Slayer’s Reign in Blood Reissue Comes Crimson and Liquid-Filled for Its 40th Year

There is something almost liturgical about the detail: a record that opens with the words ‘Auschwitz, the meaning of pain’ and closes with rain made of blood, now pressed inside a sleeve that literally bleeds. Slayer’s Reign in Blood reissue arrives on 20 November as a limited-edition ‘Blood’ Filled Zoetrope 1LP, its grooves surrounded by crimson-red liquid, available exclusively through Sound of Vinyl.

The announcement was timed to the album’s original release date of 7 October 1986, forty years on. The object itself preserves the original running order across two sides: ‘Angel of Death’ opening Side A, ‘Jesus Saves’ closing it; ‘Criminally Insane’ beginning Side B, ‘Raining Blood’ drawing everything to its famous conclusion. The whole thing lasts just 28 minutes and 58 seconds, a fact that made Reign in Blood feel like a provocation in 1986 and still does.

A Record That Rewrote What Extreme Music Could Sound Like

Reign in Blood was Slayer’s third studio album and the first made with producer Rick Rubin. The recording featured Tom Araya on vocals and bass, Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman on guitars, and Dave Lombardo on drums. What Rubin brought to the project was compression and clarity: rather than blurring the band’s speed into noise, he let every hit and every riff land with surgical precision. The result was a record that didn’t simply push thrash metal forward but effectively set a ceiling that most of the genre has been reaching for ever since.

The album earned Gold certification from the RIAA, which is one measure of reach. Another is the breadth of what it touched. Public Enemy sampled ‘Angel of Death’ on ‘She Watch Channel Zero?!’ from It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, placing Slayer’s most confrontational opening gambit at the centre of one of hip-hop’s canonical records. That kind of cross-genre currency is rarely accidental: it speaks to the sheer sonic force of a track that functions almost independently of genre loyalty.

The Anniversary Tour: Reign in Blood Performed in Full

The reissue coincides with a run of performances in which the band plays Reign in Blood in its entirety. The current live lineup pairs original members Araya and King with drummer Paul Bostaph and guitarist Gary Holt. Two sold-out hometown headline shows at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum on 13 and 14 November will feature support from Cannibal Corpse, Cavalera, and Crowbar. Before those, the band plays Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes on 21 October and Sick New World Texas in Fort Worth on 24 October.

According to Sonic Perspectives, Power Trip will provide support at the Mexico City show, while Kreator will join the band on select dates across the Latin American leg. That pairing of Slayer with Kreator, two acts whose parallel histories span the breadth of 1980s thrash on either side of the Atlantic, carries its own weight as an anniversary gesture.

The South American dates close out the year: Bogotá’s Vive Claro – Distrito Cultural on 5 December, Santiago’s Santa Laura Stadium on 10 December, Buenos Aires’ Movistar Arena on 14 December, and São Paulo’s Nubank Parque on 17 December. Slayer’s most recent studio album, Repentless, arrived in 2015 and debuted in the top five of the Billboard 200. The liquid-filled Reign in Blood reissue is available to pre-order through Sound of Vinyl ahead of its 20 November release.