Raining Blood

Reign in Blood is 28 minutes and 22 seconds long. That is not a mistake. It is a statement. Released on October 7, 1986 on Def Jam Records, it arrived with no warning and no precedent. Ten tracks. No filler. No breathing room. “Raining Blood” is the last song before the sound of rain fades to silence. By then, Slayer has already dismantled everything around them. The album charted at number 94 on the Billboard 200. A thrash metal record on a hip-hop label. It was not supposed to exist at all. “Raining Blood” is not a conclusion. It is a verdict.

Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King wrote it. Hanneman wrote most of the album. He was the quieter of the two guitarists. The one who sat with a riff until it was exactly right. Tom Araya sang it and played bass. Dave Lombardo played drums at a tempo that still sounds inhuman forty years later. Rick Rubin produced the record. He had made his name in hip-hop. He had never made a metal album. Columbia Records refused to distribute it. The cover art. The lyrics. The relentless speed. Geffen stepped in. A hip-hop producer. A distribution deal that almost did not happen. The record that defined thrash metal got there anyway.

Jeff Hanneman died on May 2, 2013. Liver failure. He was 49. He had written the songs that shaped an entire genre. “Raining Blood” among them. The reach of the song has never stopped expanding. In 2001, Tori Amos recorded a version for her album Strange Little Girls. A piano interpretation. Slow and deliberate. Slayer’s riff rendered in a completely different language. It still worked. That is what a great song does. It survives translation. Reign in Blood has influenced every corner of extreme music. Punk. Death metal. Black metal. Hardcore. The bands that followed Slayer spent decades trying to match what Hanneman and King built in two guitars and 28 minutes. They are still trying.