Album Of The Week Club review: Slayer set a land speed record on Reign In Blood

(Image credit: Def American)

Angel Of Death
Piece By Piece
Necrophobic
Altar Of Sacrifice
Jesus Saves
Criminally Insane
Reborn
Epidemic
Postmortem
Raining Blood

Calling Slayer’s Reign In Blood ‘the greatest thrash album of all time’ might sound like a convenient soundbite… until you hear it. With Rick Rubin producing, everything was taken to a height nobody would ever scale again.

The playing was world-class, the songs were stunning, the production balanced technology with the brute force of their live performance and, best of all, it came in at under 30 minutes, which meant that it never outstayed its welcome. From the moment the opening track Angel Of Death kicks in to the last chords of the closer Raining Blood, this is peerless.

“People come up and talk to me about Reign In Blood in the most random places,” said drummer Dave Lombardo. “People yell out, ‘Slayer!’ or come up and say ‘Reign In Blood saved my life.’ That’s one thing I hear a lot. Although the music may have been intense and violent, people have told me that it’s helped them navigate the most horrible times of their lives. That’s just special.”

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Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.

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Other albums released in October 1986

• Eye of the Zombie – John Fogerty
• The Dark – Metal Church
• Reign in Blood – Slayer
• True Stories – Talking Heads
• Rock the Nations – Saxon
• Whiplash Smile – Billy Idol
• Dreamtime – The Stranglers
• Blah Blah Blah – Iggy Pop
• To Hell with the Devil – Stryper
• Skylarking – XTC
• Alive and Screamin’ – Krokus
• Can’t Hold Back – Eddie Money
• Fame and Fortune – Bad Company

What they said…

“Reign in Blood established Slayer’s spot in metal, and probably crowned them the unofficial gods of thrash. The unfortunate thing is that it also establishes a very generic sound that Slayer sticks to almost religiously throughout the album, and leaves me wishing they had expanded their musical repertoire.” (Sputnik Music)

“The obsessive pace is almost always the same, and even when a song seems, from the beginning, to be different from the others, it always ends up with the same hammering riff played at the same speed and in the same key, ending up seeming like a sort of reprise of the previous tracks. The album is pleasant to listen to, but it could also be more varied.” (Dabaser)

“The album acts quickly and with clinical precision – 28.56 breathless minutes to be precise, and when the needle enters the run-out groove after the terminal thunderclap of Raining Blood the only conceivable thing to do is to play the fucking thing again. And again.” (The Quietus)

What you said…

Adam McCann: Genuine masterpiece, a stone-cold classic of the genre.

Andrew Cumming: Arriving and departing in less than half an hour, Reign In Blood is an unbelievably intense ride. In 1986, the world had nothing like it in terms of sustained speed and intensity. It made Motörhead and Metallica (the previous benchmark setters) seem sluggish.

What sustains Reign In Blood, though, is the quality of the songs. Bookended by two timeless classics (Angel Of Death and Raining Blood), but then chock full of great songs. Individually and collectively, this is a great listen and sets the bar for the genre. Even now, just the “dum dum dum” sound of those drums at the start of Raining Blood is enough to get the heart racing. Best heavy metal record of all time? Anyone want to argue?

Michael Böcher: Come on… 10/10. It‘s the classic genre-defining thrash metal masterpiece. 28 minutes of pure metal craftsmanship. Influenced so many other bands. The title track was even covered by Tori Amos. Stellar production job by Rick Rubin. One of the definite genre-defining metal albums of all time.

Gary Claydon: Twenty-nine and a bit minutes of unrelenting brutality. Aural assault with a sonic blunt instrument. Totally lacking in subtlety and nuance, but surely that’s the whole point? I’m hardly being original in saying that Reign In Blood’s best tracks are its bookends, Angel Of Death and Raining Blood, bona fide thrash classics both. In between, things suffer from a discernible element of sameness, and there are some truly risible lyrics throughout. Fortunately, Rick Rubin’s production keeps things sharply in focus, and the whole thing is short enough to prevent it from becoming wearisome. 7/10.

Mark Herrington: I gave this a good listen and tried to get under the skin of it, but in the end was glad it was quite short.

I like a lot of heavy metal, but I also like a degree of melody and drama to hook on to. So, with thrash, I prefer the Metallica version over a relentless sonic onslaught with less pattern.

I don’t mind a degree of harsh vocals if it is alongside clean vocals, as with Paradise Lost, or of the gravelly type as with Mastodon.

The first and last tracks here were more memorable, but overall it did very little for me, and I wouldn’t listen to it again.

Slayer – Raining Blood (Live) – YouTube

Watch On

Andy Aris: 10/10, any less is plain wrong

Neil Immerz: Love it. First got onto it when I was 12 years old on my second trip to Utopia Records – Home Of Metal with my dad when it was on Clarence Street, Sydney. I’d read about the album in Hot Metal magazine at the time. So naturally I bought it.

It was the fastest, most aggressive thing I’d ever heard other than Metallica’s Master of Puppets, but this was on another level entirely. It is still a gem of an album and a masterpiece of thrash metal.

Robby Jackson: My body does not move like that anymore, and when it did, it wasn’t to that. Did not like this album at all. Because you can sing, strum and beat the drums real fast doesn’t mean it’s going to sound good.

Nigel Taylor: Simply one of the greatest, most intense acts of savagery ever recorded. It still sounds as fresh and exciting today as it did on its release. 10/10

Mark Paul: One of the greatest thrash and metal albums of all time. No way should it get less than 10.

Chris Elliott: It goes beyond horrible. It’s difficult to express just how bad this is. I never got thrash or the endless depressing genres that followed (honourable exception to early Metallica).

This summarises pretty much everything that I dislike in 30 minutes.

It’s the musical equivalent of what the UK press called video nasties – and just as tedious. In the same way that video nasties were just crude, trying too hard to be shocking – in the first five minutes, 15 buckets of fake blood, zombies, lesbian nuns, some Nazi uniforms – and you go past revolted into utterly bored…. exactly like this. And musically? 220 BPM: that’s it.

Philip Qvist: So we have a 10-track album that isn’t even 30 minutes long, and two of those tracks, Angel Of Death and Raining Blood (my picks on Reign In Blood), are both over 4 minutes long. That gives you an idea how short the other songs are. In fact, its brevity could be Reign In Blood‘s saving grace, because most songs sounded the same to me, and a 40-minute-long album would have been pushing things.

Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman are on fire here, for both their guitar playing and songwriting, while singer and bassist Tom Araya and drummer Dave Lombardo both ensure that the album remains at a high tempo from start to finish.

I can understand why Slayer’s third album is regarded so highly by so many, and it is a classic. If I had bought it in the late 80s I almost certainly would have given it a 9 or 10, but that was then, and this is now. It’s still a good album, but I feel that I have outgrown it somewhat. A 7, maybe an 8, from me.

Greg Schwepe: I’ve always seen Slayer’s Reign In Blood high on any list of classic albums for this genre, but I’ve never checked it out. Thrash is generally not an everyday listen for me. But this is a timely choice, as the early darkness due to the recent time change has relegated my running to my treadmill versus outdoor running. So what better time to listen to something that should blast me through 60 minutes (listen twice!) of running in place and staring at a wall? Let’s find out.

Typical frenetic thrash pace? Yep. Vocals spit and barked out? Uh huh. Enough down-stroked buzzsaw power chords to grind a guitar pick to shredded plastic? Correct. Drum heads pummeled and getting close to needing replacement from the pounding? You got it.

It’s the chunky riffs that kept me interested and in the game here. I’m not listening to the lyrics for any deep insight or anything that will change my general outlook on life. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

Basically, this is everything I thought it would be, and nothing more. Actually, a little better than what I expected. 7 out of 10 on this one for me. And yeah, the treadmill pace was a bit faster today.

John Davidson: I tend to view thrash metal like other people view prog rock. I can see that the playing is technically accomplished, but the vocals are not for me, and I just can’t connect to the music most of the time.

The drum patterns on Angel Of Death (and indeed peppered through the album) are a case in point. I know people love and revere Dave Lombardo, but that skank beat double-kick machine gun drum style just doesn’t work for me.

Again, I appreciate that it’s part of the appeal, but as an album it is absolutely relentless. At least it’s only 29 minutes long.

Mike Canoe: I like the idea of Reign In Blood more than I like the actual album. Ten songs played so blindingly fast that they clocked in at under 30 minutes! Who can argue with a legacy like that? But as far as the actual album content goes, I like follow-ups South Of Heaven and Seasons In The Abyss better.

Bookends Angel of Death and Raining Blood are still outstanding, but the only two tracks that stand out from the blur in between are Criminally Insane and Altar of Sacrifice. With the benefit of hindsight, this feels like an album that the band had to get out of their system to prove it could be done. Once the land speed record was established, I feel they added some light and shade and became a better band.

Final score: 8.28 (106 votes cast, total score 878)

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