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

by Ferris, D. X.

  Critics, musicians, and fans generally recognize Reign as the quintessential thrash album. You can argue whether the sonic variety of Metallica’s Master of Puppets makes it superior or inferior. Regardless, as Spin magazine’s Joe Gross put it, Reign is “the thrashiest thrash ever.”3 The disc marked Slayer’s coronation as the kings of thrash, and their ongoing streak of vitality places them in the small fraternity of rock’s greatest groups. Don’t just take the headbangers’ word for it.

  “They are one of the very best American rock bands,” said Greg Kot, host of rock talk show Sound Opinions, a biographer of the hallowed Wilco and contributor to Rolling Stone. “I take them out of the realm of metal. They are just a pure great rock band of the past twenty-five years. What they do with a guitar, bass, and drums is unequalled in the history of modern music.”4

  After more than twenty-five years, Slayer is still Slayer. The band has only changed drummers. Its other three members are constants. And original skinsman Dave Lombardo returned to the group years before 2006’s Christ Illusion, which ultimately netted the band two Grammy awards. The musicians interviewed for this book invariably ranked Slayer as the top thrash band, and “top five” among metal bands. Using different criteria, you can argue Slayer, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, or Metallica as the best group in the genre: Biggest? Most influential? Best musicians? But consider this: Metal or otherwise, no group has remained as true to its peak intensity or intent through a continuous career. Any argument to the contrary puts Slayer in contention with some of the greats.

  The Rolling Stones are still a top draw, but only a diehard, easy-to-please fan would argue that any material from the past thirty years is more than a pale shade of “Paint It, Black.” R.E.M. made great records from 1983 through 1998. The Who has a tremendous legacy. U2 is more popular than ever, but Kerry King’s worst lyrics—and he’s written a couple groaners; who hasn’t?—don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel like “Vertigo.” The Grateful Dead don’t count. Sonic Youth still do their thing, though Rather Ripped is no EVOL. Front row at a Slayer show is still an aerobic experience. Say what you will about the others: Eighteen-year-olds do not thrash themselves bloody at Stones or U2 concerts.

  Mötörhead and AC/DC certainly never took a step off their boat. Pantera? Great band, never fell off, maybe more influential than Slayer—but not as groundbreaking. The Ramones never hit bottom, and went out on top. What if the Ginn-Dukowski lineup of Black Flag had stayed together for twenty-five years? Imagine if the Stooges had stuck around to make eleven albums. There is no what if with Slayer. Slayer never sucked. Slayer’s worst is never too far from their best.

  And Reign in Blood is Slayer’s best. It’s one thing for a single alpha-geek music fan to run his mouth for a hundred pages; don’t take my word for it. Read on, and you’ll hear from forty-seven musicians, producers, and artists who find Reign in Blood an enduringly significant piece of art. And twenty others who created Reign or saw it happen. None of them is the type to carve the band’s name into his skin, or shout—as countless fans do—“FUCKIN’ SLAYER!” and leave it at that. But Reign in Blood has touched their life. And they have some thoughts as to why.

  What band besides Led Zeppelin has such a cumulative consensus? Slayer’s high-profile fans include metal musicians from three generations. Old-school hardcore legends. A singer-songwriter piano queen. A composer-musicologist. A tattoo-artist TV star. Underground rappers. Hip-hop heroes. A Ukrainian Gypsy punk. They all agree: Like Black Sabbath before them, Slayer has an appeal that goes beyond the traditional hesher demographic. Slayer is the one thrash band palatable to music fans who don’t own a Metallica album and never heatedly debated the merits of various Megadeth lineups.

  “Slayer have as much integrity as these hipster bands who carp on and on about integrity,” says Henry Rollins. “They just go out and make that record and do that tour. They don’t talk about integrity. They don’t need to. And that’s what gives Slayer undeniable power, unimpeachable credibility. If you notice, the people that are into Slayer, you can’t convince them there’s any better thing to be doing on that night. And it’s for good reason: because Slayer’s never sold out.”

  Talkin’ Thrash

  In 1981, heavy metal wasn’t heavy enough. Eleven years had passed since the genre’s black nativity. Now something had to give. Thrash metal was the faster, fiercer next generation. Thrash demolished the divisions between genres that had, historically, been diametrically opposed. It changed music in ways you can still see at mainstream concerts and hear on the radio.

  “I think that thrash metal is just as important as punk or hardcore, or any other form of music—although it’s been overlooked for so long, and people might not know about it,” says Get Thrashed director Rick Ernst. “You look at anyone playing heavy guitar in any genre, whether it’s Lamb of God or Nickelback, I guarantee you they were listening to Megadeth or Anthrax at some point. The music is very influential.”

  With Exodus riffing up a riot, banging your head till you were dizzy was just a warm-up. With Slayer ringing in their ears and adrenalin sending their heart up into their skull, long-hairs finally understood what those punk kids were thinking when they slamdanced into each other at shows. With Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo playing over 200 beats per minute, you had to go nuts, climb onto stage, spazz around, and dive back into the sweaty shoulder-to-shoulder audience. Seats were obsolete. Shows were a full-contact sport. Music had a new extreme point. 1983 ushered in the golden age of thrash—after a long incubation.

  In the late 60s, Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer had pushed blues-based rock to its limits. Riding their wake, Black Sabbath unleashed the first distinctly heavy metal album on Friday, February 13, 1970. Black Sabbath began with the sounds of a thunderstorm, and the next generation of hard rock was loose: Tony Iommi’s forbidding riffs backed Ozzy Osbourne’s ominous vocals about supernatural horror, mystical violence, and all-obliterating war. Over the 70s, Zeppelin, Sabbath, and Deep Purple filled arenas and sold millions of albums with the help of steady radio play. Zeppelin and Deep Purple still inspire heated debates about whether they’re hard rock or heavy metal—but there was no mistaking their offspring.

  A movement called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal formalized metal’s formula and dress code. Decked out in denim, T-shirts, and leather, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden led the charge. They added a second guitar to the mix, developing faster leads and heavier riffs. The singers—most of them with shoulder-length hair—shrieked and growled about vengeance, violence, and running free. Priest and Maiden begat bands like Diamond Head and Angel Witch, who shredded harder, played faster, and wrote longer, more complex songs. None of the NWOBHM bands sold nearly as many albums as Sabbath, but their records got around.

  In Los Angeles County suburb Downey, California, in 1980, future metal gods were just high school headbangers hungry for vinyl. Slayer’s Kerry King, Metallica’s James Hetfield, and a host of other future-greats would jockey for position at Middle Earth Records, one of Southern California’s best sources for hard-to-find records from San Francisco to Britain. While Hetfield preferred epic groups like Diamond Head, King was partial to British hellions like Venom, who embraced punk’s minimalism, but kept metal’s over-the-top theatricality or volume.

  “[Thrash] was more intense than anything,” says King. “I think [the thrash bands] became the evolution of metal at that point. Venom was already out. Mötörhead was already out. They were already doing what they did well, so we had to do what we did better. That spawned our speed.”

  Not all of the shoppers were looking for proggy metal jams.

  “I was at Middle Earth a lot,” says Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman. “Mercyful Fate was huge for us. I used to go, looking mostly for punk stuff—what I call punk is bands like DKs [Dead Kennedys], not happy stuff like the Sex Pistols. I’d look for a lot of local bands that I’d go see at parties—TSOL, Wasted Youth. Wasted Youth was a big influence on us: It’s mostly fast. Th
ey play a lot of dark riffs, chord patterns like we play.”

  Somehow, ambitious metal and go-for-the-throat hardcore fit together. Meeting in the testosterone-soaked minds of impressionable young metal fans, those two disparate genres would yield thrash metal. Bands like Exciter and Agent Steel played speed metal, which was generally 4/4 rock played at punk tempos. But thrash songs were multimovement epics, with shifting signatures and guitar leads as complex as classical compositions. Thrash musicians could really play, and they wouldn’t waste your time with ten-minute solos.

  “It was the best,” says Municipal Waste frontman Tony Foresta. “It was just something new to everybody. It’s the best type of music, because punks liked it, metalheads liked it, hardcore kids liked it. It had all those elements.”

  “Thrash was the perfect mix,” concurs Ernst. “Guys could growl a little bit, but they could sing. And it was a mix of heavy, brutal riffing, but also these beautiful guitar solos, and double-bass drums. And the lyrics, especially in the 80s, [were about] nuclear war and corruption. I think it really [brought together] everything from the musicianship to the lyrics to a lifestyle.”

  Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth were collectively known as thrash’s big four bands. They were there at the beginning, and they’re still here, in one form or another. All but Anthrax were from Southern California. (Metallica formed there, and later moved to San Francisco.)

  “It was a great time,” recalls Hirax frontman Katon W. De Pena. “All of us grew up around each other. You had us, Metallica, Slayer, Dark Angel, bands that were more about doing something different. Because we were not too far from Hollywood, and that was the hair bands. So all of us were pissed off because we were young, and all the bands wanted to do something more extreme than that hair rock.”

  The popular image of metal dudes was (and remains) a cartoony stereotype: suburban dunces playing air guitar to Van Halen, as immortalized in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Beavis and Butthead, and Wayne’s World. But thrash dudes were harsh, like Keanu Reeves in River’s Edge: They were long-haired metalheads who rode around in beat-up cars, listening to songs like “Die by the Sword” and “Whiplash.” They wore leather jackets under dismembered Levi’s jean-jackets that were turned into vests, arms hacked off and covered in a patches, band pins, and painted pentagrams.

  Over the course of the 80s, popular groups like Bon Jovi and Poison would give metal a bad name. Mainstream radio was unlistenable, a stream of Genesis and Lionel Richie. College radio broke bands like R.E.M., the Cult, and the Cure—and also helped push true metal from clubs to arenas. Thrash was the alternative to the alternative.

  “When Hell Awaits came out, there were half a dozen of us that listened to [Celtic] Frost and Slayer,” recalls Obituary guitarist Trevor Perez. “We were the outcast kids. We were like, ‘Fuck off, you suck, go listen to the Smiths.’”

  Metal fans form a distinct social strata. In the 80s, only a mohawk relegated you to a lower social class faster than longer hair and denim. In The Breakfast Club, not for nothing does prom queen Molly Ringwald mock Judd Nelson’s “heavy metal vomit parties.” Even when the hair is gone, metalheads remain bonded by music. Some metalheads are tools, but the headbanger clique is largely devoid of the kind of hipster rivalry you find in indie-rock circles. When you look around the Hi-Fi Club and see another guy mouthing the words of Maiden’s “Two Minutes to Midnight,” you recognize him as a brother.

  “It’s like you see motorcycle guys pass each other on the highway,” says Metal on Metal host Bill Peters. “One guy will be on a Harley, and one guy will be on a Honda, but they still put up their fist to each other when they pass each other It’s the same thing with metal guys. It’s a bond, an eternal bond.”

  Whether they were too erudite or too soft, bands like the Cult, the Cure, and Oingo Boingo didn’t speak to most metal fans—be they suburban kids with a need for speed, or blue-collar weekend warriors.

  “The college crowd had their indie music they listened to, but I never associated [thrash] with any kind of class structure,” says Nuclear Assault/S.O.D. bassist Dan Lilker. “It’s not [a movement] in an English-skinheads sense where we were saying, ‘It’s our music, for us.’ I think it just turned out that way.”

  Most A-list thrash musicians graduated from high school, skipped college, and turned their band into a small business. They built their own risers and stuffed them into Ryder trucks every weekend. In 1986, thrash broke out of the underground. By then, the big four bands had major-label deals. All would eventually score at least one platinum record. Three of them released albums that year, which was arguably the genre’s artistic peak.

  “Those were the epiphany albums for the thrash and speed-metal genre,” says former Megadeth bassist Dave Ellefson. “Those were our statements as thrash pioneers. After that, the die had been cast.”

  Metallica’s Master of Puppets ranged from short blasts to nine-minute epics with acoustic intros and climactic jams. Signed to Elektra Records, the band would be the first thrash band to graduate to arenas, and they’d never look back. 1991’s Metallica (the Black Album) alone would sell over 15 million copies, and the group became one of the biggest rock bands in the world, period. It’s certainly good work if you can get it, but the disc doesn’t have the same kick as their debut, 1983’s Kill ’Em All.

  Megadeth’s Peace Sells … But Who’s Buyin’? marked the pinnacle of the Black Sabbath blues-and-jazz-influenced tradition. Led by original Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine, the group dealt in blistering leads, bloody imagery, and vaguely political lyrics. The group’s hard-partying ways hobbled the group, and lineups shattered. Megadeth effectively became the Dave Mustaine Band. It drifted far from its classic form, but scored Capitol Records five platinum plaques in the process.

  Representing New York City, Anthrax came to the party late. Island Records released Among the Living in 1987. Anthrax would make “mosh” a household word and put a friendlier face on thrash. The most accessible big four band wrote songs about comic books and Stephen King novels. Later, the B-side “I’m the Man” would spark rap metal. Over the years, the band endured lineup changes, and kept making good records that were markedly less thrashy.

  Shortest and fastest of the ’86 vintage was Slayer’s Reign in Blood, twenty-nine minutes of punk-bred aggression. Slayer’s third album was released on Def Jam Records, home of L.L. Cool J and the Beastie Boys. Over twenty years later, Slayer’s same four members still play with lethal intent. They still bang their heads. They’re still pissed off about religion. They’re still fast.

  “I think Slayer, when you look at the biggest bands from the thrash scene, they certainly stayed true to their thrash roots more than any other members of the big four,” says Ernst. “They’re pretty much still the reigning kings of thrash. They’re gods in the metal scene.”

  Slayer is respected by pundits, acknowledged by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and beloved by fans. With a pure-thrash discography, the uncompromising group is a role model for generations of musicians. Reign in Blood is their definitive statement.

  “The best thrash metal band of all times,” says Angela Gossow, singer of Sweden’s Arch Enemy. “Whoever does not own Reign in Blood doesn’t know metal history. It’s a genre-defining milestone, a relentless assault of some of the best thrash metal riffs one could ever come up with. Lots of bands are stealing from it, but never manage to execute it in the same sadistic manner.”

  “Metalstorm: Face the Slayer”

  In 1987, Hit Parader’s Anne Leighton noted that Slayer “come across as merely West Coast guys who happened to have picked up Stratocasters instead of surf boards.”5 They still do.

  Hanneman’s a blond Cali dude who says “hella” when he means “very.” Lombardo takes a hushed, reverent tone when he talks about his wife and kids. Araya brings his family on tour, and he comes across as a mellow soul. King’s equally content talking about Judas Priest or the Raiders. Lombardo’s the
most introspective; the other three simply do what they do. Not one of them seems to have the kind of self-aggrandizing personal mythology that’s common with less accomplished groups.

  The creators’ recollections of the Reign era are often vague: Decades of constant activity have slightly faded Rick Rubin’s once-photographic memory. The band didn’t slow down or take a long break until 1992; by then, they’d been going constantly for a decade. When they talk about their records, it’s like Randy Moss explaining how he shook coverage, suddenly accelerated, and extended for an amazing catch: He didn’t plan it out. He just made it. If you see Reign as a concept album, or you think a King-Hanneman solo symbolically represents the howl of a soul trapped in the abyss for all eternity, you’re thinking about it on a level the band never did.

  Like their music, Slayer aren’t much different since their rise to renown. They’re still focused and confident. Following their tastes and instincts has taken them this far.

  Over the years, Slayer has stayed competitive by inviting A-squad groups on tour. Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher has played 150 shows with the band. Kelliher notes, “Jeff Hanneman told me once, ‘We formed this band right out of high school, and it’s like we never had to grow up.’ And they didn’t: They still wear jeans and T-shirts, and they’re still like that hellion guy.”

  King concurs. “I’m still seventeen,” he told the Cincinnati City Beat’s Alan Sculley. “That’s probably why our music kicks so much ass, because we’re still kids.”6

  Now and then, Slayer are hellion guys who can play.

  “Slayer was like well-trained athletes who had a shitload of training and could go out and kick your ass all the time,” says former Overkill drummer Rat Skates. “They knew what they could do, and they did it, never going like, ‘Heh. Look what we did.’ They’re four Michael Jordans. Four Michael Jordans on a team are always going to win the championship.”