In Listener’s Digest, our writers help you explore the work of great musicians. Next up: the LA metal band who made the sky pour with blood
Reign in Blood (1986)In 1986, thrash truly emerged from its classic, generally
British, heavy metal influences, with the “big four” – LA’s Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and NYC’s Anthrax – all finding their sound. Metallica emphasised a paranoid grind, Anthrax a tongue-in-cheek, streetwise hardcore bounciness, and Megadeth a remnant of old-school, hard-rock boogie; Slayer, however, distilled and concentrated the essence of pure metal: the crystal meth to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest’s medical Dexedrine. Every blastbeat and guitar widdle is faster, every scream higher, every grunt lower, every mood either assault or preparation for assault, and the subject matter is boiled down to Satan, slaughter and pain. All of metal’s preposterous theatre and grandiosity is here, but at only 28 minutes from the first everyone-hitting-everything stab of Angel of Death to the final trickle of Raining Blood, it’s perfectly nasty, brutish and short.