Slayer: Angel of Death, Why The Song Was So Misunderstood

Why the Slayer Song Angel of Death was so Misunderstood

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The 80’s were a really important decade for heavy metal albums and one of the most important records released during this time was Slayer’s 1986 record Reign in Blood, which brought them onto the radar of a lot of metal fans. The Rick Rubin produced LP was delayed due to a controversy involving the opening track ‘Angel of Death’, which we’re going to explore in today’s video.

Slayer would release their second album Hell Awaits in 1984 on metal blade records. For their follow up and third album the band would nab a deal with def jam records, an odd move at the time given that they were a hip hop label. But founder Rick Rubin was a metal fan and convinced the band to sign with him and made them the first rock act to sign to the label.

When it came to writing their third record Slayer would take a different approach with bassist and frontman Tom Araya telling metal hammer in 2012

“Everybody else was doing something slow,”. “Kerry [King, guitarist] and Jeff [Hanneman, guitarist] said that they didn’t want to do a slow record, they wanted to do something fast. They didn’t realise it was gonna be that fast…” The opening track of the album would be angel of death, which would be solely written by guitarist Jeff Hanneman who at the time had read several books about germany’s atrocities during world war 2.

Hanneman would tell author Paul Elliott the strange place he wrote the song recalling in his article for Loudersound ‘The last time I spoke to Hanneman, in 2009, he explained that Angel Of Death was written in a most unlikely setting – at the home of his girlfriend’s parents. He laughed about the bizarre nature of his creative process. “It’s weird. When I’m angry, the music doesn’t flow. But when I’m happy the evil comes out!”

Hanneman would spend his years on tour with the band visiting war museums, reading history books about world war 2 with kerry king remembering “Jeff was super intelligent about history—World War II became his thing,” Hanneman’s father was an American soldier during world war 2 and he would bring his son home medals and other items taken off the corpses of german soldiers. It was that fascination with Germany’s world war 2 history that landed the band in trouble. Angel of death would take its name from German Scientisit josef mengale who conducted horrific experiments on prisoner’s of war at auschwitz concentration camp.

Columbia records who was Def Jam’s distributors were already unhappy about the album’s cover which showed gentalia and the pope’s hat. When they saw the lyrics for angel of death they flat out rejected it. Rubin stood by the band and said no to removing the song. Columbia head Walter Yetnikoff would reportedly say according to Rolling Stone @My shareholders are all Jewish!”

Tom Araya would tell Team Rock in 2012 “All of a sudden, the record company doesn’t want to release the album because of this song,” “When Jeff brought in the song, we thought, ‘Wow, that’s really cool – [Mengele] was the guy that did all those crazy, terrible things.’ Then all of a sudden we discovered that people had a problem with that. We were, like, f. …'”

Def Jam would be forced to take the album to Geffen Records. Geffen was weary of being associated with the record and while they released it they didn’t list it on their release calendar and didn’t put their logo on the album. Many in the press picked up on the lyrics of the song with some criticizing the band for being sympathetic to the Germany’s world war 2 history. But this was a charge the band flat out denied, claiming the media misunderstood the song.

Hanneman would tell the LA Times in 1988 during a profile on the band I’m into German history. . . . It fascinates me. It’s not that I am one of them or that it’s a sympathetic song. It’s more like a documentary.”

In a separate interview Hanneman would recall “I know why people misinterpret it – it’s because they get this knee-jerk reaction to it,” “There’s nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily [Mengele] was a bad man, because to me – well, isn’t that obvious? I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
The biggest flak over the album seemed to come from Europe, more specifically Germany. Here’s tom araya and jeff hann