HISTORY
Slayer, one of the better bands in the thrash-metal genre of all time, the band has been a big influence to many death-metal bands and extreme bands in general. The band is known for their aggressive sound, their lyrics which often contains stuff as war, blood and gore, creatures from hell and other occult themes.
Slayer was one of few metal bands that kept their own sound through times when bands like
Anthrax and
Metallica started to be affected by the mainstream.
Slayer was formed in 1982 and back then the band was playing covers of heavy-metal bands like
Iron Maiden and
Judas Priest, but the band suddenly moved their music into the extremes and became of of the worlds most well-known bands in the world of metal.
ALBUM INFORMATION
This album is considered to be
Slayer's yet best album, which is also considered to be a milestone in the metal history, and this album is called
''Reign In Blood''. Though I haven't heard all the albums they have made so far but this album really was something special. The album concentrates on the speed, evil lyrics, furious and heavy guitar work, machine-gun drumming and ''occult, religious'' vocal work. The overall sound production is very good, the only thing that is too low in this album is the bass, but we will move on to the next step in this review now if you want to know more about this ''thrash-classic''.
BAND MEMBERS
Starting with the frontman
Tom Araya, the vocalist and bassist of this band.
Tom's vocals might be one-of-a-kind vocal style, I think that this sounds more like some sort of preaching and not singing but it sounds good. His vocals are not overdone or to weak, the vocals helps to build the unique and evil atmosphere that surrounds the band, the ''vocals'' are strong, quite sinister and it sounds like
Tom really is preaching. But the bass is too bad, the bass is almost non-existent. The only clear instruments you can hear are the drums and the two guitars, I love the bass myself but I don't know how this would've sounded like if the bass was louder, but who cares. The bass does not make any standout performances, it goes along with the rhythm sections. The guitarists
Kerry King and
Jeff Hanneman might not be excellent guitarists but they do know how to handle the guitars. The guitar work is great in this album, the guitars sounds quite strong and powerful, the riffs in some of the songs are though pretty unique in my opinion but we will come to that part later. The guitar solos were no real highlight solos though, the solos are most of the times very chaotic, they are played in fast paces and the catchiness-level is not high though.
Dave Lombardo is the drummer here, the drums are great in this album. The patterns are fast, heavy and has a good variety. The fast patterns creates the energy in the songs and make them interesting and catchy.
TRACK INFORMATION
The album starts with
Angel Of Death, a fast song which enters with fast shredding. The drums enters later and later
Tom delivers a scream which is high-pitched at the beginning but later turns into a agony-based sound. The song is quite catchy, the guitars has a good variety of riffs and shredding in this song which is great. But the solos are unfortunatly not that great, good album opener.
Piece By Piece starts off with variated and fast guitar work along with rhythmic drum beats. The song gets thrashier which means that the instruments gets faster, the songs might not be so catchy or heavy but the musicianship is good though.
Necrophobic goes out in the same spirit but this one is even faster, a real thrash-attack. The song is intensive all the way, the solos are very high-pitched and chaotic, and
Tom delivers some variety in his vocal work.
Altar Of Sacrifice starts with a ''marching'' and short intro, this song also transforms to a thrash-attack. The pace is very intensive, the song changes its pattern after a while though with a calmer section with quick vocal work. A bit catchy but not so heavy, but it is still a good song though.
Jesus Saves starts with a slower intro made by power chords I guess, the drums enters later in a slower pattern. The guitars later starts to play some sweet triplet riffs, a moment later the song turns up its pace with very fast shredding and pounding drums. The guitar solos are once again very chaotic, high-pitched and fast, sorry but these solos are not so good but the song is pretty catchy though.
Criminally Insane starts with slow heavy drumbeats and fast high-hat tapping, the guitars enters with catchy shredding. The aggressive vocals enters and the song gets a power boost and goes high-speed, the solos sounds like the previous once but these might be some of the better solos though. The song has some catchy moments and it feels a bit heavy too, the vocals is some of the best on the album because they sound more like singing than speaking.
Reborn enters with heavy and somewhat technical intro riffing along with heavy drumbeats. Also this song goes berserk with quick/rushed vocals and with a very intensive pace, but the song is slightly catchy and the vocals are also pretty good here.
Epidmic starts with some quick drum rolls, the intensive shredding enters later and the drums does the same. The pace is fast but it still feels a bit calmer than the previous tracks, the song is quite heavy and catchy. But it reminds you of the other tracks though, most because of the fast song pattern and the crazy guitar solos.
Postmortem starts with a slow intro with half-catchy intro riffiing, the song gets later very catchy when the fast and rhythmic drumming enters. The shredding guitars are equally as catchy as the drumming, the song is heavy and the vocals are well balanced, mixed with yell screams and dark vocal work. One of my favorit tracks though.
Raining Blood, the triumph card in this album. It starts with a quick burst by all instruments, you can hear rain is pouring down, sudden drumbeats is played, thunder blasts are also heard along with eerie guitar effects. The riffing enters with their spooky feel and the fast drumbeats follows, the song goes berserk for a while when the speed is turned up. The pattern changes and becomes heavier and slower, here comes the best part when the classic sound of
Slayer emerges. The guitars are very creepy, evil and heavy, riffs that you will remember. The song is fast and slow, the catchiness-level is high and the instrumental variety is great.
MY CONCLUSION
This stuff was great, now I have the complete thrash-collection with this album. I'm not a big fan of
Slayer but I have heard everywhere that this album is great both from friends, media, internet and so on. And I have to agree, maybe not my style of thrash but I liked the unique sound that
Slayer has, many death-metal bands and extreme bands in genral will never express evil or darkness in the way that
Slayer did on this album and other albums as well. I will recommend this to all thrashers out there, I bet that there will be at least one or two songs on this album that will stick into your head. This is now my favorite
Slayer album yet thats for sure. I hope this album has been a good guidance and I hope you had a good time while reading this review.
PROS
+ The atmosphere of evil, darkness and occult themes can only be best displayed by
Slayer
+ The haunting and spooky riffs made the material very interesting
+ The drumming kept up the energy in all of the songs
+ The variety in the vocal work was very good, not the same deal all the way
+ Good life-span of the songs
CONS
- The guitar solos were not of high-quality
- Some songs had too familiar song structures (repetitive warning)
The final overall album rating will be a strong 4.5/5 (still very close to a 5/5 though)
