The Unholy Trinity of 1986, Part 1 - Slayer - Reign in Blood

I’ll start this review by informing what the Unholy Trinity of 1986 is. It is a trio of metal albums released in 1986 known for their heavy influence on not just thrash metal, but death metal as well. The three albums of this trio are Slayer’s “Reign in Blood”, Kreator’s “Pleasure to Kill”, and Dark Angel’s “Darkness Descends”. Since this year marks the 30^thanniversary of this trinity, I will be doing a review on each of these albums, starting with, of course, “Reign in Blood”. Admittedly, so much has been said about this particular album that saying more would be redundant, but nevertheless, I’ll put in my two cents.

When I wrote my review for Slayer’s “Hell Awaits”, I said that this album was overrated. I still think that, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad album – on the contrary, it’s a good album. But best thrash metal album ever? No. Regardless, it’s still one of the essentials of the thrash metal genre.

The album itself starts off with “Angel of Death”, a song about Josef Mengele, a Nazi physician in Auschwitz who experimented on the camp’s prisoners. It is easily the best song on here, and one of Slayer’s finest songs in general. The album concludes with a duo of songs: “Postmortem” and “Raining Blood”. The former is not as fast (until the 2:44 mark), but it serves as an introduction to the latter, whose dark, thunderstorm introduction paves the way for a bone-chilling closer, only to end in the same way.

From there, we have 7 songs, none passing the three-minute mark. These songs don’t match the quality of the songs in the previous paragraph, but they are still good nonetheless, with some particularly standing out, such as the 1:41 “Necrophobic” and the 2:23 “Criminally Insane”. The rest of the songs I personally believe are just “good”, and not spectacular. This is why I believe the album to be overrated – the consistency can and does dip at times. If you want my recommendation, listen to the whole thing from beginning to end to get the best experience.

Overall, “Reign in Blood”, while not the best thrash metal album ever made, is certainly an influential and commendable record worthy of anyone’s time, especially if you are new to the genre. If you want to explore the more “extreme” side of metal, it’s an album that will serve as a great stepping-stone as well.