The opening track (also titled “Black Sabbath,” putting these guys in the same camp as Wang Chung, Talk Talk, and Big Country), finds frontman Ozzy Osbourne wailing: Press play and track one launches with the ominous sound of rain and church bells, calling to mind the soundtracks to blockbuster films like The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976). The album artwork looks like one of those aforementioned Halloween lawn decorations. Things really escalated in 1970 when Black Sabbath released their self-titled debut album, pioneering the “heavy metal” genre, some say.
(Later in 1984-85, there was serial killer Richard Ramirez who left behind an AC/DC baseball cap at one of the crime scenes, which led to sensational headlines like " AC/DC Music Made Me Kill at 16, Night Stalker Admits" and accusations that their band name stood for "Anti-Christ/Devil's Child.") In the horrific Tate-LaBianca murders in August 1969, his followers wrote variations of song titles on the walls in their victims’ blood. Speaking of those lovable mop-tops, in the late ‘60s, California cult leader Charles Manson claimed The Beatles’ White Album held “subliminal messages” encouraging him to incite a race war. (Crowley, apparently, did not consider himself a Satanist, but he did refer to himself as “the Beast 666," so you can draw your own conclusions.)
The Beatles put occultist Aleister Crowley in the crowd on the cover of Sgt. (The myth later inspired the 1979 hit “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band, giving Lucifer another moment on the charts.) Parents accused Elvis Presley of being possessed by dark forces back in the ‘50s with those sinister swiveling hips (I mean, the guy’s first name literally spells out “EVILS.”) In the ‘60s, the Rolling Stones released the single "Sympathy for the Devil" and then the album Their Satanic Majesties Request. In the 1920s, the blues was regarded as “the devil’s music” with the talents of now-legendary guitarist Robert Johnson attributed to a pact with Satan. The Prince of Darkness has long been a shadowy presence in the music world. (Can you guess which one is really a Home Depot ad?)īut it got me wondering, why do heavy metal album covers mostly share this aesthetic? Why are so many of them obsessed with Satan? Turns out, the genesis of the genre was an organic response to the times, but then so was the period known as the “Satanic Panic” that followed in the 1980s. So the heaviest album ever – and one of the most controversial.It’s that time of year again, when the front yard of your neighbor’s house looks like the artwork of a heavy metal album. So controversial was the track – which doesn't condone or condemn the man's terrible actions, but the band always argued they didn't need to tell their fans what to think – that US distributors refused to touch the album. That's fast, but not so fast you can't make out what Tom Araya's singing about: serial killers, the devil, and, most controversially, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele on Angel of Death.
There have been faster bands, there have been bands with fatter low-end sounds or more inhuman vocals, but nobody has ever been able to match Reign in Blood for what you get from all the elements mixed together.Ĭlocking in under half an hour, the band played so furiously that the finished product clocked in at seven full minutes shorter than the demo versions. Why? Because when the LA thrashers released it in 1986 it was faster, harder and louder than everything that came before it, and nothing since has ever come along to truly trump it.