“Raining Blood” by Slayer

"Raining Blood" comes from Reign in Blood, Slayer's third album, released on Def Jam in 1986 with Rick Rubin producing alongside the band and Andy Wallace engineering. Jeff Hanneman wrote the music and shared the words with Kerry King, and the idea behind it has all the subtlety of a pentagram on a leather jacket: an assault on Heaven itself.

The rain comes first, 33 seconds of it. Then Dave Lombardo's drums tumble in like artillery, Hanneman and King's guitars saw away at a riff that coils tighter and tighter, and Tom Araya barks over his own bass like a preacher who switched sides. It's thrash at its most concentrated, a blur of speed and menace, and when it's done it leaves you where it found you, standing in a downpour. Rubin keeps every hit dry and brutally clear.

Fans count it among Slayer's most popular songs, and it has barely left the setlist: Hanneman and King both named it their favorite to play live, and it turns up on live album after live album, including the multi-band MTV2 Headbangers Ball collection from 2003.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.