5 out of 5

Label: Def Jam / Geffen

Produced by: Rick Rubin

Believe.

Back in my early metal days – or let’s go earlier than that, to when I was but a wee, fledgling music fan, just starting down the alterna-radio / 120 Minutes road – it was easy enough for me to lump all of the metal stalwarts into one long-haired, greasy, devil-behorned bucket.  Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth: they were all the same to me, despite not really having heard them, and I rolled my eyes at yonder black-clad headbangers sporting torn shirts dedicated to said bands.

When my tastes started to lean toward heavier stuff, I accepted the role these groups played in influencing what I liked, but I still drew a line in the sand: ‘I only listen to stuff from my era,’ or something similarly stupid and limiting.

Anyway, jumping past this origin story that I’ve likely retold a thousand times and more, I admittedly still kinda judge, say, Metallica.  And Megadeth.  I acknowledge what they did when it was important to do that, but I dip my toe in their musical waters and I find it pretty tepid.  Tom Araya, according to interview snippets on the wiki, may feel like Reign in Blood was also right time / right place and has lost its impact over the years, but: nah.  I have a lot of heavy music plugged in to my ears at all times, and I just recently started listening to Slayer, and: this stuff is vicious.  This stuff is pure.  And yes, Reign in Blood is at the tippy top of their laundry list of releases for very good reason.

Made in eighty-effing-six – which is unbelievable for the fidelity of its aggressions, thank you Rick Rubin – this is not just an album that blows away modern followers / peers with opener Angel of Death, a lyrical tour through deathly violence and a musical proving grounds for Lombardo’s jaw-dropping drumming, Araya’s speed bass and intense growl, and Hanneman / King’s dueling fretboard mastery… it’s an album stocked end-to-end with explosive blasts of the same, rocking between thrashier exploits and punk; straight-ahead riffing and soloing, such that your earholes are constantly oppressed by new variations on their theme and your brain is in love with the heft for all glorious 29 minutes.

There’s plenty of other reviews out there to tell you more.  Angel of Death; Jesus Saves; Reborn; Raining Blood… you think each can’t be topped until they are, and then you relisten to the disc and it tops itself…

Just… freaking believe.