“I played him a Metallica record as an example of what I thought was wrong”: Rick Rubin explains the genius production behind Slayer’s Reign In Blood
Veteran producer Rick Rubin has worked across a wide variety of genres, from hip-hop to metal, producing for major names from Public Enemy to Metallica.
And in a new interview with YouTuber and fellow producer Rick Beato, Rubin shares his creative “theory” which inspired how he tackled Slayer’s iconic third studio album, Reign In Blood.
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Rubin recalls explaining to engineer Andy Wallace that the same production formula can’t be applied to every metal band.
“I had a theory. This [was] not based on being a musician. This [was] not based on being a technical person. This is based on being a fan and…theoretical, just thoughts. So, when I hear very fast music like Metallica, and the sounds are big sounds… the whole thing gets blurry, and you can’t really hear it.
“If the music you’re playing is fast and if the sounds are big, there’s not enough space for those big sounds to happen next to each other. There’s no punctuation; it becomes a blur.”
Rubin adds that he played Wallace a Metallica record “as an example of what I thought was wrong”.
“I said, ‘Would it be possible to record in such a way that it was hard-sounding but everything was short, because it’s fast and we want there to be this?’ I didn’t want it to be a blur of bass, I wanted it to be a pulse. And he said, ‘I think we can do that.’”
Rubin has since worked with major names such as AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. However, he believes it was his “lack” of technical experience with metal music that made Reign In Blood such a success.
“Not having the experience of the right way to do it [was] part of the key,” Rubin goes on. “If I was an experienced heavy metal producer, I would use the tricks that I’d used on other heavy metal records, because that’s what people do. You learn the ways to do it…
“I was more subtractive than additive [in the case of Reign in Blood]. It was getting back to the essence. It wasn’t doing the professional ‘thing’. I wasn’t using all the normal tricks of the craft. It was reducing them to only what was essential with the particular case in mind.”
Asked how he was able to produce what is now one of the the quintessential heavy metal records of all time at such a young stage of his career, he replies: “I didn’t have the baggage of what the old way of doing it was. And in [this case], these forms of music were so new that the old way would’ve lessened their impact. It wouldn’t have made them better.”
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