Rick Rubin is undoubtably a music genius, having his hand in making the careers and reinventing the careers of many of rock and hip hop musicians. Everybody from Metallica to Johnny Cash to Black Sabbath to Beastie Boys to System of A Down to Danzig to Run DMC. He also notably signed and "discovered" Slayer (after they had already put out two albums on Metal Blade) and had a huge influence in polishing their sound.
Rubin launched a podcast recently with Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, the Broken Record podcast, and while speaking with the week's guest, T Bone Burnett, offered an interesting take on Slayer:
"Something I noticed relatively early, working with different artists that was interesting was… one of the bands I worked with is called Slayer, heavy metal band, very… one of the inventors of black metal… very aggressive metal, and the lyrics were very dark and heavy. Some people would look at that as negative content, and then I would go to a concert and see an arena full of kids who were very much like the guys in Slayer, who were so filled with joy listening to this music. It was speaking directly to them. It was completely nourishing them…"
Now did Rubin misspeak and actually meant that Slayer were one of the inventors of thrash metal or does Rubin believe that Slayer invented black metal? Typically, the creation of black metal is attributed to the likes of Venom, Bathory and some might say Sodom. As Lambgoat points out, Slayer themselves acknowledge that Venom had a huge influence on their early albums.
What do you think? Is Rubin accurate in saying Slayer were one of the inventors of black metal?
