SLAYER — Reign in Blood (review)

SLAYER — Reign in Blood album cover Album · 1986 · Thrash Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Beekeeper
As a thrash fan many would say it's sacrilege not to declare this the greatest album of the genre. After loving them, hating them, seeing them live, not listening to them for a few years and coming back with a much more mature and rounded musical perspective, I can safely declare that Slayer and this album in particular are overrated.

Sure it's fast, aggressive and well produced but it has a lot of flaws, some of which are inherent to the band - namely mediocre vocals and unforgivably bad guitar solos. The song writing which I believe is very important in this genre is fairly primitive, particularly when you compare it to contemporaries such as master of puppets.

It just seems like Slayer have a handful of riffs and ideas and have sought to build a career by extrapolating those ideas as far as possible. This album is a pretty good demonstration of this, the only real change between songs is how fast they are and what order the notes are played in. It's accesible and for many people it's just their cup of tea when it comes to thrash, personally I prefer the more elaborate and intelligent songwriting of bands like Kreator, Coroner and Voivod.
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Certif1ed wrote:
more than 2 years ago
I think the fact that Slayer use a limited palette of primary riffs to draw from is their main strength and the reason for their longevity. It's actually very hard to create a consistent album, yet Slayer managed this many times. The guitar solos are tremendous - they're only bad if you think there should be melodies or technical bits and bobs in there, or use some other yardstick for "bad". The primitive songwriting, again, is its strength. Who the frick wants sophisticated except a prog head? Some metal is the ultimate expression of primeavailty in music, some is the ultimate in technical yawnery. I know which I'd choose...
UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Wow that´s pretty brave. I can see a couple of hardcore fans questioning a 3 star rating for this classic album. It´s great to see other opinions too though.

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