The album’s short running time is a result of the band playing the songs with such anger at record label interference that they managed to reduce their duration in the process. Recorded by producer Rick Rubin with the intention of bringing the aggressive guitars and Dave Lombardo’s machine-gun drums right to the fore, rather than having them heavily reverbed and spooky as on the band’s first two releases, the aural violence Slayer detonate is beyond heavy. Even now, the intensity, fury, speed and gut-punching heft that explodes out of it is utterly devastating. It takes just 28 minutes and 58 seconds for Reign In Blood to tear the competition apart and gorily crown itself the ultimate thrash album. And while they would go on to sell more, they never again touched its red-hot technicality, vicious delivery, or the sense of a band making a record as a by-product of simply trying to hold it together. Masterful. The album became Megadeth’s biggest to date. The Northern Irish incident, meanwhile, resulted in Rust In Peace’s opening rager Holy Wars… The Punishment Due, while on Tornado Of Souls and Hangar 18, the riffs seemed intent on breaking lesser bands’ fingers. On top of that, a new line-up was called for.īut from this tumult grew Megadeth’s most successful and creative period, and a classic line-up was pulled together, with the addition of guitar whiz Marty Friedman and drummer Nick Menza. Before this, during a show in Northern Ireland, having heard bootleg shirts were being sold for ‘The Cause’, he inadvertently dedicated a cover of Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK to the IRA, resulting in a riot and the band having to leave in an armoured bus.
With his addictions to smack, cocaine and booze causing him his own problems, the band were forced to scrap much of their 1988 touring plans owing to bassist and narcotic running-mate David Ellefson’s own sickness. One with a violent legacy that remains unimpeachable.įor Dave Mustaine, the road to Rust In Peace was a rocky one.
While the Big Five isn’t a thing, Testament still win as one of the most important bands in the genre’s history. The twin guitars of Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick perfectly blended the former’s brute force with the latter’s devastating technical ability, while man-mountain singer Chuck Billy’s vocals on opener Over The Wall and Do Or Die are boiling screams of fierce anger. Taking the groundwork laid out by their mates in Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax and distilling it into an even sharper, more deadly point, the band absolutely exploded on this debut, taking what had gone before and crystallising it into a flawless sonic dagger. Originally named Legacy until they learned of a jazz outfit of the same name, as children of the scene that birthed three of those four bands, Testament were the first of the second wave of Bay Area thrash.
Crionics.mp3 (8.If there was a Big Five, Testament would be in there, and The Legacy is more than enough of an argument as to why.