Formed in 1981, Slayer has released twelve albums, and has broken up in 2019. They were formed in 1981 by guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King, Bassist and Singer Tom Araya, and Drummer Dave Lombardo, and have defined the subgenre of thrash metal along with Exodus, Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Reign In Blood is often known as their best work, and often thought of as one of, if not THE greatest thrash album to be released, because it is where they came to be more refined. Slayer is often considered a direct inspiration to Death Metal, another subgenre of Heavy Metal.

The album recieved amazing critical response, placed on #6 on the “Best 100 metal albums of all time” list that Rolling Stone published. Kerrang! even called it the heaviest album of all time, and on November 20, 1992, the album reached gold in the U.S., but never reached above place #94 in the “Billboard 200”, however the album never recieved any airplay.

Dave Lombardo's drums are an amazing driving force in Reign In Blood, being nearly blastbeats, and nearly similar from song to song. Tom Araya’s Bass shows to be very prominent in the starting notes of “Piece By Piece”, but otherwise, personally unnoticeable throughout the massive guitar tone shared by Kerry and Jeff. Kerry and Jeff, have an excellent Mid filled guitar tone, a great sound, and tone profile, which suits the album very well, and makes every song sound like you’re just slightly South Of Heaven. Tom Araya’s shouting vocals, fast, aggressive, and affective, are a large part of this album, from the opening scream in “Angel Of Death”, to the final lines in “Raining Blood”. Together they seem to form a supernova of amazing aggression released in a fast, beautiful way. All these amazing pieces of knowledge are great, but I must warn you about Kerry King’s guitar solos. They fit the music well, but they themselves, are a cacophonic audio assault that seem improvised. 

The starting track, “Angel Of Death” has an intro, with trem picking and power chords in the background, Jeff and Kerry synchronize after a bit, and the track truly begins. It has a technical feeling breakdown/bridge full of pull offs which ends in a harmony provided by Jeff Hanneman. The end is a series of trem picked riffs revolving around the E (lowest) string. The ending track, “Raining Blood” begins with ambience-like rain, it continues to play this for about 10-20 seconds, and then Kerry begins the amazing starting riff of the song. After this it proceeds to have open chugging and playing across the first four frets. After this beautiful beginning, the song goes full chaos, it has insanely fast pull offs on the E string and power chords tossed in here and there. This song ends with an E5 power chord breakdown/bridge.

This album raised controversy, not just for the blood covered album cover, but for the starting track, “Angel Of Death”. “Angel Of Death”, is about the Auschwitz concentration camp, and the vile experiments done by the Nazi scientists, mainly focusing on Joseph Mengele. Many people were offended by the lyrical content of the song, as many people believe it is a touchy subject. It goes from talking about the large groups of people brought to Auschwitz, to some of the vile experiments, like non-anesthesia proceeded surgeries, and sewing people together. The song was written entirely by Guitarist and Lyricist Jeff Hanneman, and it was an introduction to his several songs about war. 

This album brought Thrash to the forefront, and it became a popular subgenre, fueled by anger, speed, and most importantly, beer. It was released on the labels Def Jam, and Geffen on Oct 7, 1986, but they were later picked up by American, and now most copies found on the market will be american copies. The only thing more amazing than the songs, is the runtime. This album is a mere 28:58. That means it fits so much speed, brutality, and power in just 28 minutes.

Overall, the album is a 10/10, it’s held up very well. It may turn some people away, but just give it a listen, it’ll likely blow you away, and if you don’t like it, you only used 30 minutes, not a big loss.