In the series of me ranting about how much I love metal, we have arrived at the classic album that started the hell raising in my putrid mind. Slayer is definitely the most important band for me when it came to getting into metal and they will always be one of my favorite bands of all time. I’m an absolute Slayer geek and it’s pretty clear. My nostalgia for this album and Slayer in general is far too extensive to fit into one paragraph, but I’ll put it all as bluntly as possible. Out of the many metal albums that have influenced me as a musician and a songwriter over the years, Reign In Blood is by far the album that has stuck with me for the longest time. I still vividly remember the first time my young ears heard Tom’s iconic “Angel Of Death” screech and being absolutely blown away. I had heard Metallica before Slayer as a kid, but Slayer are who really proved to me that metal was something that I was gonna be into for a long time. Slayer at that time felt like a freight train filled with napalm hit my ears at 1000 miles per hour. Tom’s deliverance of “ENTER TO THE REALM OF SATAN!” on Altar Of Sacrifice proved to my 12-year-old brain that you can make such a basic line sound so devastating. Not to mention nailing “Raining Blood” back on Guitar Hero 3 for the first time was one of the most satisfying feelings of my life. With nostalgia covered, I present to all of you wonderful folks an essay on why Reign In Blood is in fact NOT overrated, from the ashes of my repulsion filled soul.
Songwriting and song structural wise, Reign In Blood never ceases to satisfy me. Right off the bat, “Angel Of Death”, the controversial and brutally honest tale of the holocaust, begins the lyrical massacre with a fistful of steel. I really love how a lot of the songs on the album feel incomplete from one another, especially the infamous combo of “Postmortem” and “Raining Blood” as well as the bludgeoning combo of blows to all that is holy “Altar Of Sacrifice” and “Jesus Saves”, because it forces everyone to listen to the entire album if they want to get the full experience. Jeff and Kerry have absolutely phenomenal chemistry and they are both great songwriters who have their own style of writing haunting lyrics. Jeff specializes on the gritty war and social lyrics, while Kerry specializes on the horror fantasies and anti-christian songs. “Piece By Piece” is a fine example of how well Kerry specializes in the gore obsessed lyrical content approach, and his riffs are bone crushingly fast in addition. Despite the song only being 2 minutes long, not a second is wasted in ripping everyone’s fucking head off. The same applies to the following track "Necrophobic". “Altar Of Sacrifice” and “Jesus Saves” are a menacing combo of hostility, the first song obviously being a satanic anthem and the latter being a devastating blow to all that is holy. The following track “Criminally Insane” is a first person story about a serial killer: “Epidemic” is self-explanatory, and you could even argue that Slayer predicted 2020 with the song. “Postmortem” is a song once again spoken in first person, this time however about dying, and what the afterlife has in store for the deceased soul. And of course, I shall not rant about Slayer and not talk about the band’s most career defining and most popular song, “Raining Blood”. Everyone who’s ever listened to metal in their life knows this song, but not too many people look at it in-depth from start to finish. Written musically by Jeff and lyrically by Kerry, the song is an antichristian barrage of terror, telling a fantasized story about a genocide of a group of souls who are in a purgatory, and it finalizes on it’s aftermath. Tom’s performance on the album closing line “Raining blood from a lacerated sky, breeding its horror, creating my structure, now I shall reign in blood!” pretty much sums up what Slayer as a band are all about in just one sentence. They take no prisoners and slay anything in their path.
There’s no doubt that there’s plenty of high-speed, razor-sharp aggressive instrumentation all throughout this monstrosity. The guitar solos are infamously messy and over the top fast, but in my opinion they fit the chaotic tone of the albums perfectly, and the iconic and super headbang-able thrashing riffs totally make up for the sloppiness of the solos. Some of the solos actually serve a good purpose in addition to the madness, especially on “Criminally Insane” where the solo turns into demented whammy bar madness towards the end. No matter what all the annoying contrarian hipster “metalheads” try to say I’ll always back that up. And of course, Dave Lombardo is one of the best fucking drummers of all time and this album shows what he is capable of. So many rapid fire machine gun skank beats and double bass blasting is present and the fills make the already insanely over the top songs even more crushingly intense. The previously mentioned dual track musical piece of carnage “Postmortem” and “Raining Blood” is where the tempos become less predictable and the songs get slightly longer, but the furious attitude and catchy riffs remain in prominence. Hell, “Raining Blood” contains arguably the most recognize-able metal riff ever written.
You may be asking yourself “why on earth are you reviewing Reign In Blood, everyone and their grandma has reviewed Slayer before! Why don’t you review *insert crappy obscure black metal album or awful contrarian worshipped album here* instead?” which is a question I often get from imbecilc contrarians who think liking Limp Bizkit makes their taste free from pretentiousness. The answer is simply the fact there’s still so much to talk about that most metalheads would either willingly ignore or try to debunk, despite all that has already been covered about this classic. Besides, I would rather review a timeless masterpiece with tons of coverage then an abysmal fluke with no coverage any day of the week.
“Oh my god Slayer is so overrated bro Infant Annihilator and Signs Of The Swarm and *insert awful generic overproduced slam band here* are so much heavier and betterrrr!!!!111” Well, sorry to break it to you, inexperienced deathcore kid with a lack of functioning brain cells and an extraordinarily underdeveloped taste, but pig squealing and generic chugging riffs with obviously programmed and overproduced production with horribly pretentious and cringeworthy lyrics does NOT translate to heavy music, LET ALONE quality music. You wanna know what defines quality music? Superb and impactful songwriting, razor-sharp yet intense and aggressive musicianship, catchy riffs, verses, and choruses, memorable songs that keep you coming back after each listen, which ends up creating a replay value that’s through the roof high. Try listening to music that isn’t made by computers for once in your life and you’ll learn to appreciate rawness.
“All slayer songs are just random fast notes being played super fast” sure thing, ignorant thrash kid who endlessly worships Anthrax and Vio-lence as if their music is anything more than painfully dull and generic thrash that you only talk about because your self-righteous contrarian mind doesn’t want to appreciate bands that are highly beloved and respected. You can’t handle music that never slows down or loses it’s intensity? Then go listen to the obnoxious hippie alternative bands that RYM users worship and get the hell out of the metal community, you puny pretentious hipster. Metal fans like myself have had enough of hipsterism in our community and we don’t want you here. Ugh, sorry about that, I hate people. I just HAD to get my pent-up irritation off my chest, back to the actual review.
The cover art for Reign In Blood is quite intriguing and quite notable for this review, considering how immensely it depicts the lyrical content. Painted by Australian painter Larry Carroll (R.I.P 1954 - 2019). The artwork is a visual representation of multiple songs from the album. “Raining Blood” being the most obvious of the bunch, as the album artwork features lost souls being trapped in a purgatory breaking free and proceeding to cause a morbid massacre in heaven. The artwork is also the band’s depiction of hell, as evidenced by the goat headed satan performing a nazi salute and being carried on a throne by morbid angels, which is possibly a reference to “Angel Of Death”. The demons are surrounded by waves of blood and fire, and severed heads on top of impaled bodies surrounding the carnage, representing the fast, aggressive, overtly satanic and anti-christian anthems that are “Altar Of Sacrifice” and “Jesus Saves”. These songs, the intense artwork, and the major label promotion of this album in 1986 resulted in a massive spike in popularity and critical acclaim for the band, and it all resulted in Slayer’s cultural impact. They became one of the most worshipped, idolized, and influential metal bands of all time and they deserve every single piece of it.
In my eyes, there are 5 aspects of a metal album that truly define whether an album is great, let alone a masterpiece. Rawness, hostility, memorability, speed, and bold, groundbreaking intention. Slayer knocked all 5 of those categories WAY out of the park in 1986 with Reign In Blood and no matter what, I will never get tired of listening to Reign In Blood or Slayer in general. What’s crazy about this entire review is that you’d expect this to be my favorite Slayer record (unless you know me better), but if you did, you’d be mistaken! I like Hell Awaits just a smidge more musically, although impact wise Reign easily takes the cake. My multi paragraph long thoughts on Haunting The Chapel and Hell Awaits are for different reviews, but either way, R.I.P Slayer, R.I.P Jeff, R.I.P Larry, and hail Slayer for the rest of the crypts of eternity!
Highlights: Angel Of Death, Piece By Piece, Altar Of Sacrifice, Jesus Saves, Criminally Insane, Epidemic, Postmortem, and Raining Blood
Track List :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
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