Book Review: Reign In Blood
August 27 2008 at 03:49:37 AM
Let’s clear the air for a moment. I don’t know a single person whose copy of
Reign In Blood isn’t worn to the sleeve and plastic casing. The printed letters on my own cassette have since been sweated out from existence. Played every day between classes and the walk to and from school, the distance just long enough that I would reach the front step as the storm clouds rolled in. But it ain’t the be-all-end-all true mutha of mehtull. Not for me. To this day, I’m more creeped out by Larry Carroll’s artwork for
South of Heaven than his work on
RiB. And the lyrics to “Praise of Death,” from the preceding album,
Hell Awaits, chill me deeper than all of Mengele’s atrocities. At this point, it’s hard for me to reduce SLAYER to a string of tracks and a set running time. There’s a connection between each album, one more proverbial limb tacked onto the body. Probably the most “organic” metal band in the genre and for all they’re their faults later on, one of the most consistent. Many would not agree. They’re not exactly wrong either.
Fans can fuss over such matters, but the facts are beyond dispute.
Reign In Blood is the album that made Slayer; that still lingers on today and regardless whether or not it’s your favorite it has now and will continue to be the most discussed work of their career. It will never sound dated, It fixes everything else in place. And all that came before and all that follows after becomes defined by its relation to this one album, will be compared to it always, which is more often than not less of a problem for Slayer than it is every other band in existence.
Author D.X. Ferris breaks it all down person-by-person and track-by-track to separate fact from fiction, retracing the origins, occasional pitfalls and eventual triumph that brought forth in his words, “the greatest heavy metal album ever.”
No small task in itself. Try and think back to the last time you saw Slayer give a real good interview, in print or on camera, and you have some idea of the obstacles in Ferris’s path. The band is notorious for batting softballs, dodging the hard questions or more innocently coming up short of memory. It’s the latter that threatens to keep the lid on some interesting tidbits here and there, but Ferris’s research provides plenty to mull over regardless.
The book begins appropriately enough by quoting from America’s preeminent scribe of chance and mortality, Cormac McCarthy, and follows up with a riff on
Blood Meridian that introduces the band. After a digest of each of the players’ backgrounds we’re ready for the book’s real bread and butter: the unlikely relationship between Slayer, Def Jam producer Rick Rubin and engineer Andy Wallace, tied up in a blow-by-blow account of the recording process: What Rubin expected of the band; where they differed and what was changed from the original demos (very little in fact).
Between first-hand accounts from those involved, Ferris makes frequent comparisons between
Hell Awaits’s reverb-heavy melodies and the mainline adrenaline of the new standard to be, all while charting the album’s conception as guitarist Jeff Hanneman’s baby – down to shaping Araya’s precise phrasings on “Angel of Death” – to the full-born monster we know today. A few anecdotes stand out, particularly the reaction of Al Teller, President of Columbia records, whose parents died in The Holocaust, upon hearing the album, as well as Ferris debunking any and all myths that the recording sessions were another typical LA crank binge, stressing instead the eat-sleep-breathe work-ethic of the band and Araya in particular. It’s almost a bit of a letdown, but then the book untangles a number of assumptions related to the band that should surprise even longtime fans.
Part of Slayer’s greatness throughout much of their career lay in their nonchalant attitude and lack of pretension (Kerry King’s routine boasts notwithstanding.) The fact that they didn’t set out to make THE record, didn’t over-think the songs or the meaning behind it all, but at the same time pulled it off in a way that seems almost effortless. If you think a “King-Hanneman solo symbolically represents the howl of a soul trapped in the abyss for all eternity,” writes Ferris, “you’re thinking about it on a level the band never did.” Which isn’t meant to discount the absolute fury unleashed throughout the album’s storied 29-minute run, or to sidestep its relevance to the world outside Larry Carroll’s painting. Essential we’re talking about group of Cali-beach bums and a would-be respiratory therapist who entertain some extremely morbid interests. Yes, this feeds into the now cliché use of Satanic imagery, but also comes from a very heightened sense of reality.
We get a fleeting, but palpably weird sense of how the band members interact together when the subject of Hanneman’s late-sister is brought up and see how the same blasé attitude is carried over into the business end of things with Araya remaining steadfastly clueless as to the label deals being discussed in ‘86.
At least three pages of “fans,” including celebrity-songwriters Tori “batshit” Amos, and Henry Rollins, as well as legendary bangers: Gene Hoglan, Danzig and Def Jam’s Russell Simmons are also on hand to offer testimonials (in Hoglan’s case more often criticism) on the men of the hour. Even if you’re like me and don’t have the slightest clue who some of these people are (Gogol Bordello frontman, Eugene Hutz? Fistula’s Corey Bing? Angela Gossow?), the scope of influence is well established. But the book’s main failing is that few of those queried – both inside and outside the genre – have anything substantial to add or can only offer naïf responses and back-handed compliments (Rolling Stone mag’s Greg Kot opines: “I take them out of the realm of metal. They are just a pure great rock band…”). It’s a bitter truth that the book, (Only the second metal-related hallmark to be cleared for the 33 1/3 series), would likely not have been published without such wide-ranging, if most of the time vacuous support. The important link between Slayer and Death Metal is thus mentioned only in passing and it’s unfortunate those in the know could barely move past a derivative “Fucking Slayer!” to help explicate this further.
The book does conclude with at least one pair of salient quotes by musicians Eric Hinds, who recorded his own version of
Reign In Blood on an acoustic Harpeggione, and High on Fire’s Matt Pike that perfectly captures the whole spectrum of thoughts, emotions and lasting reactions tied to the album, which Ferris then stretches into an odd Jurassic Park vs. Terminator analogy that feels more than a bit strange after placing the album in the best tradition of McCarthy and Melville.
Short of a full biography, however, and on the heels of Joel McIver’s comprehensive
The Bloody Reign of Slayer, the book provides not only a good introduction to the band, but capably answers on all fronts regarding the album in question. Given what he had to work with, Ferris pens a clean and even story, flashes his bona fides outright and is passionate enough about the work to sustain that fervor through to the end. (I can just about forgive him for putting Judas Priest in the NWOBHM canon.) Blessed by concision, you could easily read it through in an afternoon; but unless you want to know what hell is really like, you’ll make sure you have a copy of the album on hand before digging in.
[Todd DePalma]
D.X. Ferris
Slayer: Reign In Blood (33 1/3)
148 pgs.
2008
Continuum
.jpg "Spooky Fingers: Binge")
.jpg "Interview: Lugubrum")
print
email
RSS
list
big
small
TWITTER