Slayer's Reign in Blood (33 1/3)

by Ferris, D. X.

  Even though the Reign in Blood cover was an instant rock-art hallmark, it didn’t bring more work in for Carroll. Aside from his Slayer albums, he wouldn’t accept another music commission until 2007, when rapper Ill Bill asked him to create the cover for The Hour of Reprisal, which borrows its title from the “Raining Blood” lyrics. Like Reign’s music, Carroll’s postcard from the netherworld set a standard.

  “What makes a good cover is how effectively it reflects the music which it dresses,” says Romano. “Reign in Blood marvelously hits this mark. The palette and the spiraling composition drop us into a dark, nauseating dream ripe with demons and body-horrors that haunt the collective unconscious. Reign in Blood holds references to Bosch and Bruegel, updating them and giving them pertinence for our time, but more importantly endowing it with a sense of history; this painting always was and always will be. This is the mark of a great cover: being timeless.”

  Photographer Charly Rinne shot the rear cover’s famous full-color picture of the band backstage at Belgium’s Heavy Sounds Festival in 1985, where Slayer were second on the bill to UFO, heroes whom they’d covered at their first practice. King, Hanneman, Araya, and Lombardo flash their pearly whites, making their best metal faces, scowling and growling. Lombardo looks less crazed, as if he’s having fun, but growing weary.

  Reign in Blood’s credits are a stripped-down as its production.

  Different pressings of the album list different details, but none have many. Hit City West, the studio where the band recorded in L.A., isn’t listed; the credits read simply, “Recorded in L.A.” Rubin, at that crucial junction in his career, was mindful of appearances: His previous records had been recorded at the famous Chung King House of Metal, a studio set up in an old restaurant. It was actually called Secret Society at the time, but Rubin didn’t want the industry to know his golden rock-box sounds were made in a seedy Chinatown basement.29 Similarly, Soundtrack is listed as New Fresh.

  Essentially, the credits list who recorded Reign, and where. No shoutouts appear. Hanneman has a clear-cut recollection about that matter: “We were sick of looking at albums like people thanking your mom, dad, brother, and my best friend Pete and my girlfriend,” says Hanneman. “‘We’ve already done that, let’s leave it all out.’ It was like, ‘Fuck everybody.’”

  Bad Day at Black Rock

  Reign in Blood faced some stiff resistance between the end of recording and the record’s arrival on the shelves.

  Led by Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore, the Parents’ Music Resource Center—the indignant group of parents you can thank for the PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT LYRICS sticker on CDs—was at the peak of its influence in 1986.30 Slayer was in their sights: The next year, Gore would name-check the band in her book, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. As the band toured Reign in Blood, religious groups would picket most shows. Wal-Mart and Kmart wouldn’t carry the record. But Reign’s biggest opposition came from its own record company.

  The content at issue was “Angel of Death,” a song about one of the more infamous figures from Nazi death camp Auschwitz, where nearly a million Jews were killed, tortured, and experimented upon.

  As summer 1986 arrived, Reign in Blood was ready to go. Then an early lead led to major setback. Circus magazine, one of the leading newsstand metal journals of the day, got an early tape and started the buzz in the metal community. Then an advance reached Spin. A curious review ensured the album would miss its July release date.

  Spin critic Rich Stim’s well-informed 500-word review damned Reign with backhanded praise. Stim found the disc dopey and juvenile, a good album he didn’t seem to like.

  “The album starts with the words ‘Auschwitz, the meaning of pain,’” wrote Stim. “For sheer numbness of purpose, nothing beats ‘Angel of Death,’ Slayer’s commentary on Nazi Joseph [sic] Mengele. Mengele was a ‘sadist of the noblest blood’ who ‘toiled to benefit the Aryan race’ by performing ‘surgery with no anesthesia.’ Jeez, if you ever wondered what effect Hogan’s Heroes had on our culture, this is it—a view of the Holocaust as comic-book drama, as removed from reality as the Black Plague or Darth Vader.”31

  It was a suspect interpretation: For what it was worth, Stim apparently misheard “destroying” as “toiling.” Hogan’s Heroes was a 60s sitcom that followed the wacky hijinks of prisoners at a Nazi P.O.W. camp. Stim’s review did set the precedent for discussion of the record: No look at Reign is complete without a note that its first lyric is “Auschwitz.”

  The review only mentioned Def Jam, but word got out that CBS Records—Def Jam’s new corporate parent, where no one thought to look into the nuances of the matter—was going to release some too-extreme-for-the-PMRC record by a Satan-spawned band that allegedly goofed on a concentration camp like they were writing a hella gnarly sitcom. It didn’t help that inflammatory name of Slayer’s fan club, the Slaytanic Wehrmacht, borrowed it name from both the devil and Germany’s World War II special forces.

  Word was also getting out to CBS firsthand. The label was already tender on matters of metal and Def Jam. After a camera went missing during a recent social function, the Beastie Boys had been banned from the corporate headquarters at 51 West 52nd Street, a gray monolith popularly known as Black Rock.32 Metal was also a touchy subject: Ozzy Osbourne had been banned from the Rock after biting a dove’s head off at a meeting. The label was locked in lawsuits alleging links between teenage suicides and lyrics by Ozzy and Judas Priest. Once the suits heard Reign, Slayer would slide from the label’s hope column to its headache list, then leave the CBS ledger entirely.

  Preparing for Reign’s marketing push, Columbia brass met at the office of Al Teller, Columbia’s Jewish president, whose parents had died in the Holocaust. The first song from the label’s next slated Def Jam release was a Technicolor terror about one of the Third Reich’s most infamous war criminals. Neither the content nor the music was well received then—or as it traveled up the ladder.

  “They heard the beginning of ‘Angel of Death,’ recalls George Drakoulias, Rubin’s college roommate, who was now a Def Jam intern. “And it starts, ‘Auschwitz, the meaning of pain / The way that I want you to die.’ I remember people coming out of the meeting, being horrified. They thought it was a pro-Nazi record. Being Jews, Teller and [CBS President Walter] Yetnikoff thought it was offensive.”

  With a taste for women, booze, and drugs, Yetnikoff was far from uptight, but he was an observant Jew and a successful businessman. Citing a “responsibility to shareholders” to sell records, he later stood behind popular Def Jam group Public Enemy when Professor Griff’s anti-Semitic remarks made news—though he personally felt like chucking Griff in the East River.33 Turning Auschwitz into a song, however, was a bridge too far. Stacy Gueraseva’s Def Jam Inc. relates Yetnikoff’s response: “My shareholders are all Jewish!”34

  “The other thing that nobody will ever mention is that maybe [CBS] was not excited about Rick’s first foray into metal, outside of hip-hop,” notes Koenig. “On top of the fact that there was a questionable song.”

  Def Jam’s lawyer, Paul Schindler, broke the bad news to Rubin: CBS would not release Reign in Blood.35

  “They want the cutting edge,” Rubin fumed to the Village Voice. “But they’re afraid to get cut.”36

  Rubin was aware Reign’s lyrics weren’t exactly sublime. “When I asked him for a lyric sheet,” reported the Village Voice’s Barry Walters, “Rubin replied, ‘You don’t want it. The lyrics are really dumb.’”37

  Rubin was pissed; Teller was already on his shitlist over foreign promotion and distribution issues.

  Def Jam needed a new label for Reign. All roads led to Geffen, a hot affiliate of Warner Brothers, Yetnikoff and CBS’s hated rival. Steve Ralbovsky, CBS’s liaison to Def Jam, had worked for Geffen’s Gary Gersh. Gersh now directed A&R under the legendary John Kalodner.38 Kalodner had signed AC/DC and more recently worked with Aerosmith—whom Rubin had almost single-handedly returned to prominence with the Run-DMC collaboration �
��Walk This Way.” Kalodner and Rubin had yet to meet, but when they did, the scruffy Rubin looked like a golden boy.

  “John Kalodner told them, ‘I’ll put this record out right now. I don’t give a fuck. I don’t care. The band’s brilliant,’” recalls Koenig. “And whether he meant it or not, he was saying that because he wanted to lure Rick. He figured that was a big problem for Rick.”

  Geffen President David Geffen was also Jewish, of Polish-Ukrainian extraction. He’d founded Geffen Records in 1980, making a splash with John Lennon’s Double Fantasy. Later, he snapped up Donna Summer, Elton John, Cher, and Joni Mitchell. The Geffen label partnered with Warner Brothers/WEA for promotion. Technically, Reign in Blood became a Geffen product, though it was sold and promoted by Warner staff, and didn’t appear in Geffen catalogs at the time.

  “Geffen was interested in establishing a relationship based on all of the success we were having at Def Jam,” says Rubin.

  The Geffen-Rubin relationship would end in 1990, when David Geffen objected to graphically violent Geto Boys lyrics. For now, however, Geffen would release Reign in the States, in October, three months after its initial July release date. WEA International picked it up for Europe. London Records handled it in the UK.

  Slayer, as with many parts of their story, still know next to nothing about the Columbia-Geffen episode. Rubin the boss hadn’t bothered the talent with situation.

  “I can honestly tell you that nobody in this band knows anything about what went on,” says Araya. “Because it had literally nothing to do with [us]. A lot of that stuff, we didn’t know. Rubin would know all the details.”

  Reign was released October 7, 1986. And Slayer marched on, in the odd company of the unstoppable Def Jam.

  Def Metal: Slayer in the House

  Slayer and L.L. Cool J never would have ended up at the same party, but Rubin made them labelmates. Decades later, it may seem presumptuous to assume that long-haired Cali metal doodz wouldn’t gel with a rap roster drawn from the Five Boroughs. At the time, it seemed ridiculous to think they would. Today, the Def Jam all-stars and Slayer aren’t pen pals, but the thrashers’ time at the label was not discordant.

  As of spring 1986, any degree of rap-rock crossover was unheard of. Metal fans hated rap, and the wiki-wiki crap on the radio didn’t make a strong case that hip-hop could ring a rock fan’s bells.39 Michael Jackson and Prince had broken down some barriers between black artists and white fans in recent years, but America’s ever-present racial divides were far more pronounced at the time. For the general public, rap was black music, and rock was white music. And the two existed in different worlds.

  “At that time, hip-hop and rock, especially heavy metal, were so far away from each other,” says Hank Shocklee, leader of the Def Jam production team the Bomb Squad. “Rick’s genius was taking rock and hip-hop and marrying them together.”

  Slayer had interest from labels that would have been a more conventional fit. Elektra, Metallica’s new home, missed a meeting with the band, which stoked their concerns about major labels. After the Elektra incident, they resolved to sign with whomever showed the most interest. Unlike their other suitors, Rubin didn’t just want to sign a token thrash band to cash in on the metal gold rush. Rubin genuinely loved the group. He didn’t want the label’s rap culture to affect their thrash sound at all. As Def Jam’s only rock band, they concluded, they would be a priority.

  “Slayer, that was like the dark side,” explains Shocklee. “They were enigmas. But they were always cool. In a strange way, they did fit in. They were the extreme of the Beastie Boys. As far as I’m concerned, the whole Def Jam family was a very, very weird family anyway. It was more like the Addams Family than anything else.”

  Araya says Slayer felt at home, but not that they were especially of Def Jam.

  “We signed a record deal with Rick Rubin,” says Araya. “That’s what I’ve always known. That’s it. Def Jam [and distributing parent companies], Island, Columbia, all those…. Whatever deal was worked out, we’ve always been with Rubin, wherever Rubin went, because he was the one that signed the band; we were almost his property in a sense.”

  When the time came to draw up the papers for that relationship, Russell Simmons trusted his partner’s instincts. Curious about the new recruits, Simmons and posse checked out a Slayer show at the Ritz. Representing the label, they were dressed up for a night on the town, wearing thick rope chains, Kangols, pressed Lee jeans, bright track suits, and Adidas sneakers. In a sea of denim, leather, and long hair, some of the rap crew wore black-and-gold Def Jam jackets, like varsity football players at a house party in a neighboring school district.

  “They were nice kids,” Simmons says of Slayer. “They looked fun. I didn’t know. I wasn’t even [interested] because they didn’t rap. Me and all the hip-hop kids that were part of my group, they looked up and said, ‘Wow, I don’t know what the fuck this is. This is Rick Rubin’s shit.’”

  Once Slayer had product in the pipeline, Rubin fired up some synergy. While the metal group were in New York to put the finishing touches on Reign, Rubin had King cut a screeching solo for the Beasties Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” The guest appearance would inadvertently give the thrash kings a small role in the genesis of the most universally vilified form of metal: rap metal. King would also appear in the video, pushing a gorilla out of the way to perform his solo. The cameo was Rubin’s idea; to Koenig’s recollection, neither Slayer nor the Beasties were happy about it.

  “The Slayer guys did not want him in that video,” says Koenig. “The Beastie Boys guys wanted him in the monkey suit the whole time, which was not going to happen. [The Beasties] looked at the Slayer dude as totally ridiculous and funny. They were people who see themselves as a little more … upscale. They like Zeppelin, stuff with a little more substance.”

  Slayer’s first album for Def Jam would find the band besieged by indignant strangers who accused them of being white supremacists without taking the time to read their lyrics or learn that the band had a Chilean frontman and a Cuban drummer. Def Jam’s tight, demographically mixed circles were the one place that Slayer’s ethnic diversity earned the band some latitude—especially Araya’s slightly darker skin and the angular Spanish undertones of his Chilean accent.

  “Araya’s not white,” says former Def Jam staffer Georges Sulmers, a black Jew who met Rubin at an AC/DC concert when Rubin noticed his Plasmatics shirt. “It’s a different thing.”

  Slayer found some unlikely boosters at the label: members of 3rd Bass, a rap group fronted by two white rhymers. When the Beasties left Def Jam, 3rd Bass’s Pete Nice and MC Serch would become a priority. They eventually went gold taking potshots at Vanilla Ice in “Pop Goes the Weasel.” But in 1987, they were just two more junior-varsity Def Jam artists who would hang around the office, waiting for Simmons to notice them. The mail kept them busy.

  “I read Slick Rick’s mail, and I read P.E.’s fan mail, and I read some Beasties fan mail,” says Serch. “Slayer had a lot of mail coming to Elizabeth Street. Like, a lot. Literally a crate full, on a regular basis. We found this one girl. She sent tons of letters. She lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. So I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to make this girl’s life. I’m going to pretend to be Tom Araya, and I’m going to call her. And she’s going to flip out.’”

  Serch called and found himself on the line with an excited teenager. The emcee introduced himself as Tom a-RAY-a from Slayer, burying his Brooklyn accent and rap lingo as best he could.

  “I’m looking at your letter right here, at our management office,” he told her. “I just wanted to tell you how touched I was and thank you for sending a letter.”

  Initially dumbfounded, she regained her composure and began chatting up Serch-as-Araya. Then she realized that no one would believe Araya had called her. Quickly, she thought of a way to overcome the humiliating choruses of “yeah right”: Could he please call her back next Thursday at 3 o’clock? Mindful that he was playing with Slayer�
�s reputation, the pseudo-singer said he sure would. A week later, Serch called Ohio again, and found himself talking to a room of shrieking teenage metalheads.40

  “They were going apeshit,” says Serch. “Like, ‘Oh, you guys rule! You fuckin’ rule!’ And she was real cool. And then she was like, ‘I love you.’ And I was like, ‘I love you too, baby.’ And that was it.”

  Serch says metal fans would send long letters. Slick Rick fans would write, “I love you Rick. You’re the best.” Slayer fans would dissect lyrics, break down riffs, and quiz the band on the minutiae of their creative process. Slayer would later become famous for fans who carved the band’s name into their skin, but Serch didn’t see any bizarre offerings.

  “There was never anything nutty, but you could tell that the fans they had were kind of bonkers,” says Serch. “Not in a bad way. They were just a little off-center. It was really interesting. You could definitely tell the difference between a hip-hop fan and a rock fan. Slayer fans, the letters were always a full page, a page and half, they always had so much to say. I think it’s amazing how their music spoke volumes to their fans.”

  Slayer got more mail, but Rubin’s rap records dramatically outsold his rock. Released in late ’86, the Beasties’ Licensed to Ill quickly built steam. It would be the first rap album to hit number one on Billboard’s album charts, and would ultimately sell nine million copies. Reign would ship 100,000 copies to start, but barely cracked Billboard’s top 100, and wasn’t certified gold until 1992. It didn’t move anywhere near the gold and platinum numbers of Rubin-produced LPs by the Beasties, L.L. Cool J, and Run-DMC (who recorded for Profile Records). Rubin didn’t chase sales.