New Books In Music

By the fall of 1986, the Los Angeles heavy metal band Slayer had two solid but unspectacular records, 1984’s Haunting the Chapel and 1985’s Hell Awaits, to their name. Meanwhile, producer Rick Rubin had started a record company, Def Jam, in his dorm room in NYU, and after a handful of successful rap releases, was on the lookout for new talent for his label. In a New York City nightclub, he found it in Slayer. D.X. Ferris, in his taut and entertaining 33 1/3 series bookReign in Blood, explains how this seemingly incongruous paring of a rap guru and four speed-metal merchants ended up making rock history with their 1986 thrash-metal release Reign in Blood. Rubin, whose genius has always resided in his ability to help artists capture the essence of their greatness, found the band’s lengthy, more traditional heavy metal songs unappealing. What he liked, Ferris argues, was the faster, heavier, and aggressive aspects of Slayer’s material. This made him a perfect partner for the band’s