Slayer's Reign in Blood (33 1/3) (2 page)

Most of all: Ryley, Sydney, and Rachel. You’re the best. Thanks for making it possible. Love is like a rock.

The Creators

Slayer
: Tom Araya, Jeff Hanneman, Kerry King, and Dave Lombardo

Behind the boards
: Rick Rubin and Andy Wallace

Cover artist
: Larry Carroll

The Witnesses

Sean “the Captain” Carasov. Beastie Boys’ tour manager from the Def Jam era.

George Drakoulias. Rubin’s college roommate. Then described by Carasov as “Robin to Rubin’s metal Batman,” now acclaimed producer of the Black Crowes and Tom Petty.

Glen E. Friedman. Photographer known for recognizable images of the Dogtown Z-Boys skaters, the Beastie Boys, Fugazi, and others.

Scott Koenig. Slayer friend who introduced the band to Rubin, earning his spot on the rock squad at Def Jam.

Chuck Perrin. Produced the first album of Andy Wallace’s band, First Friday.

Rick Sales. Slayer’s manager. First worked for the band as the
Reign
tour manager, recommended by Metallica managers Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch.

MC Serch. Emcee for Def Jam’s 3rd Bass, more recently seen as host of
ego trip’s The (White) Rapper Show
.

Anthony “T.J.” Scaglione. Former Whiplash/M.O.D. drummer who filled in for Lombardo when he left during the
Reign
tour.

Hank Shocklee. Leader of the Bomb Squad, the production team behind Def Jam albums by Public Enemy, Slick Rick, and 3rd Bass.

Russell Simmons. Rubin’s partner in Def Jam. Arguably the biggest force in bringing hip-hop culture to the masses.

Brian Slagel. Slayer’s manager before Def Jam. Also head of Metal Blade, the band’s first label.

Bill Stephney. Def Jam promotions director.

Georges Sulmers. Former Def Jam Head of International Business Affairs. Part of Rubin’s informal rock division.

The Fans

Tori Amos. Pianist-singer-songwriter. Recorded a cover of “Raining Blood.”

Philip Anselmo. Frontman of Pantera, Down, and Arson Anthem. Pantera kept metal in arenas during the 90s.

Rob Arnold. Guitarist of Chimaira, one of the few contemporary metal bands Kerry King likes.

Matt Bachand. Guitarist of Shadows Fall, leaders in the thrash-indebted New Wave of American Metal.

Kurt Ballou. Guitarist of avant garde hardcore heroes Converge. Also producer-engineer (Cave In, Converge, Isis).

Charlie Benante. Drummer of Anthrax and seminal crossover band S.O.D., pioneer of the blastbeat.

Corey Bing. Utility infielder for underground metal groups Fistula, Necrodamus, and King Travolta.

Anders Björler. Guitarist of Swedish death metal pioneers At the Gates, more recently of the Haunted.

Karl Buechner. Frontman of Freya, Path of Resistance, and Earth Crisis—one of the hardcore bands instrumental in making metal conventions part of punk in the 90s.

John Comprix. Guitarist of throwback metal band Beyond Fear and hardcore cult heroes Ringworm.

Brann Dailor. Drummer of Mastodon, a major-label metal band on the short list of groups that could be the next Metallica.

Glenn Danzig. Mainman of the Misfits, Samhain, and Danzig.

Katon W. De Pena. Frontman of So. Cal old-school thrash also-rans Hirax.

Dave Ellefson. Golden-era Megadeth bassist.

Jack Endino. Producer of Nirvana, High on Fire, and Soundgarden.

Rick Ernst. Director of the documentary
Get Thrashed
, the definitive look at thrash.

Tony Foresta. Frontman of Municipal Waste, thrash-friendly crossover revivalists who play like it’s ’86.

Angela Gossow. Singer of Swedish melodic death metal phenom Arch Enemy.

Page Hamilton. Singer-guitarist of Helmet. Has a master’s degree in jazz guitar, and compares Hanneman and King’s iconoclastic style to self-taught master Wes Montgomery.

Dwid Hellion. Frontman of Roses Never Fade and Integrity, a vanguard hardcore band from the first generation of punks to openly embrace metal, in the late 80s and 90s.

Larry Herweg. Drummer of Pelican, an instrumental metal band popular in both stoner- and indie-rock circles.

Killick Erik Hinds. Composer who covered the entire
Reign in Blood
LP, solo, on a H’arpeggione, a big, custom-designed, acoustic string instrument.

Gene Hoglan. Drummer of Dark Angel, Strapping Young Lad, Pitch Black Forecast, Death, and Testament. As onetime drum tech for Slayer, helped Lombardo figure out how to play double bass.

Gary Holt. Guitarist-leader of Exodus, one of the top six old-school thrash bands.

Eugene Hütz. Frontman of Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello.

Ill Bill. Rapper-producer who wrote the song “The Unauthorized Biography of Slayer” in honor of his favorite band.

Bill Kelliher. Guitarist for Mastodon, who have survived opening five Slayer tours.

Dan Lilker. Bassist for Nuclear Assault, Brutal Truth, S.O.D., formerly Anthrax, and others. A walking metal encyclopedia.

Roger Miret. Frontman of old-school New York hardcore heroes Agnostic Front, one of many punk bands to play with Slayer in the 80s.

Nergal. Singer-guitarist of Polish blackened-death metal warriors Behemoth.

Buzz Osborne. Melvins mainman. Played with Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo in Fantômas for nearly a decade.

Tim “Ripper” Owens. Beyond Fear vocalist who replaced Rob Halford in Judas Priest. One of metal’s top voices.

Trevor Perez. Guitarist of Florida death metal pioneers Obituary.

Bill Peters. Host of WJCU Friday-night radio show
Metal on Metal
since 1982. Saw a Slayer concert on his honeymoon.

Dave Peters. Frontman of Throwdown, a Pantera-style band that grew up in hardcore circles. Metal’s ambassadors to the Warped Tour.

Lars Göran Petrov. Frontman of Sweden’s Entombed, pioneers of the
accessible death metal style sometimes called death-and-roll.

Trevor Phipps. Frontman of thrash-leaning Unearth.

Matt Pike. Frontman of stoner-metal warrior-kings High on Fire. Learned to play guitar by dropping acid and mimicking Slayer solos

Henry Rollins. Frontman of the Rollins Band, formerly Black Flag. Has every Slayer record.

Paul Romano. Reigning champ of sophisticated extreme-music album covers, best known for his Mastodon art.

Jim Root. Guitarist of Slipknot, the one true metal band from the nü metal era.

Rate Skates. Former Overkilll drummer. Toured with Slayer during the
Reign
era. Director of Overkill-thrash documentary
Born in the Basement
.

Devin Townsend. Frontman of the Devin Townsend Band and metal traditionalists Strapping Young Lad.

Kat Von D. As star of
L.A. Ink
, America’s most popular tattoo artist.

Andy Williams. Guitarist of Every Time I Die, survivors of the metalcore movement, who gracefully fuse classic rock, metal, and hardcore—like Slayer, but to a much different effect.

Deryck Whibley. Frontman of pop-punk vets Sum 41. Slayer guitarist Kerry King contributed a solo to Sum’s “What We’re All About.”

Sean Yseult. White Zombie bassist, currently with Rock City Morgue.

1986, touring
Blood
. Slayer in Seattle, between sound check and set. L to R: Hanneman, Araya, Lombardo, and Kerry King—wearing approximately 250 2.5-inch nails. Photo © Glen E. Friedman (
www.BurningFlags.com
).

2006, Andy Wallace, engineer of
Reign in Blood
, mixer of Nirvana’s
Nevermind
, and producer of Jeff Buckley’s
Grace
. Photo by Andy Wallace.

“Thinking about death can enrich your life, not just detract from it…. The sense that things are not eternal, that you don’t have them forever, enhances their value.”

—Drew Gilpin Faust

“If it doesn’t concern life and death, it’s not interesting.”

—Cormac McCarthy

I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen
Reign in Blood
. Fire’s another story. Read on, and you’ll learn about Slayer’s
Reign in Blood
, the best heavy metal album, by the best metal band.
¹
Reign
is twenty-nine minutes of pure hell, made with some of the biggest names in the music business.

Bear with me for a moment, and you’ll hear from the people who made
Reign
a true phenomenon—those who wrote it, who recorded it, and who still take notes on the album, more
than twenty years after it was released.

Slayer has been better longer than any other band.

The group came to my attention a little early, a little late, in 1985, when the term “heavy metal” was forcibly entering the pop-culture lexicon. After Quiet Riot and Mötley Crüe put metal on my radar, the syndicated radio show
Metalshop
scorched me with “Fight Fire with Fire”—the first song from Metallica’s second album, their major-label debut. Now I was hooked on the hard stuff: thrash metal.

Then college radio introduced me to D.R.I.—an impossibly fast hardcore band that squeezed twenty-two songs onto a seven-inch EP. I was ready to quit metal and move to the punk side once and for all. In those days, most people listened to hardcore
or
metal. You chose a side and stayed there. And my ticket to punk was bought. My bags were packed.

The right music at the right time can change your life. And a conscientiously executed review can help you find it. Out of habit, I dropped three bucks on the August ’85 issue of
Creem Close-up: Metal Rock ‘N’ Roll
. Every month, a three-man tag team of reviewers—Martin Dio, Jesse Grace, and Hal Jordan—chatted up records in a round-table discussion. That issue, they listened to Impaler’s
Rise of the Mutants
, Abbattoir’s
Vicious Attack
, Savatage’s
The Dungeons Are Calling
, Venom’s
Possessed
, Exodus’s
Bonded by Blood
, and Slayer’s
Hell Awaits
. Slayer was a new name.

“It sounds like hardcore,” said Grace, ringing a bell the size of the Big Ben in my mind. “And if I was in a dark room late at night reading Stephen King or something scary, and I heard this coming from nowhere it would scare the shit out of me.”
²

Reading Stephen King paperbacks was the one thing
that made my days in Catholic school bearable. Slayer was hardcore-influenced thrash that sounded like Stephen King? I was in.

Hell Awaits
was a huge letdown—for about a minute and half. The
Creem
guys had described it as some kind of full-throttle thrash masterpiece. But the album kicked off with some obligatory backward-masked chanting, followed by what felt like five minutes of slow, building, mathematical groove. “Fuuuck,” I thought, staring at my combo turntable-radio-double-cassette-deck. “
Hardcore
? Killer
thrash
? Here I sit, seven bucks poorer, burned by another shitty record review. Who are these pricks that call themselves music critics, and can’t they do a better job—”

Before I could add the question mark, the song exploded in a supercharged nitrous blast and
stayed
there. Tom Araya’s speed-slurred vocals kicked in, and my hair blew back, like the guy in that Maxell commercial, sitting in front of a stereo like it’s a wind tunnel. Two minutes after I’d dismissed them, Slayer were now the kings of metal. There was none higher.

Of course, a flat-out-violent album with a cover featuring a pentagram logo, a decapitated corpse, and a trio of demons eviscerating a damned soul’s entrails would sound great to a disgruntled Catholic-school kid. But it wasn’t just me. Slayer owned.

About the same time, in New Orleans, a teenager named Philip H. Anselmo—a future metal singer whose résumé now includes Pantera, Down, and Superjoint Ritual—bought the
Hell Awaits
tape. He had a similar epiphany.

“I remember that album, the day it came out,” Anselmo told me nearly twenty years later, during an interview for an article about why 80s metal was still relevant. “Me and my
friend, we picked it up and popped it in the tape deck in his van. And I had to roll down the windows. I almost started crying, it was so great.