Producer Rick Rubin Claims His ‘Lack of Experience’ Helped Make Reign In Blood
Reign In Blood, the album by Killer released in 1986, is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic albums in the history of the Metal.
In the studio, the band brought in Rick Rubin to help produce the record. And during a recent interview on Channel 4, the producer spoke about his implication in the realization of this opus.
In particular, he revealed that his “lack of experience” ended up playing a role in shaping the sound of this legendary record.
He stated : “When you treat everything the same way, you dilute the nature of things. Speed metal was a novelty [à l’époque où j’ai travaillé avec Slayer]. People who were recording speed metal until Reign In Blood were doing it like Hard Rock or heavy metal. While it’s different. Everything is different.”
Regarding the sound of the drums in particular, he explains: “Usually it comes from my lack of experience, my misunderstanding of the ‘right’ way. The ‘right way’ to record drums Rock is the one used by Led Zeppelin. But in my mind, it was the wrong one for Slayer.”
“So in a way, because I didn’t have enough experience to know ‘the right way’, I was listening to things for what they were, and Slayer was very precise, very fast. And I wanted to hear this clarification [ce qui n’était pas possible avec le son de Lep Zeppelin]. And up until that point, nobody had recorded drums that way, because that just wasn’t the way it was done.”
Slayer played their very last show on November 30, 2019 at the Forum in Los Angeles, marking the retirement of one of the bands of Thrash Metal the most legendary in history.
Moreover, guitarist Kerry King has mentioned on several occasions that he considers that the departure of the group was “premature”. Since then he has been working on a new project which should be released soon.
Rick Rubin on Channel 4:
