Three years ago, the perfect gift for any Slayer fan was The Vinyl Conflict, a now out-of-print collection of all of Slayer’s American Recordings albums. Starting with the band’s classic Reign in Blood and ending with their most recent album, World Painted Blood, the set was a really good summation of the majority of the band’s career, pressed on 180-gram vinyl. Of course, you can’t get that any more, but coming in December, American will reissue the individual albums on vinyl. On December 10, you’ll be able to pick up the ten albums, Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss, Divine Intervention, Diabolus In Musica, God Hates Us All, Christ Illusion, and World Painted Blood, as well as their double-live album Decade of Aggression: Live, individually.
This is good for several reasons. First of all, the box set is going for a minimum of $365 on Amazon. Secondly, you don’t really need to own all 10 of the albums, and now you’ll be able to pick and choose (we’re guessing the first three will be the most popular). And thirdly, there’s going to be some pretty cool reasons to pick them up, mainly that you could pick up something rare: For the first US run, 500 unmarked copies will be pressed on 180 gram blood-red colored vinyl and randomly inserted in the run. Can you think of anything cooler than getting a blood red colored version of Reign In Blood? We can’t.
Even American Recordings’ Rick Rubin, who you might have seen pretending to DJ on Saturday Night Live this past weekend with Eminem, says “Slayer defines speed metal and these albums define Slayer. Listen at your own risk.”
