5. Slayer
I was a Christian kid, so when I heard Slayer, I was like “I don’t think I’m supposed to be listening to this.” There’d been Satan in metal before, but it was either badly produced, I was never a Venom fan, because they sounded like garbage to me, and I know you’re going to have a ton of people on your site going “what the fuck?” but they weren’t well produced. They hurt my ears when I first heard them. And Mercyful Fate seemed kind of silly, and I know that’s also sacrilegious, but at the time, when Slayer came out, even though they looked like an LA strip band right before they got so scary, but when you first hear Hell Awaits, that album is like…life-changing. It’s just so, so, so heavy, and kind of spooky as a Christian weirdo kid.
