5) Hell Awaits (1985)

After their debut Show No Mercy became Metal Blade Records’ highest-selling record in 1983 and a release of their first EP Haunting The Chapel and live album Live Undead a year later, Slayer were becoming notorious within the Bay Area scene, despite not originating from there. For their second LP Hell Awaits, producer Brian Slagel was able to pull together a budget and hire other experienced producers. But at this stage in Slayer’s career, they were still very much wearing their influences on their sleeves. At the time, King and Hanneman were still heavily invested in Mercyful Fate, which inspired the longer song durations and diverse tempo layouts that verged on a quasi-progressive approach.

The opening title track begins in an unorthodox manner where, the phrase being spoken by the demonic voice is in fact “join us” but backwards before the infernal instrumentation puts the listener on the edge of his/her seat. It isn’t until halfway through that Araya unveils with quick, snapshot lyrics of a Satanic nature. “Lonely children of the night / There’s seven ways to go” references the seven deadly sins and “The flames of Hades burning strong / Your soul shall never leave” is a reminder that Slayer were still very much about Satan, hell, death, and everything in between.

Lombardo is particularly fond of ‘At Dawn They Sleep’, probably because he had the chance to use his double-bass drums in the song’s final minute or so. Now admittedly, while the song is fantastic, it does expose the flaws of the production, especially when listening to the guitar solos. ‘Crypts Of Eternity’ uncovers a lack of cohesion and integration between the guitars and the bass. However, the sheer thrust and firepower delivery, its mind-bending solos and a signature Araya scream means this flaw leaves only a scratch on the listener’s conscience. Slayer start stepping into fiercely contentious territory on ‘Necrophiliac’ which discusses sexual attraction towards dead bodies that contains graphic lyrics like “Lies raped in demonic lust”.

Let’s not forget, a lot of early ‘80s thrash metal bands had similar production and audio mixing drawbacks which soon improved for them as they became bigger; Anthrax and Metallica with their respective debuts Fistful Of Metal and Kill ‘Em All are two more examples of this. The reason Divine Intervention got such a kicking for its production was because it was significantly different to albums which were released prior. Context matters, and many people may argue that because of all these imperfections, Hell Awaits has that classic feel.

Hell Awaits would go on to inspire many ‘80s underground thrash metal bands and help mould the extreme metal subgenres. Phil Anselmo, former vocalist of Pantera, once said when interviewed by D.X. Ferris, author of Reign In Blood which talked about that album, that “Hell Awaits just holds the entire thing. Every bit of everything to do with heavy music”. (LISTEN)

4) Show No Mercy (1983)

As Hell Awaits was driven by a Mercyful Fate-inspired blueprint, Slayer’s first outing Show No Mercy saw them conform to their hardcore punk influences firstly, including Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys and Black Flag. It was one of the first “heavy metal punk” albums, if you will, ever recorded with noticeable Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Venom traits cropping up that emboldened the Satan within them.

Producer Brian Slagel first caught sight of the band when they opened for female-fronted heavy metal act Bitch (the first ever band to sign with Slagel’s label Metal Blade Records) at Woodstock Club in L.A. After the show, he met with them backstage and asked them if they would like to feature on the label’s compilation album Metal Massacre III where the song ‘Aggressive Perfector’ off of Reign In Blood can be found. As mentioned previously, Show No Mercy was self-financed; partly from Araya’s income working as a respiratory therapist and the rest coming from King’s father. One of the weirdest requests a drummer could ever receive is to play without cymbals, right? Lo-and-behold, this is exactly what Slagel told Lombardo as his cymbals were so loud, they could not be picked up by the recording equipment and had to be dampened out of the mix.

The band introduce themselves on the opener ‘Evil Has No Boundaries’ which features backing vocals from famous drummer Gene Hoglan, who is known for his work with Dark Angel, Death and Strapping Young Lad. Slayer are coming to “conquer and move on ahead” – they’re as demonic as hell itself and the fastest band in the world! ‘The Antichrist’ follows this up with more forte lyricism like “Pentagram of blood” and “The birth of Satan’s son” which depicts the Antichrist’s viewpoint as he wallows and luxuriates in death and destruction. The riffage on this track reminisces Dead Kennedys to a tea but is uplifted further by face-melting shreds in the solos and Araya’s screechy vocals.

The ambitious two-part track ‘Metal Storm / Face The Slayer’ where ‘Metal Storm’ acts like a symphonic overture for the song but using distorted guitars instead. The intricate guitar melodies highlight that Slayer can be sophisticated when they choose to be. ‘Face The Slayer’ then plays out what seems to a battle where someone is fighting the “Slayer” in a fight to the death (“You see me lift the axe, as it plunges through your shield”). One of thrash metal’s most identifiable mannerisms are palm-muted low E string riffs that alternate between differing notes at the end of each bar. ‘Die By The Sword’ is one of the earliest tracks that popularised this, and it henceforth became a commonplace element in the general sphere of the metal genre.

‘Black Magic’ should be regarded as a Slayer single, even when it is not officially so. This song is essentially the foreshadowing of Slayer’s success in the second half of the ‘80s. From beginning to end, King and Hanneman are utterly relentless in their playing and Araya’s distant vocals and screams are electrifying.

Although there were polarizing opinions from critics and receiving demands from the PMRC to stop releasing records because of the album’s eliciting bestiality, Show No Mercy remains one of metal’s most cherished and vital albums to this day. (LISTEN)

3) Seasons In The Abyss (1990)

Personally, I like to refer to the three remaining albums in this list as Slayer’s “Unholy Trinity” collection. Slayer’s fans generally hold these records in such high-esteem and starting us off is 1990’s Seasons In The Abyss. Like so many great albums, sometimes one must look back at what was going on at the time to fully appreciate the underpinning concepts and themes.

Just over a month prior to the album’s release date, then President George H.W. Bush ordered US military to invade the country of Kuwait, backed by UK, Saudi and Egyptian allies, which had been occupied by Iraqi forces. This became known as Operation Desert Storm, or more commonly known as The Gulf War. Drawing inspiration from this turn of events, Slayer redirected themselves further away from their usual dungeons-of-hell image as war and oppression became the focal points for this album. Although, ‘Spirit In Black’ is the exception where Satan gives a tour of hell through the words of King (“Show your flesh eaten away / Beyond the gates I’ll take you / Where the blood forever rains”).

Contrariwise, the intensely spine-chilling ‘War Ensemble’, in which Araya contributed to the lyrics with Hanneman, spells out war in all its horror and fearfulness over some of King’s and Hanneman’s expeditious guitar playing rarely matched elsewhere in Slayer’s discography. “Corpses rotting through the night, in blood-laced misery” is as disturbing as it is thought-provoking but the final two lines of the chorus “The final swing is not a drill / It’s how many people I can kill” lowers humans to mere animals for sport. But let’s not forget Araya’s moment when he yells “WAR!”. The music video for this song was Slayer’s first ever to be made.

‘Blood Red’ continues rolling the war machine but now it’s civilians in the firing line (“Oppression ruled by bloodshed / No disguise can deface evil / The massacre of innocent people”) as they protest against their tyrannical regime (“Peaceful confrontation meet war machine”). Moreover, ‘Skeletons Of Society’ tells a survivor’s story after a nuclear war (“Shades of death are all I see / Fragments of what used to be”). This song implements one of Slayer’s slowest tempos ever used which can said to imitate the atrocity as death marching upon the world’s population, turning everyone into skeletons.

‘Expendable Youth’, which also adopts a marching tempo, illustrates a different kind of war closer to home: the war on drugs. Araya grew up in a neighbourhood rife with inner-gang violence and expertly lays out his experiences with “Expendable youth fighting for possession / Violence is only a friend”. Lombardo’s drum fills on this track are superb to say the least. One of music’s greatest gifts are production mistakes that turn out be assets and are hence included in the final product. The song ‘Temptation’ features an overdub of Araya’s voice that was not originally intended to be there. But listening to the song, it ties in satisfactorily.

Then we come onto the album’s renowned title track, where the prolonged guitar bends that initiate the song are immediately attention-grabbing. The song then moves from a clean, nefarious melody transitioning into a full-bodied and robust riff which then simplifies and descends into the first verse and so on. The subject matter is rather more complex than usual, but the basis appears to be a murder from the points of view of the victim (“Frozen stare deep in your mind as you die”) and the perpetrator (“As you go insane, go insane”). The music video for ‘Seasons In The Abyss’ is probably their most famous one to date. Set in Egypt, the band can be watched playing at the foot of the Sphinx and in a tomb plus travelling along the Nile.

Seasons In The Abyss was essentially the cut-off point for Slayer’s run of exceptional albums, marking the end of their imperial phase before the tides of quality started turning. (LISTEN)

2) Reign In Blood (1986)

No, I’m not kidding on this occasion. Reign In Blood is not Slayer’s best album, despite it being their biggest and most important. What this album has done for music, let alone heavy metal, cannot be described using the word “groundbreaking” alone. Reign In Blood would become the template for myriad thrash and extreme metal acts to fall back on. Never has half an hour of music felt so guttural, barbaric, ferocious, sadistic, inhuman and totally essential all in one go.

After the success of Hell Awaits, Slagel soon realised that Slayer were about hit it big. He began negotiating with various record labels which included meeting Rubin at Def Jam but was unsure about handing over a heavy thrash metal band to a primarily hip-hop label. However, Lombardo stayed in contact with Rubin even though Slayer were still under contract with Metal Blade Records. But one thing led to another and soon Rubin convinced the band to sign with Def Jam after speaking to them directly. The album that resulted from this partnership would go down in history as a metal milestone which saw Slayer focus less on Satan and more on realistically gruesome and vile topics.

Seldom do the songs on Reign In Blood exceed three minutes. ‘Necrophobic’ can’t even make it past two, but leaves behind enough plenty of gory and violent graphics for good measure with “Skin contortion, bone erosion, your life becomes your fine” being one example. ‘Postmortem’ explores death as means to a newfound, transcendent life with the oxymoronic “Entering a tomb of a corpse yet conceived” suggesting that rebirth is possible through death and is above the range of physical human experience. This is somewhat linked with ‘Reborn’ as someone has become a “convicted witch” but will still live on to condemn those who showed her “no amnesty”.

What makes Reign In Blood even more impressive is how tight and in sync the band members are with each other even when they’re constantly going at full-throttle. Moreover, the solos on this LP are constant forces of nature, like on the ritualistic track ‘Altar Of Sacrifice’ (“Satan’s slaughter / Ceremonial death”) that consists of amplified pinch harmonics combined with whammy bar wizardry where King’s and Hanneman’s guitars are given their own voice, as it were. The follow-up ‘Jesus Saves’ is half appetising riffage with varying changes in tempo, and half anti-religious thrash-mania which mocks religious believers for their belief in God without empirical evidence for the supposed afterlife. Lyrics like “For all respect, you cannot lust / In an invisible man you place you trust” were unsurprisingly the works of King’s unholy mind.

While the songs mentioned above are mesmerizing alone, Reign In Blood houses two unforgettable heavy metal souvenirs that are valued and treasured by millions of fans worldwide. The first of which is the opening track ‘Angel Of Death’, written by Hanneman. “Auschwitz, the meaning of pain / The way that I want you to die” is indicative of Josef Mongele, a Nazi physician who conducted savagely evil experiments on his human subjects, including abacination and performing surgery without anaesthesia. Hanneman’s lyricism delayed the release of Reign In Blood because Def Jam’s distributor Columbia Records refused to release it due to its graphic material and controversial tendencies. Many people lashed out at the band for broaching such subject matter, calling them Nazi sympathisers, racists, fascists. But putting lyrics aside for a moment, the music is as abominable as the words that go with it. ‘Angel Of Death’ features Araya’s most prominent and best held high-pitched scream in his entire career. King and Hanneman provide some of their most serpentine riffs and Lombardo’s drums are extraordinarily prevalent.

Finally, a word for Slayer’s signature song, ‘Raining Blood’. It scraps the usual verse-chorus-verse structure and opts for multiple unique movements that are vastly different from each other. Starting with the final chord of ‘Postmortem’, the opening moments paint a tempest of despair using wailing guitar notes and Lombardo’s snare drums for additional effect. Then the almighty and immortal riff that even non-metal music fans will recognise descends upon the listener followed by a segment with a tri-burst, headbang-able riff. Araya’s accursed vocals sound unprecedented in their villainy, as someone is “Trapped in purgatory / A lifeless object alive” after being cast out of heaven. This person now wants to get revenge and is waiting for “the hour of reprisal”. The song ends on “Now I shall reign in blood” which assumes that the protagonist has succeeded in taking over heaven.

‘Angel Of Death’ and ‘Raining Blood’ probably deserve to have their own separate features, as what we can cover here is only the tip of the iceberg. But their parent album Reign In Blood is an incredible collection of heavy metal tracks, whose impact and influence are unimpeachable. But the big question is, why is it not #1 on this countdown? (LISTEN)

1) South Of Heaven (1988)

This is perhaps one of very few published ‘From Worst To Best’ Slayer countdowns on the internet where South Of Heaven is rated first. It was not easy choosing between two thrash metal masterpieces but South Of Heaven does outshine Reign In Blood by only a very small margin. But why is this the case? After all, even the band members are not too fond of this album. King says that it is one of his least favourite Slayer albums (it is important to note that he was absent for most of the songwriting process as he just gotten married) and Hanneman felt that Reign In Blood was unsurpassable. South Of Heaven was criticised for the overall slower and mid-tempos that was not cut from the same cloth as their orthodox thrash beginnings. Despite this, it’s no less a fan favourite, even if its reasons for claiming the pinnacle spot on this list seem stacked against it. But there is one factor that needs to be addressed: time.

If you were a metal fan who lived through the experience of what was happening to metal during the ‘80s, you’d incontestably hold the opinion that Reign In Blood was superior South Of Heaven by default. Thirty years have passed since then and Reign In Blood, albeit still gutturally and savagely astonishing, does feel like an album of its time and has dated somewhat. South Of Heaven, on the other hand, feels fresher by today’s standards and is Slayer’s best produced album, thanks once again to Rubin.

South Of Heaven was the only Slayer project that the band, to quote Hanneman, “actually talked about before we started writing it”. He also went on to say “We knew we couldn’t top Reign In Blood, so we had to slow down. We knew whatever we did was gonna be compared to that album, and I remember we actually discussed slowing down. It was weird – we’ve never done that on an album, before or since”. Hanneman was correct, Slayer embarking on making a second album implementing the Reign In Blood effect, if you will, would receive negative press for a lack of ideas. Prioritizing the speed of their music for a second time in a row may have kept their hardcore fanbase happy but not much else. Little did Hanneman know that “slowing down”, in tandem with Rubin’s production, would be end up being a positive rather than negative in the long-run.

While mid-tempos are a key feature on South Of Heaven, critics of this album seem to conveniently forget that it also has plenty of orthodox, fast-paced thrash passages. The first half of ‘Ghosts Of War’, for example, is fully charged with said characteristic which begins with the volume turned down before Araya’s entrance brings it back up to its necessary levels. The second half of the song then slows down where King and Hanneman deliver yet more black-hearted riffage with adept guitar-layering.

Furthermore, the totality of ‘Silent Scream’ is a thrash-fest littered with anti-abortion lyrics from Araya, who based them on the 1984 Jack Duane Dabner-directed film of the same name which attempted to depict an abortion procedure from the foetus’ perspective (“Silent Scream / Bury the unwanted child / Beaten and torn / Sacrifice the unborn”). Araya is known to hold certain Catholic beliefs, but whether he is actually pro-life or not is unclear. But having said that, he has always successfully managed to set his personal beliefs aside when working with the band, particularly his atheist compatriot King.

Another unfair criticism of South Of Heaven is Araya’s vocals verging on actual singing rather than his usual textbook, unabating shouts and screams. Admittedly, Araya does not have the most remarkable, let alone heavenly, singing voice, but his toned-down vocals do work consistently well on this occasion. Take closer ‘Spill The Blood’, where Araya’s vocal tenacity is especially vitriolic when he sings “You spill the blood / Eternal soul”.

At the opposite end of the tracklisting, the popular title track and live staple is one of Slayer’s finest hours which opens the album magnificently. The instrumentation, lyrics, and atmospherics all compile beautifully with the inclusion of energetic drumming and monstrous guitars. The vivid, well-constructed lyrics illustrate a society of decaying moral values of human nature with “Forgotten children conform a new faith / Avidity and lust controlled by hate” and of sex with “Promiscuous mothers with your incestuous fathers”. The other live staple from this album is ‘Mandatory Suicide’ which largely shares the same qualities as ‘South Of Heaven’, with the exception of Araya’s spoken passage which sends chills down the listener’s spine.

It is weird that Hanneman never liked ‘Behind The Crooked Cross’ which discusses the brainwashing of Nazi soldiers to give up their morals for their Führer and the benefits of the Aryan race (“Trapped by a cause I once understood / Feeling a sickness building up inside of me”). The timbre of Lombardo’s accentuated ride cymbal adds timbre and rhythm to the foundations of the song. Likewise, King detests the track ‘Cleanse The Soul’, but again it is hard to see why. His guitar solos are marvellous, as is Hanneman’s, and the song itself is actually quite ambitious when hearing Lombardo’s drums play over the complex guitar arrangements that crop up two minutes in.

Hardcore Slayer fans will surely disagree vehemently with me on this. But of all the Slayer albums, South Of Heaven is the one that will bring listeners back the most. Yes, Reign In Blood has had the privilege of receiving millions of revisits over the years but this is in large part because of the hegemony of ‘Angel Of Death’ and ‘Raining Blood’ defining the album. Unlike its predecessor, South Of Heaven offers a crisper production and more musical variety throughout, which means it stands tallest thirty years down the line. (LISTEN)