Reign in Blood

Reign in Blood is a work on which SLAYER cut away excess ornament and concentrated fast riffs, abrupt key changes and Dave Lombardo’s fierce drums into a single point. Tom Araya’s screaming voice and Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman’s guitars build tension with no time to rest. Made with the great producer Rick Rubin, it is a monument shining brilliantly in the history of thrash metal. From “Angel of Death” to “Raining Blood,” the album keeps the pressure entirely unbroken within a mere half-hour. Songs like “Necrophobic,” “Criminally Insane” and “Postmortem” condense tremendous aggression too. Turning extreme expression into precise construction and defining thrash metal’s speed and violence, it still exerts immense influence as the origin of all extreme metal. It is an enduring masterpiece representative of the genre.