Def Jam, despite its big numbers, was still a small label, with a staff of around a dozen. After adding Koenig and Sulmers to Drakoulias, Rubin now had three foot soldiers who spoke his native language. At first, the rap majority were indifferent to what Def Jam publicist Bill Adler calls “Rick’s rock adventures.” By 1988, Rubin’s return to his metal roots would create irreconcilable differences at Def Jam. In 1986, before the numbers were in, everyone rolled with it.
“Internally, it was just like ‘Rick’s doing his thing,’” explains Sulmers. “Licensed to Ill was finished. Rick and L.L. were not going to make another record together. And Rick brought in these two metal dudes to do metal shit.”
The Def Jam guys got the messengers, if not the message.
“They were like, ‘I don’t understand that devil shit,’” says Summers, explaining the rappers’ take on their metal mates. “That’s exactly what they thought of it. The first line says it all—‘Auschwitz, the meaning of pain / The way that I want you to die.’ There’s nothing that speaks to a bunch of black and white dudes that are into being out in a club and drinking 40s of O.E. ‘We’re talking about being fly, and they’re talking about some shit like being dead. I’m trying to get a fat chain and fuck some chicks.’”
Slayer did have some fans on the other side of the widening Def Jam rock/urban divide. The year after Reign was released, Hank Shocklee was producing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, a soon-to-be-classic by militant hip-hop group Public Enemy. In the song, future reality TV star Flavor Flav blasts a woman for watching too much boob tube.
Seeking sounds to match Flav and Chuck D’s vitriol, Shocklee decided he needed a rock track. He sampled “Re-Ignition” by Bad Brains, a reggae-punk-Rastafarian fusion that had been one of hardcore’s biggest sparks. That version didn’t quite work. Then Bill Stephney, Def Jam’s production supervisor for the album, suggested sourcing Rubin’s Slayer album. Shocklee—a longtime rock fan who knew about Slayer before Rubin did41—took a listen, decided the darker “Angel of Death” guitar break was louder than a bomb, and looped it.
Improbably, metal’s gnarliest band found kindred spirits in the underdogs-turned-stars crammed into a little office at 298 Elizabeth Street.
“Nothing like being in an office with Kerry King and Tom Araya in one corner, DMC of Run-DMC in another, and Flavor Flav in another spot,” says Stephney. “No wonder we didn’t get any work done.”
Reviewing Blood
When Reign in Blood arrived, people of wealth and taste hated the album. Naturally, the metal community loved it. It’s still a perennial choice for every metal-must-haves list, underground or mainstream.
“Slayer is the greatest metal band on the planet right now,” Creem Close-Up’s Don Kaye would declare within the year.42
The Slaytanic legion was growing. The band bumrushed the Billboard chart November 15, 1986, landing at #127. It would stay there eighteen weeks, peaking at #94 December 20—a distinction that Metal Mania’s Fabio Testa keenly noted made the disc “one of the most publicly accepted underground statements in music history.”43 (Metallica’s Master reached #29.) Slayer and Rubin have switched distributors so many times that the band doesn’t have an accurate tally of the album’s sales, but manager Rick Sales says it’s at least double platinum (2 million sold).
After years of slagging the band, Britain’s Kerrang! did an about-face and gave Reign a perfect five K’s (“Kolossal!”), calling it “an agonizing, yet at the same time breathtakingly brilliant 28 minutes of the best frash [sic]/death/hate/speed metal you’re likely to hear this year…. Their third and easily most accessible outing to date…. Reign in Blood is a far superior work to Master of Puppets…. The tones that Hanneman and King get out of their guitars on this ’un has to be heard to be believed.”44 Now on the bandwagon, Kerrang! would soon declare it the top thrash album of all time.
Metal Forces, which had been right about the band all along, noted: “Reign in Blood is just superb Slayer. They are the best at what they do…. At least two all-time classics in ‘Angel of Death’ and the epic ‘Raining Blood.’ ‘Post Mortem’—probably the heaviest Slayer track ever.”45
The Metal Forces review scored Reign a 97 out of 100. Only Testament’s The Legacy, their debut and by far their strongest LP, would outscore it in that period, earning a 99. Death’s Scream Bloody Gore would tie it. Death Angel’s The Ultra-Violence and Raven’s Life’s a Bitch would land just short, with 96s. The magazine would later call Reign “without a doubt the most outstanding thrash album to be released to date.”46
In the States, rock journal of record Rolling Stone took no notice, though it would include Master of Puppets in its year-end top albums list.47 Again, the metal press knew what it had on its hands. A year after its release, Creem Close-Up: Thrash Metal would rank Reign at the top of its Top 20 Thrash Metal Albums of All Time (So Far). “Not only did these four California beach bums top Hell Awaits,” wrote Kaye. “They topped every other damned album released under the banner of thrash metal since the whole damned thing started. Twenty-nine minutes of near perfection in metal.”48
Over time, Reign’s immaculate bloodline and Metallica’s morphing into stadium-filling hard-rock giants made Slayer’s disc the metal album to namecheck. With no tender moments, Reign in Blood was pure and uncut. Thrash peaked in 1991—and when the whistle blew, Reign in Blood was the album everyone was still talking about.
“Reign in Blood is the album that murdered speed metal as we knew it,” declared Metal Hammer in 1994.49 “Ten songs in 28 minutes, each one as focused and volatile as could be, did not bear well for the Nuclear Assaults and Testaments of the world. Reign in Blood killed speed metal because no other band came close to touching it.”
The August 2007 issue of Q would rank Reign as the number two loudest album ever, above Public Enemy’s Nation of Millions, but beneath the Stooges’ Fun House. (When you’re dealing with card-carrying music writers, there’s no beating the Stooges.)
Spin, the first major magazine to get hip to Reign in Blood, would warm up to it. Master of Puppets edged Reign out in Spin’s list of 100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005, landing at number 58 to Slayer’s 67.50 But Reign was still the second-highest ranked metal LP on the list otherwise filled with critical darlings like Radiohead, Public Enemy, and Nirvana. Two years later, Spin would pick Reign as one of its eight thrash essentials, alongside Metallica’s Ride the Lightning, Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion, and Sepultura’s Arise.
“Sitcom-length when the genre was going all Lord of the Rings, Reign glossed over Mengele, Jesus, necrophilia, insanity, and, uh, ‘raining blood’ at mach speed,” wrote Spin’s Joe Gross. “Probably responsible for more skateboarding accidents than Jackass.”51
Decibel editor Albert Mudrian would call the disc “metal’s Holy Grail,”52 and the album was the inaugural inductee to the metal magazine’s Hall of Fame, hailed as “The ultimate thrash album.” The journal’s J. Bennett wrote, “Nearly two decades later, hesher classics like ‘Angel of Death’ and ‘Raining Blood’ are still benchmarks for thrash brutality.”53
The Reign
With Reign in Blood, the Slayer team had made their bones. Once signed to Def Jam, the band wouldn’t sit still until 1992—one of the reasons the members’ recollection of the time is often spare. The Reign sessions were Rubin’s first in California, which would soon become his home.
Rubin followed Reign with the Less Than Zero soundtrack and two under-heralded rock classics: the Cult’s Electric (with Wallace) and the first (self-titled) Danzig album. By 1988, Rubin wanted to pursue rock full time. At Def Jam, he was caught in a crossfire: Simmons was bent on developing R&B groups like Oran “Juice” Jones and the Black Flames. Increasingly, Rubin found himself competing with the hip-hop agenda of Lyor Cohen, Simmons’s other right-hand man, who was another white, Jewish college boy with a punk past. Frustrated but reasonable, Rubin walked away from Def Jam, moved to California, and started the Def American label, w
hich later became simply American Recordings.
In 1986, speaking to the Village Voice, some of Rubin’s closest associates proudly described him as “a dick.” In California, as Rubin became a superstar producer, he followed a personal trajectory opposite what most would expect from a clean-living young man dropped into a world of sunshine, fame, and money. Instead of discovering booze and blow, Rubin became ever more fastidious. In New York, he had already dropped sugar and caffeine from his diet. In L.A., he became a vegan.54
Once settled in California, Rubin began seriously meditating, as part of a spiritual practice as broad as his musical tastes. When he explained his metaphysical persuasion—or lack thereof—to Rolling Stone in 2005 he could have been talking about his art, too: “I don’t follow any one path, but I’m interested in them all.”55
By 1991, Rubin was known as a calming, peaceful presence that could coax the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis to stop writing fraternity-party anthems like “Party on Your Pussy” and start crafting smash ballads like “Under the Bridge.” His newfound spirituality may have played a role in his reported mellowing; previous reports were not exaggerated.
“He was a dick,” says Sulmers. “We were all dicks. Every last one of us. And when he commits to something, he is totally committed to it. And it’s not surprising that this calmness came over him when he really got immersed in Buddhism.”
Others who know him say Rubin is still essentially Rubin; and now that he’s successful, people are more quick to defer to him. By the time he got to California, he didn’t have to fight as he did when he was an unknown fresh-faced college grad in a leather jacket. Being a dick wasn’t necessary.
“I wouldn’t say he’s terribly different,” says Wallace. “He grew into his success pretty naturally, without any great changes in character. He was always very self-assured. And early on, without having the subsequent successful history, people might have felt somebody who is very demanding, who wants things to be a certain way—they might have been less forgiving, like ‘Who is this guy coming on like gangbusters?’”
In 2005, Rubin moved American to the Warner Music Group, where former Def Jam general Lyor Cohen was now CEO. One of Cohen’s major actions was purchasing a stake in the foundry Roadrunner Records; apparently, there was some dough in this metal thing.
In 1991, after three landmark albums with Slayer, Wallace added a little more metal to his résumé. It cost him some work, though he wouldn’t be hurting for long. Wallace mixed Arise, the fourth album from Sepultura. The Brazilian band were leaders of metal’s next generation. Representing a wave of groups that had 80s metal and hardcore as their primary reference, they played music stripped of 70s classic rock influences.
“I remember why we stopped using [Wallace],” says King. “I think Sepultura used him. Like, ‘Ah, it’s tainted now.’ No offense to them, but it’s just like, ‘We’ve got to do the next thing.’ We’ve always wanted to stay ahead of the curve.”
Losing the Slayer gig wouldn’t become an issue. Months later, Nirvana’s Nevermind put Wallace on the map, and his stock has only risen since. Even after his acclaimed work with Jeff Buckley’s Grace, he chooses to mix more than produce.
“I never specifically decided to stop producing,” says Wallace. “But the last two records I made, they took me out of mixing for six months. I got on a roll mixing, and I went with that. Instead of doing a project for four months, I can do it in three weeks. It’s good in a financial regard, and I get to work with more bands.”
King says they would work with Wallace again; when the always-busy Reign in Blood team planned a reunion over a decade later, they simply didn’t think to invite him.
Lombardo left Slayer again in 1992. The drummer’s first child was due, and Lombardo had put the band on notice. Before the baby arrived, long-running tensions came to a head. One night, Lombardo vented a decade of frustrations, yelling at King and Hanneman like they were Beavis and Butthead. Then he was gone.
The departure led the band to sit out the grunge period. The 1991 Clash of the Titans tour, which featured Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Alice in Chains, played to arenas. After the easier-to-play, less-challenging, less-threatening, more-emo grunge movement usurped metal’s audience, Slayer would temporarily go back to clubs for its subsequent albums, which had more songs about serial killers than bloodthirsty demons. Rubin executive-produced 1994’s Divine Intervention, produced 1998’s Diabolus in Musica, and stepped in at the last minute, as executive producer, to salvage 2001’s God Hates Us All.
“It’s an odd relationship we have with Rick Rubin,” says Araya. “He’s always asked for more. And when we can’t agree, then he says, ‘I want to hear more. But since you don’t want to give me more, go ahead and find a producer. I’ll tell you whether I like him.’”
In the year of 6-6-06, the planets aligned, and most of the Reign in Blood gang got back together.
Two full decades after its release, Reign in Blood was more highly regarded than ever. Metal Hammer’s August 2006 issue ranked it as the Best Metal Album of the last twenty years. Even Vh1 ranked “Raining Blood” as its number eight heavy metal song, ahead of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” and behind Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast.”56 Guitar World’s October issue ranked it as the number 29 greatest guitar album.
Lombardo had rejoined Slayer in 2001, shortly after the release of God Hates Us All. By then, all four had realized their history and chemistry was irreplaceable. The reunited classic lineup took it a tour at a time. Lombardo’s return was announced as permanent in 2003. In 2006, Slayer had begun work on their ninth original full-length studio album. Slayer had long been the sole holdover in Rubin’s stable from the Def Jam days. They wanted to work with Rubin for the new album, but the producer couldn’t fit the band into his schedule. He would remain on board as executive producer, approving or disapproving the final product. Reign in Blood artist Larry Carroll returned to create the cover, a picture of a dismembered Christ floating in a sea of muck and dismembered heads. In August, American released the ten-track, thirty-eight-minute Christ Illusion.
Christ Illusion was generally hailed as the band’s best effort since 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss, their final record with the dream-team nexus of talent. Arriving during a much-touted thrash revival, the album debuted at number five on the Billboard album charts—the band’s highest chart position ever. Like every album before it, it featured not one single full-on acoustic intro, long solo, or ballad.
“We’re just programmed to write Slayer stuff because we’ve been Slayer all along,” says King. “Mötörhead have made the same record for thirty years. And it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think we’ve done the same thing: refined it, did the same thing differently. I think that’s my gift, to be able to say the same things differently. How many ways can you say, ‘God hates us all’?”
Slayer’s catalog remains as on-average-solid as any in the business, without a single drug-addled embarrassment in the bunch, no tragic attempt to show the kids they could emulate the new hotness. Some diehards hate the band’s post-Seasons records, which saw the group remain blasphemous, but depart from Reign’s Satanic majesty. At very least, unlike most hard-rock bands that have been at it for over twenty-five years, Slayer has never released a forgettable besmirchment of its name featuring a different singer and fill-in guitarist.
“People need continuity,” says King. “We’ve changed drummers, sure. But if you take people out of the front positions, people are like, ‘Well, Slayer’s coming to town—who’s playing with them? Not the opening bands, with Slayer?’”
Even people who weren’t Slayerheads recognized Christ Illusion.
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences nominated Slayer for Best Metal Performance, their second Grammy nod, for “Eyes of the Insane,” another war song, with lyrics by Araya and music by Hanneman. On February 11, 2007, fuckin’ Slayer won a Grammy.
“Jeff’s a phenomenal writer,�
� says Lombardo. “Jeff has the songwriting capabilities and the expectations of Rick Rubin.”
Rubin was also on the ballot, nominated for Producer of the Year, for work with Slayer, embattled country group the Dixie Chicks, longtime collaborators the Red Hot Chili Peppers, his metallic discovery System of a Down, and pop king Justin Timberlake. That evening, Rubin claimed part of five Grammys. Rubin says the common thread between his diverse clientele isn’t a matter of style or production. “They are all unique artists who follow their truth out of time, with no influence of anything else going on in music, pioneers of original sounds who take what they do to unapologetic extremes,” explains Rubin. “I would also add, from my point of view: They are all soulful musically, even if they don’t realize it.”
With the Grammy win, the man who punched up Reign in Blood was officially the hottest rock producer on the planet. For as long as anybody could remember, Rubin’s touch had been golden. More than most, anyway.
And at the time, the music industry needed some gold. Digital music had upended the record-business cart. Companies were scrambling to find an outside-the-box thinker to set things right—someone who didn’t work for Apple. Enthralled and sinking, Columbia Records, which had once refused to release Reign, hired Rubin as the co-head of the company.
Rubin was charged with no less a job than saving the traditional music industry. To sweeten the deal, Columbia (now part of the Sony BMG group) gave him the freedom to produce artists for any label. The move also reestablished his rivalry with Cohen, putting the two at opposite corners of a shrinking ring, with each former Def Jam big dog now a commanding force at one of the four remaining majors. (Simmons had sold his Def Jam stake in 1999 and become an executive producer and clothing mogul.) At Columbia, as with Def Jam all those years ago, Rubin’s exact title and responsibilities remained vague. Doing what he does, apparently, was good enough to bet the future on.
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