Slayer’s Reign in Blood

Araya was the first to notice the number 29 on a studio chart.

Nervous, Araya looked at Wallace.

“Andy, is that the total time for the songs?” the singer asked. “What is that? What does that represent?”

“That’s 10 songs,” said Wallace.

“We all looked at each other, like, fuck,” Hanneman notes.

By 1986, heavy metal had evolved to the point where the most cutting-edge releases were becoming bigger and bigger in scope. Released that spring, Metallica’s monumental Master of Puppets boasted meticulously arranged songs that tended to run in the eight minute range. New York’s Anthrax’s Spreading the Disease, and its 1987 follow-up Among the Living, saw the band expanding its sound, as were German thrashers Kreator. Iron Maiden had been steadily dishing out tracks in the eight to 13-minute range, and young upstarts Helloween were following suit with epic melodic songs of their own. And before their third album came out, we all thought Slayer was in the same boat.

The Haunting the Chapel EP (1984) was a watershed moment, the LA band making the jump from Judas Priest/Venom devotees to the creators of a dark, vicious new sound in metal, and the subsequent follow-up Hell Awaits branched out even further, the speed-riddled songs somehow managing to stretch past the seven minute mark at times. When they signed a major label deal in 1986, Slayer had us primed for something massive, and much to the metal world’s shock, pulled the rug right out from under us.

The rest, of course, is history. Slayer’s 10-song, 29-minute Reign in Blood is universally regarded as one of the greatest metal, nay, rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time, to the point now that Rolling Stone, which after completely ignoring the band in the 1980s mercilessly trashed the album in its 1992 Rolling Stone Album Guide (we’re looking at you, Paul Evans), has backtracked in recent years, scrambling to declare that indeed, this album is fully deserving of canonization. And it was only a matter of time until Continuum’s superb 33 1/3 series joined in with the accolades, as music writer D.X. Ferris has contributed an extensively researched dissection that, for all its quirks, is an engaging piece of work that should appeal to metal aficionados and curious neophytes alike.

With Reign in Blood being as short as it is, Ferris does his damndest to pad this book out, and for the most part, the tactic works. In addition to the band, Def Jam creator Rick Rubin, and band mixer Andy Wallace, Ferris interviews dozens upon dozens of artists and music industry insiders and digs up even more quotes from archived material. Several provide invaluable contributions, as George Drakoulias, Scott Koenig, and Russell Simmons provide details about Def Jam, Larry Carroll heads an enthralling chapter about the album’s provocative covert art, and musicians Gene Hoglan, Kurt Ballou, Page Hamilton, and Killick Erick Hinds provide some eloquent commentary on the music itself.

The book’s primary weakness, though, is the sheer number of musicians quoted, and how few of them have anything constructive to say at all. Yes, Slayer is awesome, yes, “Angel of Death” is the greatest opening track metal has ever seen, but the colorless praise is repeated ad infinitum, be it from a well-meaning Angela Gossow or an incredibly ineloquent Deryck Whibley. Also, throughout the book Ferris has a preoccupation with mentioning how many Grammy Awards Slayer, Rubin, and Wallace have won, and quite frankly, Slayer fans, or music fans in general, couldn’t give two licks about how much approval this band of outsiders has received from the mainstream music establishment.

After going into great detail chronicling the early history of Slayer and focusing on the early days of Rick Rubin’s Def Jam label and the gradual way Rubin and Slayer’s paths converged proves to be especially strong, the second half of the book truly takes off. Ferris offers thorough accounts of the recording and mixing of the album, smartly examining the dry tone that guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman used (a far cry from the “crunchier” riffs of Metallica at the time), the inspired, inimitable drumming of Dave Lombardo, and the vastly underrated vocal style of bassist Tom Araya, who proved that it is indeed possible to sound brutal and enunciate at the same time. The book closes with a track-by-track analysis over the course of 32 pages, but as well written as it is, it feels strangely incomplete, as “Postmortem”, a key track and arguably the most complex song Slayer has ever recorded, is practically glossed over as Ferris goes off on a tangent involving a pointless analysis of the line, “Do you wanna die?”, crossover punk, and, oddly, the Toadies.

What many metal fans will find difficult to relate to is how Ferris bookends Reign in Blood with memoirs of the band viewed from a strictly hardcore punk perspective. The hardcore influence of bands like GBH and Verbal Abuse were crucial to the pace of the album and the juxtaposition of power and intricacy with speed and primal aggression played a big role in uniting thrash metal and hardcore in the late-’80s, but nowhere is this album more loved than in the metal community, and while Ferris’ point of view is a refreshing change, we don’t really get enough analysis from the one faction to which this album means the most.

Metal fans are a cynical bunch when it comes to outsiders offering critiques of their favorite pieces of work, and can pick apart a treatise with the thoroughness of fussy jazz enthusiasts, but whether or not you agree with the finer points of Ferris’ book (Slayer’s musical output from 1994 to 2004 was actually every bit as inconsistent as that of Metallica), one cannot argue that unlike Metallica, Slayer has emerged from the last 28 years as vital to heavy metal than ever, as true to their sound as they’ve ever been, and most importantly, with not an ounce of integrity lost. They’re living legends, Reign in Blood is indeed awesome, and flaws and all, Ferris has done that album justice.