Reign in Blood

Reign in Blood is the third studio album by American thrash metal band Slayer, released on October 20, 1986, by Def Jam Recordings. It was the first Slayer album to be released by Def Jam and the first to be produced by Rick Rubin, whose input helped the band's sound evolve. The release of the album was delayed due to concerns regarding the lyrical subject matter of the opening track "Angel of Death", which refers to Josef Mengele and describes acts such as human experimentation that he committed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The band defended the song, stating that they did not condone Nazism and were merely interested in exploring the subject.

Reign in Blood received widespread acclaim upon release and was responsible for bringing Slayer to the attention of a mainstream metal audience. Alongside Anthrax's Among the Living, Megadeth's Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?, and Metallica's Master of Puppets, Reign in Blood is credited with defining the sound of the emerging American thrash metal scene in the mid-1980s. It was the first Slayer album to enter the US Billboard 200, peaking at number 94, and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1992.

Often considered to be one the greatest and most influential metal albums of all time, NME ranked Reign in Blood at number 287 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2013. In their 2017 listing of the 100 Greatest Metal albums of all time, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album at number 6.