Review Summary: One Hour of thrash, crammed at twice the speed.
"What a difference a year makes"
Slayer went from progressive approach in 1985 to creating a speed metal masterpiece in 1986.
Along with Master of Puppets and Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?, Reign in Blood is a thrash classic that came out in 1986.
From the opening riff of "Angel of Death," this albums is a non-stop trench warfare of riffs, screaming, and killer solos.
"Piece by Piece," is one of the few Slayer songs without a guitar solo. This begins with a nice crunchy headbanging riff, once over, the speed kicks in. More of a rhythmic song, it slows down the pace from the previous track.
"Necrophobic," feels like some slower worked out riffs just played randomly all in 1:40. This is what I call "Controlled Chaos." Whom I kidding, it's Slayer. After the speed demon this is, the last 10-15 seconds close with a nice rhythm riff to close the track.
"Altar of Sacrifice" comes in with an interesting riff in the beginning that carries out through the whole song.
"Jesus Saves" is probably the next best song on the whole album (next to "Angel of Death). One of the few songs in which you can understand the lyrics. Who does Jesus save anyway?
"Criminally Insane," is related to Metallica's "Leper Messiah." In which this is a nice riff cruncher through and through the 2:22 duration.
Next comes "Reborn," this is the song I like the least. Pretty much the same format as "Piece by Piece."
"Epidemic," starts with a nice drum intro with some nice vocal work through the song. A little faster of a riff cruncher.
"Postmortem" begins with a doomsday riff, like you're in the house of hell. It goes from easy headbanging, to all out thrashing about at the halfway mark.
"Raining Blood," without a doubt THE anthem of Slayer. This begins with pouring rain for the first 20 seconds or so. Then the infamous riff, and all HELL breaks loose. Breaking down to a mosher section, then an all-noise solo of absolute mayhem, followed by pouring rain to close out the album.
So the album is less than 30 minutes long. It's an hour of thrash at twice the speed. While it is daring to say Slayer can't out do Reign in Blood, I don't know how an attempt to top this could ever do that?
You want to learn Metal 101, here's your class requirement: Slayer-Reign in Blood
No need to skip what so ever.
