Random Fascinating Facts About Slayer's 'Reign In Blood' (15 items)

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  (#4) Guitarist Jeff Hanneman Introduced The Band To Hardcore Punk Before They Wrote The Album

  Guitarist Jeff Hanneman encouraged his bandmates to listen to hardcore punk albums to feed off the frantic vibe and psych themselves up to reach the blur-of-sound speeds they were after.

  “Jeff was going into these specialty shops where they played nothing but underground music,” vocalist Tom Araya told Metal Hammer. “He’d show up with these punk discs. Then [drummer] Dave [Lombardo] got into it, and so did I, because it was different. The last one on the wagon was Kerry – he was a metalhead, he didn’t understand it at first. But eventually, he started to like it."
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  (#10) One of Araya’s Most Memorable Moments In Slayer Went Down Without Effort

  It took Araya just two takes to record the lengthy, blood-chilling scream that pierces the mix 19 seconds in and continues to the 27-second mark of the song. And it remains one of the most harrowing screams in any metal song.
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  (#6) Rubin Convinced Slayer to Modify Their Sound

  Before Reign in Blood, Slayer’s albums were loaded with reverb – like most metal bands – giving the group a dense, echoey tone that could become muddy when they played at rapid tempos. Rubin told the band to turn off the reverb and record the album dry. “He cleaned up our sound,” King told Guitar World. “He dug what we were doing, but he told us we didn’t need all the reverb and [effects] we were using. He brought everything more in-your-face.”
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  (#9) It Would Have Been Hypocritical For Araya To Sing A Song Glorifying Nazis

  The lyrics of “Angel of Death” were blunt and factual and sensitive listeners freaked, apparently overlooking the lines that referred to Mengele as “rancid” and called his acts “sickening.” “We got accused of all kinds of sh*t,” Araya told Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal. “We were called neo-Nazis because of that song. But if you look at the lyrics they just tell a story based on history. It doesn’t glorify anything. Anyone who thinks we’re Nazis isn’t paying close attention because I’m originally from Chile, so I’m a minority, and that would have to mean I hate myself."
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  (#7) King Improvised His Solos On The Spot

  While Hanneman, whose cat-strangling guitar leads are a Slayer trademark, had a good idea of what he wanted to do with his Reign solos, King was more concerned with the riffs and lyrics he had written. “It’s really funny because for the first couple records I'd make up leads that were appropriate to the riffs that we played,” he told Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal. “But for Reign in Blood I got lazy and just made up stuff that sometimes didn’t make any sense and I was still turning up on guitar polls as one of the best metal guitarists.”

  Rubin told Genius.com:

  I really love the solos on that record because they have nothing to do with music. It’s just about speed. How fast can a guitar, or how fast can anything play? We’ll use this guitar, because we have these, but it has nothing to do with guitar playing or music. And also the fact that they had two lead guitar players who would trade off these guitar solos, neither of which made sense. Like: “This thing doesn’t make sense, and now I’m going to out not-make-sense you. You think you can do that? I’ll do this.” It’s so insane. There’s one where I think its like five back and forth of just insanity. Unbelievable.
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  (#14) The Band Hated The 'Reign In Blood' Cover Art

  The cover art for Reign in Blood was painted by political illustrator Lawrence “Larry” Carroll and it resembles a cross between Hieronymous Bosch and Marc Chagall. The image depicts a goat on a throne, a demon with a forked tongue, a man with a pope hat, a head on a spike and pierced, hanging bodies. And all of the living characters are wading through a river of blood, littered with bobbing, decapitated heads. As wonderfully warped as it was, it took some convincing for the band members to accept the image. “Nobody in the band wanted that cover,” King told Metal Hammer. “We were stuck with it. Some warped demented freak came up with the cover.”

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