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Heavy metal has always provided fertile ground for folks who enjoy sniffing around for negativity and bad influences, but seldom has one band provided more of a mother lode than this Los Angeles aggregation. While Slayer's earlier albums certainly packed punch -- thanks to the frenzied guitar playing of Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman -- the band didn't reach its full, fearsome potential until production whiz Rick Rubin joined them for this 1986 set. Fueled by hatred and morbidity (the word "death" crops up dozens of times on songs that obsess over mass murder, abortion, and all manner of human ugliness), frontman Tom Araya wails like some netherworld evangelist, his incantations proving both haunting and incendiary. A decade and a half on, Slayer still haven't scaled the harrowing heights of "Angel of Death" (a deadpan take on Nazi war criminal Joseph Mengele) and "Raining Blood," but no one else has topped them, either.