first time listening to SLAYER ⚔️ Angel of Death, Hell Awaits & Black Magic 

hi everyone! hope you had a lovely christmas & happy NY. i'm back for 2024! let's make it a good year!

Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman wrote "Angel of Death" after reading books about Nazi physician Josef Mengele while on tour with the band.

Reign in blood was considered one of the most influential albums created at the time. Its very strong start to finish.

The "demons" in the 'Hell Awaits' intro is singer Tom Araya saying "join us" which was then reversed on the tape. Great start to the new year!

Post Mortem and criminally insane are amazing songs

Congratulations RU-vid…it took a few years, but we got Kira to go from metal head newbie to Angel of Death enjoyer!!!

Headbanging to Angel of Death? I believe she's ready for the next level !

My favorite track with Lombardo drumming is actually Ghosts of War. So hard.

Personally I think that Chemical Warfare has always been their standout piece. I've probably seen them a dozen times at least live and every tie the crowd goes nuts when they start that song. I also find them to be a far better live band, I don't listen to them much anymore but I'd see them live again in a heartbeat.

There was a band called Dark Angel from California that were out and about at the same time as the rest of the big 4. They're well worth your time and are still one of the best thrash bands ever

I had the oportunity to see Slayer on their final world tour (2019). They killed it. What a show

Glad you are listening to this fantastic band again! Slaaaaaayyyyeeeeerrrr!!!!

My personal favorite Slayer song is At Dawn They Sleep, the vampire vibe is so good.

Sometimes I put "Angel of death" to play inside my pocket at work, it's always fun to see others reactions haha

Watching non punks/thrashers listen to it is actually really fun. Reaction videos are a very strange concept to me.

You should listen to “At dawn they sleep”. Their greatest song in my opinion

One thing about tom he got better and better such a bad ass front man so glad i got to see slayer live

Such sweet headbanging😆🤘🏻 Cool reactions!!

SLAYER has always been one of my favourites and "Angel of Death" is one of the greatest METAL tracks ever. But it is so devastating to see, that so many people, especially young, have no idea what Tom is singing about...

Fortunate to see them live.. When that drumkick on "Angel of Death" enters, all your body vibrstes with it. Is amazing!

" Ohh my neck"😂😂😂😂😂 🤘🤘 Awesome and funny reaction. Happy new year Kira!!!

One of the shortest (29 mins Reign In Blood) albums ever and SUCH a game changer. No crap on the album. All killer, no filler. Still have my original vinyl.

Nice combo of songs

Glad you hit these at the right time of your journey.

IDK why but I always come back to Show No Mercy. Rain in blood is awesome. Early thrash rocks

What always impresses me about Slayer is that you can simultaneously be in awe of their musicianship and be completely hooked into the song at the same time. No other band can do that like Slayer. They are the magicians of metal.

Man, Hell Awaits is my favourite Slayer song. It's rare that someone chooses this to react to! Also there's a mindblowing drumcam video of Lombardo performing Angel of Death on yt! Cheers!

Good reaction. Hope you had a good Christmas and a Happy New Years. 🎉🎉 Have a good night. 😊

On a vacation with my 20 something son, walking through a harbor I saw a smaller sailboat with "SAYLER" on the stern......in the typical SLAYER font. I busted out laughing and explained this to my son......freakin hilarious.

Slayer was my enter portal to the more extreme metal. At that time, when I was a little kid, i didn't understand the beauty of Death or Black metal, because Iron Maiden was at that time the hardest and the coolest metal band, so when I discovered older Slayer albums, I totally lost my shit. It sounded so angry, demonic and heavy that I instantly fell in love with thrash metal. Nobody around me, in my class or the nearest social ring listened to that. Only my uncle and dad were listening to these bands, so I could find my path to the bands like Accept, Metallica, AC/DC, Rammstein, Death, Black Sabbath, Sepultura, Cannibal Corpse and many more. I was an outsider at that time (I still am after 12 years), so this music projected my anger to the people who made fun of me. It was different and really bloody. Thanks to this music, I could experience my first relationship, I gained a lot of inner power and now I am finishing my master program at the university. Rock music is the best religion ever! \m/

Reign in Blood 1986 Slayer...28 minutes long. Jeff Hanneman 🎸 was inspired by hard core ❤punk of the early 80s and featured his writing process to help create shorter punchier metal songs on this album. Their pinnacle Slayer sound.

I'm not a big thrash listener but Angel of Death is probabky my favourite metal track ever because it is just so perfect - the transitions, the crazy moments like the scream and the super fast outro, and - excuse me for getting really dark - if you're going to write a song about the holocaust I think thrash is the best and possibly only genre that fits. This song puts in my mind the images of the trains coming in and out every day, the way the Nazis tried to just do it as fast as possible and get rid of the evidence etc. Grim, horrible subject matter but I don't think the song is disrespectful, it's more like a musical monument if that makes sense

@Hell Awaits - "I don't mind a quick delivery"........this is my girl

I watch a lot Angel of Death reactions because I remember my first time listening to it (not having been very well-versed in thrash and only having listened to a little metal). I fell in love with thrash because of this album and this track compositionally is so great and has so many cool moments built in that make me want to kick a trash can.

SLAYER! I'm so glad you finally got here and seem to be into it, Kira. I do hope you give Reign in Blood a listen. It's easily among the best thrash albums of all time.

Loved your reaction to the final fill on Angel of Death, such an incredible moment. Hell Awaits is my favorite Slayer album, glad you got a track off there (though personally I think At Dawn They Sleep is the coolest track). They're clearly solidifying the trademark Slayer sound, but it's not quite as polished as Reign in Blood. To my ears the lower-fi production on Hell Awaits almost gives the music a claustrophobic feeling, as if it was the music actually playing in the corridors of Hell

Happy new year Kira!!, I wish you much success, thank you for cheering us up and enchanting us with your experiences and reactions Will you be doing something soon on "Kira was a diver"?. ...I hope it is well-written

My introduction to Slayer was Hell Awaits. I was discovering thash at military school and a fellow cadet let me borrow his Hell Awaits tape during the break at night time study hall on the barracks. Taps plays afterwards so I settle into my bunk and put the album on headphones in the dark. As that infernal cacophony rises I was sure I was listening to Hell itself. It freaked me out so much I threw my headphones across the room. My roommate on the top bunk is like, what the hell is your problem? Nothing, I said. It is gone now. Subsequently, I revisited Hell Awaits and came to respect it but it took awhile. That first time just freaked me the fck out.

Yes yes finally more slayer. \m/

Great songs, the evolution of metal music and bands was very fast in those years. The instruments and recording techniques were really pushed to extreme and new territories to make all the ideas these bands had possible. And Slayer did everything right from the start.

when Reign in blood was released it was a kick in the teeth. Pure, raw, fast, extreme. Awesome.

Rick Rubin had a lot to do with the more "honed in/polished" sound of Reign in Blood than their earlier albums :)

Dave Lombardo is THE best metal drummer. Dude's awesome.

All great songs to walk your dog around the park with right? Total vibes!

Haven't watched your reactions for quite a while. Nice to see the progress - just a few years ago the pure thrash metal caused a terror in your face, now you seem to be genuinely enjoying it. Time to return to Sepultura, now you are obviously ready :)

I remember hearing black magic in the 80s, I've been a Slayer fan ever since 🤟.. even got to meet Tom Araya in Chicago in the early 2000s.

Reing in Blood is arguably the heaviest album of all time. It's a thrash masterpiece and still hits in 2024. RIP Jeff Hanneman. 🤘

the guitar riffs in Angel of Death are INSANE.

SLAYER!! Seasons of the Abyss is one of my top 10 favorite albums of all time.......in all genres of music! Front to back every song is perfect. My fav is "Dead Skin Mask".

"Black magic" is one of my favourite songs from Slayer.

You can never be really ready

Reign in Blood is a huge milestone. The album is kind of perfect, start to finish. It's short and brutal, but it tells stories and takes you places. Slayer were known to play the whole thing, in order, live. On some tours it only took like ten minutes, they played so fast. A couple of the best shows I ever saw, on the South of Heaven Tour, the album after Reign In Blood.

My Favorite Slayer album is Decade of Aggression Live album from 1991 - This is the Opener Hell awaits Amazing

Postmortem is my fav.

For me musically there is a pre and post Slayer era. At 13 I was already playing guitar and was into Progressive music and also the medal of the day which was motorhead, Megadeth Metallica etc... but in the 1986 I purchased slayer's Reign in Blood album I think I was 13 years old and it completely altered the way in which I played guitar, primarily because I'm not really heard riffing that was that precise and that manic simultaneously before. There is a riff in Raining Blood that is a very fast Palm muted triplet and I could not discern what that was I'd never heard anything like that before. Not at that speed anyway and I thought it was a whole note which it isn't and playing along with that album was a Quantum Leap Forward in figuring out the dexterous element of thrash guitar playing thrash guitar playing. To this day I think Raining Blood blood is in fact a high watermark in the song craft of early thrash.

Post Mortem and Raining Blood are excellent songs!

Like it , Phil from Liverpool uk 👍👍👍🤪❤️

Good selection to get into it. The Reign In Blood album lasts 28 minutes in total and is killer all the way through. You only heard the beginning. Enjoy when ready 😊

Best description of Angel of Death. "such a good track, such a funtime" lol

Kira, you really should just listen to all of "Reign in Blood". It is among the top 3 Thrash Metal albums released. As for Anthrax, I would suggest 'Among the Living" as your next cut. It is the title track of their 1987 "Among the Living" album. The song was inspired by the book "The Stand" by Stephen King. Great song. Looking forward to more Thrash in 2024!!!!

"Chemical Warfare" from Haunting the Chapel, "Raining Blood" from Reign in Blood, "Silent Scream" and "Behind the Crooked Cross" from South of Heaven, basically all of "Seasons in the Abyss:. That's just for starters. We could be here all night, miss! ^_^ !m! SLAAAAAAAYER!!!!!!!

Hell Awaits is definitely one of their best tracks

I wish you had listened to the whole "Reign in blood" album. The best thrash album of all times.

Disciple would be an interesting mid career checkin for Slayer. Love these Kira

Criminally insane is criminally underrated...

Divine Intervention was an underrated album Dave's and Phil "the filthy animal" Taylor of Motorhead were the best kind of drumming.

KMFDM's song Godlike uses a looped sample of the Angel of Death guitar riff.

SLAYYYYEEEEEERRRRR!! HELL YEA!

VIVAT SLAYER !!! Slayer 2019 Prague Czech republic - amazing concert !!!

For more thrash, I can suggest a lot of bands: Vio-Lence, Death Angel, Kreator, Tankard, Sodom, Sepultura, Destruction, Overkill, Razor, Coroner, Annihilator, Exodus, Violent Force, Hallows Eve, Violator, Nuclear Assault ... or perhaps a more 'crossover' approach (bands that mix thrash and hardcore), like D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies, Ratos de Porão, Excel, Stormtroopers of Death, Cro-Mags, etc

love it

Bonded by Blood, Exodus.....one of the best speed/thash metal albums for sure. Don't forget to check out the first Rigor Mortis as well, self titled

When you get to the German Big 4... KREATOR - Betrayer !!! ❤❤❤. One of the greatest thrash songs of all time, by any artist and Coroner - No More Color

Hell Awaits is a pretty great album, and the EP/album that came before are pretty good as well, but it's Raining Blood where Slayer really became Slayer. Everyone in the band just levelled up big time, but specifically Dave Lombardo, their drummer, absolutely transformed his playing and their sound because of it. And you can see that clearly between the tracks Hell Awaits and Angel of Death...both are FAST, but that overpowering energy on Angel is 100% Dave's drumming being much better than before. Anyway, great reaction. Another band that is often overlooked (and was by me for decades), and should actually be in the big 4 (imo) is Testament. Like Slayer, their first couple are good, but can sometimes feel like K-Mart Metallica. But once they hit their 3rd and 4th albums it was off to the races. Meanwhile, once you hit the 90s and the other bands are floundering around trying to sound like Pantera or Alice in Chains, Testament just honed their style to a razor-sharp precision and are STILL killing it.

As a 56 years old Metalhead is that normal Music for more than 40 years my start as a Metalhead was 1980

Dave Lombardo on drums kept them driving

Hey, big time thrash nerd here. Would be happy to see more thrash reactions, maybe I will consider the patreon :)

I use to front a SLAYER tribute band and Hell Awaits was the toughest song to sing but one of the easiest to play on bass......F'n SLAYER!!!!!🖤🤘👹

"Haunting The Chapel" is my favorite record and song by Slayer.

Freaking classics! Long live Slayer!

Early Slayer ('Show no mercy'... 'Live undead' ... 'Hell awaits') was from 1983 to 1985 when they were still kids who were in awe of bands like Metallica and Megadeth... Slayer was signed to Metal Blade records and their sound was still raw and developing under label head Brian Slagel... Kerry King (guitar) said that they used a lot of reverb on their guitars to try keep up w/ the big bands of the thrash metal era... In 1986, Slayer signed w/ Def Jam and producer Rick Rubin, and he wanted to remake Slayer to set them apart from every other thrash band... Kerry King recalled recording 'Reign in blood' w/ Rubin and the producer took out the reverb on King and Jeff Hanneman's guitars, and King heard the new, unique sound and went, "Wow, why didn't we think of that?" 'Reign in blood' was the album that pushed Slayer from a struggling indie band to a headliner and it set a new standard of drumming speed and intensity... both w/ guitars and lyrics (They went from horror movie lyrics to actual, real-life horrors) 🤘🤘

Listen to at dawn they sleep. My absolute favorite song of theirs.

I'm early in the comments here and might have your eye, as trash goes it encompasses such a huge spectrum and had a hay day and then now is having a Resurgence which is awesome but reggarding bands that you would not normally hear about that are absolutely excellent are New Jersey's Whiplash. their second album Ticket to Mayhem is simply an amazing concise thrash metal album. It's not particularly long it gets its point across but it's very musical it covers a lot of ground and yet it's super intense , and in some wayys feels more like the Germanic school of thrash like Sodom, or Kreeatorr in it's sheer energgy...with the Highlight track being "The burning of Atlanta." And on the opposite end of the spectrum opposite end of the spectrum is Canada's Annihilator who are and were for all intents and purposes a progressive thrash metal band band so you get precise musicianship and much more focused songwriting thematically and perhaps less intensity but they still do what they do amazingly well. I would recommend the track "Alison Hell" as a good introduction Lastly the brilliant and never got their fair share Cyclone Temple whose album "I hate therefore I am "came along too late in the game to ever be treated fairly but it is a brilliant brilliant record. Highlight track on that album would be "Why" Cheers

Reign in blood is the only slayer album I've bought, and it's mostly for Angel of death and Raining blood, those two songs are just insane 😁 If this is inside your spectrum of tolerance, I can recommend Bolt thrower's last album Those Once Loyal. This is by far their best album in my opinion. The vocals are death growls, but the instrumentation isn't more extreme than thrash. The entire album is about WW1, but doesn't talk about the killing as much as the experiences of the soldiers and the memory of the fallen. Hard to pick out a single song to recommend since the sound on all the songs are very similar, but the title song Those Once Loyal is a safe bet. It was my favorite album for a good many years.

13:11 eargasm alert!

Hell Awaits, is so fck underrated , for me is the best slayer track, more rifs, change tempo, the lirycs,

😂😂😂😂😂 this was fun to watch😂😂

You should still do Post Mortem/Raining Blood..... in fact...this whole album is awesome. Also, if you haven't yet listened to them... Seasons in the Abyss and Dead Skin Mask are a must...

I see Reign in Blood tour in Milano, Italy, May 1987. The most devastating event in my life...when starting Necrophobic, total delirium broke out! Dave Lombardo, the best drummer to all time! ❤

For me the best thrash metal band is Testament. You should listen to them. VERY UNDERRATED band.

great use of that fantastic riff on angel of death in public enemy's she watch channel zero, maybe you'll do some public enemy songs someday

86 was a great year!

All the albums from the 80’s you should take time and listen completely to all of them. The best !!!

SLAYER!!

Your throwing elboes ... love it darling.

You should check out Evil Has No Boundaries, The Antichrist and Tormentor from the Show No Mercy album. Great songs.

From show no mercy, Crionics is a blast!!

You see everyday things and topics, everyday. Have a bit of an escape. Listen to Slayer 🤘🤘🤘

For all three albums you must have been there at that time. Before Slayer there was nothing like slayer before. Everytime of launch of these albums we were blown away. The scream of Tom at the beginning of Angel of Death. Man. No band could come near Slayer. Fast, tight as hell, best dtummer and best riffs you can sing along with. What a time.

kira, dressed all in black, jamming out to Black Magic 🖤 I wish you would've listened to Postmortem as well, for the transitions. If you want the best thrash/death badass guitar riffs check out Bolt Thrower.