frisco
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame...
I believe it edged out Graceland at the Grammys...I wish I had time to give "Reign in Blood" a proper write-up. An extraordinary album.
My Best-Carey
I believe it edged out Graceland at the Grammys...I wish I had time to give "Reign in Blood" a proper write-up. An extraordinary album.
I believe it edged out Graceland at the Grammys...
My Best-Carey
I missed the voting but would've voted for Bon Jovi. I'm actually surprised that it has 9 votes, but not surprised that it was beaten out by Metallica and Slayer. This forum seems popular with metal fans... or metal fans are less shy about what they like than fans of more commercial stuff. I've often wondered which it is... or maybe it's both.
I was trying to be sarcastic. I wonder how many people with Grammy votes had heard the album let alone dare vote for it. Death metal as a whole wasn't exactly as accessible or critically acclaimed among that group that decides the Grammys as something like Graceland.What's your point - an album can't be great if it isn't recognized at the Grammys?
I was trying to be sarcastic. I wonder how many people with Grammy votes had heard the album let alone dare vote for it. Death metal as a whole wasn't exactly as accessible or critically acclaimed among that group that decides the Grammys as something like Graceland.
My Best-Carey
I was trying to be sarcastic. I wonder how many people with Grammy votes had heard the album let alone dare vote for it. Death metal as a whole wasn't exactly as accessible or critically acclaimed among that group that decides the Grammys as something like Graceland.
My Best-Carey
Reign in Blood is considered one of the top metal albums. It set the technical standard for a long time. It's like Eddie van Halen of metal. They didn't reach that level again (they have plenty of good ones, though). It's because of that album. None of the big thrashers, including Metallica, had an album like this.I had no idea Slayer was that popular.
Reign in Blood is considered one of the top metal albums. It set the technical standard for a long time. It's like Eddie van Halen of metal. They didn't reach that level again (they have plenty of good ones, though). It's because of that album. None of the big thrashers, including Metallica, had an album like this.
I don't disagree with you, Metallica, for instance is a lot more accessible on the ear (especially in hindsight, they were quite heavy when the albums were released) but that's not what I meant. From a technical standpoint, the sheer speed and precision was not achieved by other bands at that time. Sales is not a the question as well, Metallica blows them out of the water, although Kill 'em all was not that great at release either, saleswise. But even in hindsight, while not that commercially successful, Reign in Blood is probably the genre defining album.I hate to give a hot take on an album that's so beloved, but I want to respond to your last sentence. I just listened to Reign in Blood and wasn't impressed, to be honest. It just sounded like a band playing as fast and loud with as dark of lyrics as possible without any mind paid to memorable riffs, changing tempos or meaningful lyrics.
Those are three things that Metallica did incorporate into their music and why I think that, as a non-metal fan, I appreciate their music the most out of the genre. They may not be as hardcore as Slayer and never had an album like Reign in Blood, but I would say that that's a good thing because hardcore seems to mean one-dimensional and niche. Reign in Blood sold 500K copies, but Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice for All and Metallica each sold over 6M copies. Commercial sales aren't everything, but I think that they're a reflection in this case of how multi-dimensional those albums are (i.e. the songs can be fast, slow, emotional, political, etc.), compared to how one-dimensional Reign in Blood sounded to me.
I'm not trying to put down Slayer, but it seems more appropriate to me to say that they never had an album like Metallica had. Again, I'm not a metal fan and don't want to come across as an expert on the genre, but I think that truly great works are those that impress people who don't ordinarily like a genre (like me when it comes to metal). After all, if you need to be a fan of the genre to appreciate something, is it really that great compared to something that gets the attention of the world outside of that genre?
Reign in Blood is considered one of the top metal albums. It set the technical standard for a long time. It's like Eddie van Halen of metal. They didn't reach that level again (they have plenty of good ones, though). It's because of that album. None of the big thrashers, including Metallica, had an album like this.
That was the first record I ever made in California. We recorded it at this little studio. It's no longer there; it's now a flower shop on Vine in Los Angeles.
The technical things about recording that song stand out to me now. They played so fast. If you listen to any of the really fast recordings before Slayer, they sounded like rock records. There are certain things you do to make a rock record. But because Slayer played so fast, those things that you would normally do didn't work so well. If you listened to any other speed-metal, thrash-metal music that was being made at that time — and there wasn't so much of it — it's not clear. The reason is, technologically, people were recording it more like it was traditional rock music, which it really wasn't. It was this new form. People didn't look at it as its own thing that had to be handled differently. So that was my mission: How do you get across the clarity and articulation and speed and energy?
Dave Lombardo is this incredible, unbelievably great drummer. One thing that we did was make the drums louder. The nature of distorted electric guitars is that they sound loud regardless of how loud they are. Whereas drums, because it's a natural instrument, depending on how loud they are in the mix really changes that feeling of how hard they're being hit. If you're in a room with the drums and somebody's hitting them hard, they're much louder. So, psychologically, by making the drums louder, it made everything seem louder.
I also did away with reverb. With their super-fast articulation in a big room, the whole thing just turns into a blur. So you don't get that crystal clarity. So much of what Slayer was about was this precision machinery.
This was clearly a controversial song. Slayer were kind of the first death-metal or thrash band. I don't know what the right title is. Metallica and they were going on at the same time, but Metallica were so different lyrically than them. Slayer were more blood and guts and Satan. Anyway, this was a song where the record company refused to put out the record. So we had to find a new distributor. It was the first record I did with Geffen Records instead of Columbia Records.