Rick Rubin reveals the key behind the production of Reign In Blood from Slayer: “I used a Metallica album as an example of what was wrong.”
Rick Rubin explains how he helped Slayer define the sound of Thrash Metal with Reign In Blood
In a recent conversation with Rick Beato, famed producer Rick Rubin revealed an intriguing anecdote about the production of the legendary album Reign In Blood by Slayer. This 1986 record not only redefined speed and heaviness for an entire generation of Metal fans, but it also marked a watershed moment for Rubin, who was just getting his start producing heavy music.
Rubin explained how he used a Metallica album to convince sound engineer Andy Wallace that the usual way of producing rock albums didn’t work with thrash metal. He declared: “I had a theory. It wasn’t based on being a musician or a technician, but on my experience as a fan. When I heard really fast music like Metallica, the sounds were massive, like on rock records. But everything was becoming blurry, and we couldn’t really distinguish the [choses jouées avec des] fast tempos.”
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A revolutionary approach to thrash metal
Rubin went on to detail his thoughts: “If the music is fast and the sounds are too massive, there isn’t enough space for those big sounds to coexist. There is no punctuation; everything becomes blurry. So I played a Metallica album to show him what was wrong and I said, ‘Is it possible to record so that it sounds hard, but everything is short, because It’s quick and we want to hear it?’ I didn’t want it to be a fuzzy mass of bass, I wanted it to be a pulse.”
Thanks to his intuitive and unique approach, Rick Rubin has managed to capture the very essence of Slayer on Reign In Bloodwhile deviating from the rock production conventions of the time. This allowed the album to stand out for its clarity and precision, a stark contrast to the more saturated sound of other thrash metal bands of the era.
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