D.X. Ferris, “Reign in Blood” (Continuum, 2008)

By the fall of 1986, the Los Angeles heavy metal band Slayer had two solid but unspectacular records, 1984’s Haunting the Chapel and 1985’s Hell Awaits, to their name. Meanwhile, producer Rick Rubin had started a record company, Def Jam, in his dorm room in NYU, and after a handful of successful rap releases, was on the lookout for new talent for his label. In a New York City nightclub, he found it in Slayer.

D.X. Ferris, in his taut and entertaining 33 1/3 series bookReign in Blood, explains how this seemingly incongruous paring of a rap guru and four speed-metal merchants ended up making rock history with their 1986 thrash-metal release Reign in Blood. Rubin, whose genius has always resided in his ability to help artists capture the essence of their greatness, found the band’s lengthy, more traditional heavy metal songs unappealing. What he liked, Ferris argues, was the faster, heavier, and aggressive aspects of Slayer’s material. This made him a perfect partner for the band’s late guitarist, Jeff Hanneman, who loved hardcore punk rock almost as much as he loved heavy metal.

The resulting album, Ferris maintains, is “the gold standard for extreme heavy metal.” The LP’s ten songs are played with military precision and at a frenzied pace. And its lyrical themes are nothing if not disturbing: serial killers, witches burned at the stake, pandemics, the fall of Heaven, and perhaps most extreme of all, a meditation on Nazi sadist Josef Mengele, Auschwitz’s depraved “Angel of Death.” This last song, as Ferris shows, stirred charges of anti-Semitism and encouraged CBS Records to back away from its deal to distribute the LP.

By drawing on interviews with everyone from members of Slayer to fans, the witty and engaging Ferris makes a convincing case for the album’s significance and its continuing influence in the world of heavy metal.

D.X. Ferris is the author of Reign in Blood and has contributed pieces for RollingStone.com, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Popdose, Village Voice, and Decibel, among other publications. He is also the creator of Suburban Metal Dad, Heavy Metal Game of Thrones Reviews and is the proprietor of Pentagrammarian.com, the world’s only metal-oriented grammar and usage website. For his work he was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists’ Reporter of the Year in 2011 and is the recipient of numerous other journalism and writing awards. Ferris can be reached on Twitter @dxferrisand @slayerbook.

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