Review by Saxy S for Slayer - Reign in Blood (1986)
The Metal Conundrum
It has been thirty five years since what is undoubtedly the most important year in all of heavy metal, as Metallica and Slayer both released iconic records in 1986 with Master of Puppets and Reign in Blood. It also saw a cultural divide in heavy metal that, while not apparent at the time, would become commonplace in heavy metal during the 1990s and beyond. That fissure would eventually be referred to as “the loudness war” during the late 2000s, but I propose that it began here, on 7 October, 1986.
Now for context, Reign in Blood was not the first record to experiment with heavier tones and a horrible production budget. Metallica’s debut record, Kill ‘Em All, Slayer’s first two records and Possessed’s Seven Churches all fell victim to this. And got in the face of the hook driven hard rock and metal that was coming out of the United Kingdom (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, etc.). But then March ‘86 came around, and that Metallica band had just released Master of Puppets, which proved that thrash metal could be more than just blistering guitars, face shredding solos, while still maintaining its sonic edge over power and speed metal. It was a record that was produced to near perfection, the hooks are enormous and the variety in the band's sound was impeccable.
October of ‘86 was also significant as it produced Reign in Blood. And this album sounds very different from Metallica’s record even though they are both technically labeled as thrash metal. For starters, you will notice a drastic change in tone as Slayer incorporates E-flat standard guitars instead of the traditional E natural. Right out of the gate, the album sounds darker and heavier than other heavy albums, as the chugging zeros invoke a key center that is still very uncommon to be performed in. These keys are very commonly used to imply being otherworldly, major for heaven, minor for hell.
When the opener “Angel of Death” begins and you hear that howl from Araya, you expect to be hit with a cinder block while the gates of hell open up directly below your feet. And if that is what Slayer were going for, then mission accomplished. “Angel of Death” is ferocious, pummelling and destructive, the bridge is calming, but still maintains its intensity, and the solos from Hanneman and King are ridiculous as they defy scales and just blast off into whatever dissonant notes they can imagine. Hell, I’m sure these two don’t even imagine their notes; they probably just slid their hands across the fretboard of the guitar and whatever sound came out is what they got!
All of this got me really excited to hear the next track and what would come next...only to find out that the “Piece By Piece” main riff has way too much in common with the opener. After a triplet intro, it resorts to tremolo picking, Araya rap shouting, Lombardo’s skank beat, and the key-less soloing. “Necrophobic” is all of that but double time to match its shorter runtime. “Altar Of Sacrifice” begins with an “Am I Evil?” intro, then returns to the same beat ad nauseam.
By the time “Criminally Insane” comes on, I’m genuinely pleased to hear an actual refrain in the guitars interspersed between Araya’s inaudible vocals. Which does lead into another big problem this album has: the production. This record is produced by Rick Rubin. This producer is most noted for his work with Hip Hop artists LL Cool J, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. The last two of those should be intriguing because of their obvious rap rock leanings. In those cases, he had artists that could enunciate their words, and if not, they could always go the way of an instrumental break. Meanwhile, Araya produces the equivalent of word vomit just spewed onto the page, which is drowned out by the band's incessant need to play as many notes as possible in as little time anyways. And this occurs for the entire record! It’s even more insufferable when Araya cannot even keep up with the blistering tempos.
Now, none of this on its own makes an album bad. What makes heavy metal so great (following Reign in Blood) is how dissonance is used as a tool to create uncomfort to the listener and in turn, give the feeling of anger, hatred and in some cases, satanic emotions. And Slayer has that locked down. Far and away the discomfort of this record is unlike anything in metal at the time and helped pave the way for the eventual rise of extreme metal, or in another term, death metal. But here what irks me the most: it is not used as a building device. Every track on this record (with a few exceptions), has the exact same timbre with no room for development or growth. Which in hindsight sounds ridiculous for me to say, since the final three tracks on this album are the best of the bunch. “Epidemic” has some catchy guitar leads, even if they do sound similar to “Angel of Death”, “Postmortem” has a nice change of pace groove before transforming into another skank beat assault. And “Raining Blood”, of course, has the most iconic guitar lead and “bang yer head” breakdown in all of 1980s thrash.
It is hard to imagine extreme metal without the contributions of Slayer during the 80s and this album in particular. And while for a time, this was far beyond the realms of what anyone considered accessible music, as decades have passed, the necessity of an album like Reign in Blood has been lost on me. With Sepultura and Kreator both managing to copy this record's formula with far more variety, I find this record to become less essential.
Which will inevitably bring me to the ultimate conclusion of this review. Slayer’s Reign in Blood was never meant to be commercialized. With its raw sound and lacking any sort of hook/motif to make these songs stand out from one another, it just sounds like musical nothingness. Araya being unable to keep up with the blistering tempos is not a show of DIY mastery, it sounds like he’s running out of breath. Not having any hooks is not a display of breaking boundaries, it's a surefire way to make sure that anyone who listens to your album cannot remember a single thing about it after its conclusion. “Oh yeah I love that one Slayer song that goes ‘brrrrrrrrrrrr buh buh brrrrrrrrrrrrr buh buh brrrrrrrrrrrrrr” and “boots n’ cats n’ boots n’ cats n’ boots n’ cats n’...”
But as this album gained popularity and slowly found its way to the top of most lists of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time, it would spawn an almost infinite number of copycats. And they all make the same damn mistakes that Reign in Blood made thirty-five years ago with no sense of self-reflection that this will get them nowhere; not just because their music is completely forgettable, but because it’s trying so hard to be like an album that sounded like hot garbage thirty-five years ago!
When I listened to this record for the first time nearly fifteen years ago, I hated its entire existence. Fortunately for me, reviewing the album today means I get to maintain some of my feigning credibility as a metalhead by exclaiming that Reign in Blood is not a one star album. But it was never an all time classic; only unmistakably influential. As this album’s legend grew, and every thrash band tried to be Slayer’s Reign in Blood (much like with progressive metal with Dream Theater’s Images and Words), I grew to despise this band; not because of its quality, but the culture that formed out of it. The kind of culture that believes a relentless assault of getting beat over the head by a cinder block for thirty five minutes is artistic genius, while a decent hook every once in a while is shunned as “commercialization” of their sacred genre and less than metal.
In the end, I found Reign in Blood to be more boring than anything else. But Slayer were at least attentive enough to make many of the same changes Metallica did earlier in the year, and this resulted in South of Heaven, and my personal favourite Slayer album, Seasons in the Abyss. It is hard for me to recall an album that I have listened to more that I didn’t like than Reign in Blood to see why I never cared or liked it. Now I know why, and I will take it to the grave with me.