Book review: “Reign in Blood” by D.X.Ferris (33 1/3 series)

by Keith in New Releases, Opinion Posts, Uncategorized

Just about everyone I know has a “You haven’t seen” movie.  You know, the movie you haven’t seen that is considered a classic – the one when you SAY you haven’t seen it, someone remarks “Wait, you haven’t seen (whatever movie)?” This is usually followed by some sort of action plan requiring you to see the movie immediately, even if you’re in the middle of mowing your lawn or something (though why you’d be discussing movies while mowing your lawn is kind of lost on me. But hey whatever, it’s your life). Anyway, many genres of music have the same type of thing.  And if you’re down with the Metal and HAVEN’T heard ‘Reign in Blood’ by Slayer…. why haven’t you? Damn, stop mowing the lawn and listen to the record!

There’s a reason that you can go anywhere now and hear people randomly shout ‘Slayerrrrr!‘ every time something comes up that rocks (I heard someone say it at DJ Shadow/Cut Chemist’s ‘The Hard Sell’ tour!)…. and that reason goes back to Reign in Blood. It’s my favorite record ever, 29 minutes of thrash metal perfection.

And now, there’s a book about it.

It’s easy to find – it’s one of the books in the 33 1/3 series and is titled…. ‘Reign in Blood’ by D.X. Ferris.  If you’re not familiar with the 33 1/3 books, there are upwards of 40 of them now, and each one is a pocket-sized geek-out on one album regarded as a classic.  Some books in the series are Led Zeppelin IV/Zoso, Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland and Dj Shadow’s Entroducing. 

And now, there’s a book for Slayer fans.  I’ve read some of the books in the series even though I didn’t care a bunch about the record itself because it’s great to read about the making of a classic and the songs ON that classic, even if you aren’t that crazy about the record itself, you know? But to get a 33 1/3 book devoted to my favorite record ever… Well, let’s just say I knew about its release four months before it came out. I’m not going to spend too much time talking about the book – if you don’t know what I’m talking about I can’t see how the book would be of that much interest. But, if you love Reign in Blood / metal, you’ll love the book and the 100+ pages of detailed information on the songs, the recording process and the impact the album left on the music community. I don’t want to spoil too much, but here are a few great tidbits from the album:
- Public Enemy wasn’t that keen on Slayer, but Rick Rubin convinced them to use the breakdown riff from ‘Angel of Death’ for the cut ‘She Watch Channel Zero’ (I remember first hearing the song and thinking ‘wow, they sampled SLAYER!’)
- A lot of people didn’t like Reign in Blood when it first came out, as they thought Slayer peaked on their previous album (Hell Awaits) and this was a bizarre new direction to them.
- The band had no idea the album was that short.  They recorded all the songs, then walked in the studio one day, saw something on the wall that said ‘28:30′ and kind of freaked out.  It was (Rick)Rubin, the album’s producer, that told them the album’s done, it’s perfect the way it is – despite it being that short.

There’s a lot more, but you’ll have to read the book yourself – why have me spoil the fun?