Slayer
The run: Show No Mercy, Hell Awaits, Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss
We think Slayer’s divisive 1994 album, Divine Intervention, is eternally underrated, but still, the band’s first five are the indisputable champs. From 1983’s Show No Mercy through 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss, Slayer were the hardest, scariest, unholiest thrash band in the world, and when you compare that run of albums with any other band since, that’s still the case. The trajectory that subgenres like death metal, grindcore and black metal took in the Nineties raised the bar for metal heaviness, but even all these years and countless extreme-metal releases later, there’s no output that hits quite like Slayer’s first five records.
