That Reign In Blood is one of the greatest metal albums of all time is beyond dispute. Forever the benchmark against which all ‘extreme’ music will be measured,

SLAYER’s savage, noxious and unflinchingly visceral album is a recording of such ferocity and focused physicality that it instantly put a full stop on the thrash metal scene when it was released in 1986. If you’re into the heavier end of metal, chances are you know the album inside out, every Tom Araya scream, every whinnying Kerry King solo, every Dave Lombardo snare beat. But if you listen to Jeff Hanneman’s demo recordings for the album, you’ll hear the core of Reign In Blood as you’ve never heard it before.

Recorded solo by Hanneman in 1986 with just a drum machine for company, the instrumental demos for Criminally Insane, Altar Of Sacrifice, Reborn, Jesus Saves and Raining Blood are at once instantly familiar and yet startlingly fresh. Reborn has an alternate intro and a 45 second coda which producer Rick Rubin would trim when the LA quartet settled into Hit City West studio in Los Angeles in the summer of 1986, Raining Blood is missing Kerry King’s harmony guitar riffs and that apocalyptic opening, Altar Of Sacrifice (which dates back to the sessions for 1985’s Hell Awaits album) sounds chunkier and dirtier when heard without Rubin’s bone-dry production. But all the raw ingredients are here.