SLAYER Show No Mercy Cassette (1983)

There were records before Show No Mercy, and then there was Show No Mercy. Released in 1983 on Metal Blade, Slayer's debut didn't so much announce a new band as detonate one into existence. Thrash metal had a starting pistol, and this was it.

Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman were barely adults when they wrote these riffs, which makes the aggression on tracks like Evil Has No Boundaries and The Antichrist even more unnerving in retrospect. There's a raw, almost punk energy underneath the metal architecture that the later albums refined away, and that's exactly what makes this one worth owning on cassette. It's pre-polish Slayer, the band still sharp enough to draw blood before they even knew how big they'd get. A cornerstone of any serious dark music or metal collection.

Format: Cassette. Genre: Thrash Metal. Full length debut album, 1983. Country of origin: USA.

Fans of: Anthrax, Metallica, Testament, Overkill, Kreator, Sepultura, Exodus, Venom