to die?’ he shouts on ‘Postmortem,’ which explodes into ‘Raining Blood.’ ‘Jesus Saves’ (you can probably guess the subject matter) is so lame as to be eye-rolling, but it presents an impressive minute of intro and sinister build-up before a churning storm. Lombardo remains the star of the set, keeping it all at insane tempos, but firmly controlling the music nonetheless so as it’s sometimes the last minute of a track before things really gets going. There are a few too many heavily distorted solos, and Araya begins to overuse a piercing, sound barrier-breaking scream by the end, threatening to muffle its shlock horror, but these are hardly enough to bring the whole thing down (once again, because of the speed). There are two ‘remix tracks’ on the end of the ‘expanded edition’ which I have, too, but I’m not going to talk about them.

Much is made of Reign in Blood in metal circles, in case you didn’t know. In fact, it’s even voted the essential heavy metal release in some polls. I probably wouldn’t go quite so far: it’s certainly not for everybody, so fixed it is on subjects considered taboo in music. But for those disgusted by the mere thought of it, should such topics really be steered away from? I’m not talking about anti-Jesus quips, every death metal band in the world can do that. But events like those from ‘Angel of Death’ actually happened, and screw you, Slayer insist, we’re not going to get anywhere by giving the sugar-coated version on them. It falls outside my normal criteria of album standards in that sense, because while it’s not worth four stars in terms of the music, and I certainly don’t identify with the band on their points of view (and even they don’t), for the extremities which it pushes and what they’ve influenced since, it puts the rest to shame. …They still can.

1. Angel of Death
2. Piece by Piece
3. Necrophobic
4. Altar of Sacrifice
5. Jesus Saves
6. Criminally Insane
7. Reborn
8. Epidemic
9. Postmortem
10. Raining Blood
11. Aggressive Perfector
12. Criminally Insane (remix)

FURTHER READING

Christ Illusion

Recommended: Yes