walking upstream…
Slayer
sourcesGive Me Metal — Slayer Family Tree ("cross between Venom and Mercyful Fate" quote) · AllMusic — Show No Mercy review by Jeremy Ulrey (critical characterization of Venom's influence) · Guitar World — In Tribute · Noise11 — Slayer Hell Awaits 40th Anniversary Reissue (song-length comparison, Show No Mercy vs Hell Awaits) · Riffology — Slayer's Reign in Blood
In 1981, Kerry King was auditioning for a bar band called Ledger when a guitarist waiting his turn caught his ear. "I saw Jeff just kinda standing around playing guitar," King recalled, "and he was playing stuff that I was into, like Def Leppard's 'Wasted' and AC/DC and Priest." The two started trading Iron Maiden and Judas Priest riffs on the spot, and within a year they had formed Slayer with Tom Araya and Dave Lombardo. King brought a teenage devotion to Judas Priest's twin-guitar attack and Venom's black-clad menace; Hanneman brought hardcore punk's velocity. Their 1983 debut, Show No Mercy, sounded like a document of that handshake, indebted enough to Venom's raw, Satanic blueprint that reviewers heard it as a tightened version of that band's sound. Reign in Blood, three years later, stripped the homage down to its fastest, most extreme form.
the sound in question
1986
Raining BloodSlayer
walk the tributaries ↓
Judas Priest1980s · Heavy metal
Kerry King's testimony is unequivocal: "there would be no Slayer without Priest," he has said, tracing it to hearing "Breaking the Law" on the radio as a teenager. What stuck wasn't a hook but an arrangement — "the creativity and early uniqueness of two guitars totally inspired what Slayer became," King has explained, crediting Glenn Tipton as "super underrated, super overlooked." Slayer built its own two-guitar sound around King and Jeff Hanneman trading rhythm parts, a debt so direct that in 1988 the band recorded Priest's "Dissident Aggressor" — a cover King says came out "so abstract" that fans mistook it for an original.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — Why Judas Priest Matter to Kerry King (Priest testimony; Dissident Aggressor cover story) ↗
1977
Dissident AggressorJudas Priest
1988
Dissident AggressorSlayer
listen forPlay Judas Priest's 1977 "Dissident Aggressor" against Slayer's 1988 cover from South of Heaven and the lineage is direct rather than inferred — same riff, same galloping tempo, Rob Halford's scream reworked into Tom Araya's bark. Listen for how Slayer tightens the arrangement: the tempo pushes harder, the guitars sit closer together in the mix, trading the original's twin-guitar clarity for the blunter, more unison rhythm attack King has called Priest's real gift to Slayer — precision turned into velocity.
Venom1980s · Speed metal / Thrash metal / Black metal
"I was big-time into Venom," Kerry King has said. "I thought Cronos was the single most evil entity I'd ever seen in my life — I was very inspired by that, as you can tell from our early recordings." King has described early Slayer as "probably a cross between Venom and Mercyful Fate, maybe a little bit of Priest, maybe a little bit of punk," and the debt runs past aesthetics: the review site AllMusic later judged Slayer's 1983 debut "basically a cleaned-up version" of Cronos's band — tightened, but unmistakably descended.
listen: upstream & heresource: Louder — How Slayer Became the Most Shocking Band in Music (Venom/Cronos quote; "chasing our heroes") ↗
1982
Black MetalVenom
1983
Show No MercySlayer
listen forPut Venom's 1982 title track "Black Metal" beside Slayer's own "Show No Mercy" from a year later and the family resemblance is in the vocal snarl and the bare-bones riffing — both bands trade melody for menace, Araya's bark chasing Cronos's rasp over simple, driving chord patterns rather than intricate lead work. Slayer plays it faster and cleaner, but the Satanic posturing and stripped-down aggression Venom essentially invented — a sound King once called "the best shitty band ever" — are still the whole design.
Mercyful Fate1980s · Heavy metal / Black metal / Speed metal
By Hell Awaits (1985), Slayer's songs had nearly tripled in length, and Kerry King named the reason without hesitation: "there was definitely a Mercyful Fate influence on Hell Awaits — you can tell by the super long songs with, like, 10,000 riff changes." Where Show No Mercy stayed under four minutes a track, Hell Awaits pushed three past six, chasing the Danish band's dense, multi-part writing on 1983's Melissa. King has been candid about the reach involved: "we did mature as songwriters and musicians, but that one was still us chasing our heroes."
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — Kerry King's 10 Favorite Metal Albums, Mercyful Fate ↗
1983
MelissaMercyful Fate
1985
Hell AwaitsSlayer
listen forMercyful Fate's "Melissa" title track shifts key and tempo repeatedly across six-plus minutes, King Diamond's falsetto riding over guitarist Hank Shermann's stacked riff changes. Slayer's "Hell Awaits," the title track from the following year, runs the same math at thrash speed: a slow, reverb-drenched intro — reversed vocals spelling out "join us" — gives way to a suite of distinct riffs rather than a single verse-chorus shape, the same appetite for sprawl aimed at a much faster clock.