If Slayer’s Reign In Blood is the greatest thrash album ever made, then its opening track, Angel Of Death, is the greatest thrash song ever written. A cold-eyed dissection of humanity’s capacity for unimaginable cruelty parcelled up in four minutes and 51 seconds of viciousness, this was the LA band’s grand statement of intent and the track that made them one of the most notorious bands of their era.
Slayer had served notice of their impending greatness with their second album, 1985’s Hell Awaits. That record mixed regulation-issue Satanism with a love of horror movies on the likes of At Dawn They Sleep, Necrophiliac and the classic title track, though with three of its seven songs clocking on at over six minutes, it was positively proggy compared to what came next.
