One of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time - for some, the greatest - SLAYER's legendary Reign In Blood celebrates it's 25th birthday today (October 7, 1986). Remarks drummer Dave Lombardo: "Reign in Blood 25 years old!!! Thats right, no triggers and no computer. Straight to two-inch tape."

Although Reign In Blood emerged amidst controversy regarding its lyrical themes (particularly the lead-off track 'Angel Of Death' which dealt with Dr. Josef Rudolf Mengele's human experimentation at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II), the album peaked at #94 on the Billboard Top 200. The follow-up to the band's classic Hell Awaits album took the masses by storm, despite its length, barely 29 minutes long. To this date 'Angel Of Death' and the crushing grand finale 'Postmortem'/'Raining Blood' have been played at virtually every Slayer show since late 1986!

Slayer frontman spoke to BraveWords.com about the band's shining achievement in 2007. Says the singer: "I remember looking up and realizing it was only 28 minutes and said 'is that all the songs'. And Rubin looked up and said, 'yup, that's all the songs.' We were recording the songs and never once did we even think to look at the times structured to those songs. Because they were complete songs. You don't give a thought about how long the song is. The only one we thought was short was 'Necrophobic'. That's the only one we knew - of course it's obvious that it's a short song. The other ones, we were singing them and playing them - 'arrggghhh, this is great.' We're getting down to the final vocals and doing the mixes - and we looked up and went 'shit, 28 minutes. Is that all the songs?" I look over at Andy (Wallace - Engineer) and with a confused look on his face he says 'there must be an error, that must be wrong. It's right, but that can't be right!' Then we talked to Rubin, and he said, 'well, you've given me ten songs.' It didn't state the length. He wasn't freakin' out - it was his label. Rubin is the boss - 'you've given me ten songs, nothing stipulates time.' He was happy - he thought it was great. He wasn't really concerned at all. They put the album on both sides of a cassette tape! If anything, that would be the one record that could've gone platinum (one million units in the US) because it was sold twice every time you bought a cassette. I thought - it was probably the only record we hit platinum with and we won't get credited for it."

Guitarist Kerry King added: "Well, I said a million times: We never set out to make that the be all and end all of thrash. Like, it seemed to take on its own legs and become that all on its own. It was ten songs. Me and Jeff were twenty-two and playing guitar almost every day, just making up riffs and people like it. It’s hard to toot your own horn all the time without sounding like an asshole.”