Slayer Book Due In April

Band Photo: Slayer (?)

Continuum International Publishing Group has confirmed an April 15th release date for SLAYER's Reign In Blood (33 1/3), a new book about the legendary 1986 album from the Los Angeles thrashers.

Written by D.X. Ferris, the book description is as follows: "Slayer's controversial Reign In Blood remains the gold standard for extreme heavy metal: a seamless procession of 10 blindingly fast songs in just 28 minutes, delivered in furious bursts of instrumental precision, sparking a new genre called death metal and today serves as a benchmark for metal musicians. The disc marked slayer's coronation as the kings of thrash, and their ongoing 25-year streak of vitality places them in the small fraternity of rock's greatest groups. Through interviews with the entire band, producer Rick Rubin, engineer Andy Wallace, and a who's who of headbangers from three decades, D.X. Ferris explores the creation of the most universally respected metal album and its long road to the stores."

For more information on Reign In Blood (33 1/3), click here.

BW&BK spoke to Slayer's Tom Araya recently about Reign In Blood. Recalls the frontman: "In the studio, I just looked up and realized it was only 28 minutes and said 'is that all the songs?' And Rubin looked up and said, 'yup, that's all the songs.' We were recording the songs and never once did we even think to look at the times structured to those songs. Because they were complete songs. You don't give a thought about how long the song is. The only one we thought was short was 'Necrophobic'. That's the only one we knew - of course it's obvious that it's a short song. The other ones, we were singing them and playing them - 'arrggghhh, this is great.' We're getting down to the final vocals and doing the mixes - and we looked up and went 'shit, 28 minutes. Is that all the songs?" I look over at Andy and with a confused look on his face he says 'there must be an error, that must be wrong. It's right, but that can't be right!' Then we talked to Rubin, and he said, 'well, you've given me ten songs.' It didn't state the length. He wasn't freakin' out - it was his label. Rubin is the boss - 'you've given me ten songs, nothing stipulates time.' He was happy - he thought it was great. He wasn't really concerned at all. They put the album on both sides of a cassette tape! If anything, that would be the one record that could've gone platinum (one million units in the US) because it was sold twice every time you bought a cassette. I thought - it was probably the only record we hit platinum with and we won't get credited for it."

Source: BW&BK