Reign in Blood

Slayer - Reign in Blood

Day Three: It's time for my favorite thrash band and my second favorite band of all time. The only thing better than Slayer is Judas Priest. And the only Slayer album better than Reign in Blood is Haunting the Chapel.

I actually got into Slayer through a rather silly way. I was in middle school when Grand Theft Auto 3 came out. Raining Blood was one of the songs in there (along with You've Got Another Thing Coming). My mind exploded just like the poor victims out on the streets of Liberty City. That galloping riff with the steady double bass was heavy as hell. And that schizophrenic barrage of guitar noises at the end was crazy. I immediately went on a hunt for Slayer records.

Raining in Blood and Angel of Death receive the most attention. But the bulky mass in the middle is probably more important. Those songs are frantic, fast, and furious. They crammed about 93 riffs in 28 minutes in 10 songs. That's 9.3 riffs per song and those songs are barely even three minutes long. Most bands can't even put half that many riffs in double the time (like Dark Angel).

The result are deceptively complex songs that are constantly changing tempo, texture, and feel in one abrupt and violent motion. These songs almost function like ultra-violent, hyper fast micro-symphonies with sub-sections within themselves. Best example of this is Altar of Sacrifice. It's probably my favorite song on the album. The "Enter to the Realm of Satan!" part is just completely insane

It's also worth discussing riff-craft on this album. Heavy Metal started off as really loud and heavily blues-influenced hard rock. So you're going to get a lot of pentatonic scales. Slayer pretty much set out to remove those influences by making the riffs atonal (an idea stolen from Discharge). Both the atonal riffs and ever-evolving song writing generate this uneasy feeling in the gut. Chaos is erupting outside. And my, what a beautiful feeling.

I'm also a huge fan of the guitar solos. Yeah, they're atonal as hell. No, they don't use scales like they taught you in music class. But it's not just random notes mashed together. They're the screams of condemned souls trapped in everlasting torment as they plan their vengeance. Slayer solos transcend your precious music theory and become something more powerful than anything a classroom can teach you.

Reign in Blood was released in 1986. It's still intense even to this day. The shadow this casted over the Death Metal genre is just simply impossible to ignore. I don't think there's a single album more important in the evolution of extreme metal than this one (except maybe Discharge). It's nuts.

Anyways, I need to recount the riffs and make sure that there really is 93.