Slayer's Reign in Blood (33 1/3) (4 page)

Working in a much-maligned genre, guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King emerged as the Lennon and McCartney of speed metal, having penned a collection of blood-soaked scenes comparable to haunting novels like Cormac McCarthy’s
Blood Meridian
and Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick
. The record stands as a grim treatise on human
nature, a statement of violent naturalism, an unflinching look at the human condition’s darkest corners.

Reign in Blood
opens with a song about the true horrors of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Three songs about serial killers follow. Two gory tales threaten vengeance from beyond the grave. An explicit indictment mocks religion. A plague obliterates the human race. A Satanic cult slaughters virgins for evil power. A piledriving climax looks at death nine ways from Sunday. It’s wonderfully grisly stuff.

Issued on America’s premier rap label—Def Jam—at the pinnacle of the thrash movement,
Reign in Blood
set the bar for an emerging genre called death metal. The record continues to serve as a touchstone for headbanger musicians internationally, from underground to arenas, from Poland to Iowa.

“
Reign in Blood
, it’s a dogma,” says Nergal, frontman of Poland’s Behemoth. “Slayer kills.
Reign in Blood
is really top of the tops, definitely one of the best extreme metal albums ever. Not just thrash metal. They’re more than just a thrash band. They are a rock band. Slayer stands there along with Metallica, Kiss, and the Beatles.”

If, unlike Endino, you
were
paying attention to metal,
Reign
is still relevant, recognized as a high-water mark from a golden age.

“[
Reign in Blood
], to me, is the epitome of thrash metal,” says Slipknot guitarist Jim Root. “It’s great. I’d definitely give it five stars. It’s straightforward, no-bullshit. Every song kicks ass. Every riff kicks ass. It’s such a short record—absolutely no way you can get sick of it. I would put that album right up there with [Megadeth’s]
Peace Sells
and [Metallica’s]
Master of Puppets
and [Anthrax’s]
Among the Living
. It changed [metal] for the better.”

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.”

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. They 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.