Relentless Onslaught of the Mind and Ears (Reign In Blood - Slayer)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Reign In Blood - Slayer
Date:	24/06/04 (382 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An understandably popular thrash album, The band play how they want to play, A couple of classic metal tracks

Disadvantages: Not enough variety, Many tracks are not given adequate time to progress and inspire, Potentially dangerous lyrics

At a fairly recent gig at London’s Astoria venue, vintage American thrash metal band Slayer returned to the stage for an encore consisting of the ‘Reign in Blood’ album in its entirety. As this is perhaps Slayer’s best-loved album this naturally went down incredibly well but isn’t as surprising an event as it may first sound: in many ways, this half hour aural assault is more of an extended anthem than a collection of diverse songs, and as such it is a very different and incredibly powerful listen. I wasn’t there though.

On the face of it, Slayer’s screeching music with overly controversial and demonic lyrics may not seem to have much in common with the Craig Charles-fronted childish mechanical romp ‘Robot Wars,’ but this album can be similarly judged by its style, control, damage and aggression. By these grounds at least it achieves maximum points.


THE SOUND


As a fan of metal, and specifically that originating from the hairy decade of the eighties, I can’t help but love the roaring guitars, rasping vocals and powerful drum rhythm of this band, but Slayer are a small step away from my preferred kind of heavy metal. While Metallica could unleash similarly relentless thrash tracks in their early years, they balanced out their albums with more reflective, sombre and fun offerings and this prevented them from being similarly labelled a solely ‘thrash’ band. Slayer were always more about sheer energy and violence of sound over musical substance and while they are nothing compared to the darker, heavier and often more interesting Scandinavian death metal bands of today, their influence on these modern bands is undisputed. Plus I kind of like the image of hairy eighties Americans pounding guitars in a bar.

While listening to this album I begin to prematurely age and wonder how something this discordant and damaging can be considered ‘music,’ but then Kerry King pulls off a cool guitar wail and I know I’m home. Rest assured though, this is not an album that would appeal to the masses and as such I would strongly recommend you either wean yourself onto this band through their more accessible contemporaries, or just avoid it like Jim Davidson. Guitar solos take a backseat here to the power of raw riffs and grinds, while the drumming is excellent throughout. Araya’s vocals may not be to everyone’ taste, but they certainly suit the music. You know, if you can call it that.

Saying all that though, it certainly is an experience unmatched by any other album I’ve heard.

‘Slayer’ were:

Tom Araya – vocals, bass guitar
Kerry King – guitar
Jeff Hanneman – guitar
Dave Lombardo – drums


REIGN IN BLOOD


The album opens as it means to go on: completely uncompromising and in-your-face (ears) with Slayer’s most popular track, ANGEL OF DEATH. Coming in at just under five minutes this certainly feels like more of an accomplished track than the shorter outings, featuring impressive changes in guitar riff and the speed of the drums. As a stand alone track, this is an excellent metal song that sums up the thrash genre perfectly and provides adequate competition to bands such as Metallica, Megadeth and Testament, mainly due to the efforts of Kerry King.

From this point onwards, no track reaches three minutes in length apart from the extended final offering. This is very unconventional in the metal world, with bands such as Metallica achieving average song lengths of around six and a half minutes across their first four albums, but it works really well in getting the adrenalin going. And it’s essentially just a load of four minute songs played at breakneck double speed anyway. The only problem with this approach is that it’s very difficult to determine which song is which, and there is a distinct lack of variety.

PIECE BY PIECE manages to be even louder and faster than the opening track due to the lack of any guitar experimentation and provides an excellent follow up, but NECROPHOBIC is pretty much a re-hashing of that track, albeit with a speedy and impressive guitar solo section taking up only part of its 1:40 length. It would be pretty much impossible for anything this short to achieve critical acclaim, but the main point is that it doesn’t break the flow and ruin the effect of the album. After this track there are a couple of very rare silent seconds, but it doesn’t last long.

ALTAR OF SACRIFICE is another very good track due to its distinctive guitar riff and the different atmosphere created by the song with the more spoken vocals. It’s still raw, heavy and (obviously) fast though, with a quiet guitar solo providing some high notes and Lombardo’s drums expertly providing the transition to slightly slower sections with even angrier vocals. This is clearly the ‘classic’ track amongst the fairly average offerings, but treating this album as one song it’s certainly one of the best bits.

JESUS SAVES is segued into straight from the end of the fourth track and has a slightly slower pace this time round but with much of the same guitar work throughout. This is a good track, but sounds too similar to what’s come before (and after) to distinguish itself amongst the noise and remain memorable, as there’s no distinctive guitar riff; the chorus is quite catchy though, and this is probably one of the most powerful tracks.

After this track comes a brief period of quiet cymbals and drum build-up in which the listener can get his or her bearings, but a guitar riff soon kicks in for CRIMINALLY INSANE. The vocals are very powerful here, as are the guitar solos, but it’s again a problem of merging too much into the fabric of the album rather than standing apart as a song. With REBORN, the band somehow manage to execute an even more ferocious sounding track than what has come before, although this may just be my imagination. This track features one of the few guitar solos that actually sounds nice and melodic rather than fast for the sake of it, but the emphasis is still firmly on the power and heaviness of speed. By this point, most listeners will have been completely sucked into Slayer’s nefarious album and craving a period of relaxation, something only teasingly offered before the next track.

EPIDEMIC is very average, sounding far too much like an extension of the previous track for its own good even to the inclusion of an identical sounding chorus riff. There’s really nothing more I can say about this track. POSTMORTEM is the penultimate track and, while expectedly still almost the same as everything else, it’s got more of a groove kept by more muted guitars and as such is possibly the least intense offering here. But bear in mind that this is only in comparison to ‘Epidemic’ and the rest; Araya still screams to high heaven (or more accurately, deep hell) in the chorus.

Onto the final track, the Slayer classic RAINING BLOOD. Beginning with a faster and heavier continuation of the previous track, the cacophony of instruments suddenly becomes only a whine of its former self as the track becomes some background noises of thunder kept only by a steady drum beat… then the music really begins with one of the most recognised thrash riffs in history. This was the only track I was previously familiar with and is one I really like, especially as it distinguishes itself from the rest of the tracks here – and not just because of the brief weather interludes. The lyrics can be made out for a change, while the guitar riffs and adaptations of the main tune sound incredible and very powerful. The track continues through verses and the chorus before suddenly erupting into the loudest and speediest part of the entire album, but which is still kept firmly in control by the musicians. Then it’s all over, with a crack of thunder leaving only the sound of rain and a low booming for the final minute. The aural onslaught is over.


LYRICS


Now I’ll come on to the area that Slayer are most infamous for: their demonic and essentially over-controversial lyrics. There’s nothing tongue-in-cheek about them, but the band have said on numerous occasions that they do not practice what they preach; they only sing about Nazism, necrophilia, blasphemy and sacrifice because it suits the dark tone of their music. Nevertheless, it was inevitable that they would get involved in court cases.

Although Slayer’s involvement in influencing a group of youths to rape and murder a young girl was eventually dismissed from court, it could be argued that the band are a little irresponsible in discussing such issues. Personally I don’t have a problem with evil lyrics in the same way I have no problem with such films, but this image is one of the reasons I stick to less intense metal such as Iron Maiden and Metallica; you know you’re safe with a good historical metal anthem. There’s also the fact that I prefer these bands for their more melodic qualities.

As this is a public review site I won’t go into detail on the lyrics, but here are some samples from the ‘Reign in Blood’ album that illustrate what the band were (and to some degree, still are) about. If this influences you to commit any kind of perverted crime, please do not lay the blame on me. You twisted idiot. Listening to the songs alone makes it hard to distinguish all the lyrics as they are shouted so rapidly, but fortunately there are plenty of websites devoted to spreading the Slayer words:

(From Angel of Death, the beginning of the album)

Auschwitz, the meaning of pain
The way that I want you to die
Slow death, immense decay
Showers that cleanse your life

(Alter of Sacrifice)

Flesh starts to burn, twist and deform
Eyes dripping blood realisation of death
Transforming of five toes to two
Learn the sacred words of praise – Hail Satan

(Post-mortem)

Funeral held for the depression of man
Holds the key to his own death
Entering a tomb of a corpse yet conceived
Tighten the tourniquet around your neck

A far cry from that ‘chirpy chirpy cheep cheep’ song, but the aggressive onslaught of this album demands something more wicked than seventies people making stupid bird noises.


VERDICT


This isn’t strictly my kind of music, but it shares enough similarity with my preferred metal fixes that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like many people I enjoy some variety when listening to an album, and this doesn’t exactly satisfy on those grounds. Coming in at only twenty-eight minutes it hardly seems worth buying unless you’re specifically a fan of the band, especially as most of the tracks sound very similar, but I can imagine how impressive it must have been to see Slayer ripping through the entire album on stage. These guys have undisputed talent, whatever you may think of their lyrics, guitar work and girl hair.

It may be obvious from my track-by-track exploration that I found it very difficult to distinguish between the music offered here, as an identical formula is used for every single track without fail. This could be interpreted as ‘no compromise,’ but to my ears it just sounds a little unoriginal and quite tedious. There are three to four really good Slayer songs amidst a sea of chaotic, discordant filler that prevents me from seeing the real appeal of this album compared to my own collection. If the album was produced as an E.P. and available at a lower price I would have more respect, although I have to admit that my ‘respect’ for the band in releasing this for their major label debut in a decade previously dominated by cheesy glam rock.

People who enjoy listening to albums in their entirety will agree that this is an experience though.

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