Def Jam Recordings: File Under ‘Heavy Metal’
Once upon a time, labels released samplers on physical media. One to make its way into my collection is Def Jam Recordings: Greatest Hits Hardcore, which consists of 14 tracks spanning LL Cool J’s “I Need a Beat” (1985) to Foxy Brown’s “The Promise” (1996). Def Jam is synonymous with the Golden Age of Hip Hop, but many people don’t know it also released one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time.
Opening with “Paul Revere,” an early hit from Beastie Boys, the sampler proceeds to trip through the years among big names such as Method Man and Redman as well as lesser known acts (at least to me) such as Onyx and Case. There may be moments that sound dated, but most of what I hear coming from my speakers is so sonically forward-thinking that we may never get back to that particular future. These were gritty and formative years for hip-hop, but not only hip-hop.
In the midst of all this mayhem, Def Jam also released heavy metal band Slayer’s Reign in Blood (1986). Produced by Def Jam founder, then visionary, now legendary archon Rick Rubin, this album is a fist, kick and headbutt to the solar plexus, groin and face, and it would help establish the band as one of the Big Four thrash bands alongside Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax. Many is the YouTube reactor to hear Tom Arraya’s opening shriek and wonder what . . . the unholy . . . eff. No heavy metal fan would consider this dated.
Slayer would make another outing with Def Jam when releasing South of Heaven in 1988, the year Public Enemy released It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back on the same label. South of Heaven starts slower than Reign in Blood, but before long it’s all solos afire, rapid cymbal chokes and more unholy bansheeism. For some, this is the defining Slayer album. For others still, it’s 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss, but by then Slayer was on Def American, which has been a home for the likes of The Black Crowes, System of a Down, and ZZ Top.
I have another sampler from an overlapping slice of time: Earache Presents Earplugged (1994). Entombed opens by death-n-rolling the aural orifices with “Out of Hand,” before early Cathedral delivers the surprisingly upbeat “Midnight Mountain.” Napalm Death, Carcass, Bolt Thrower . . . Nineties grunge housed a new zeitgeist in old rock basics, but heavy metal was less constrained in its corruptions of its forebears. Contemporaneity be damned, there’s nothing here even remotely resembling EMPD’s “Gold Digger,” another track on the Def Jam sampler.
But don’t let that fool you into thinking hip hop doesn’t mix with rock and metal. As early as 1986, Run DMC famously covered Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” and there’s been no shortage of collaborations, mash-ups, new genres and style-crossing in the years since. One of my favorite releases is Drums of Death (2005), featuring input from Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, Public Enemy front man Chuck D, electronic musician DJ Spooky, and Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid. It’s a singular mental bender I’d never have discovered if not for a public library curator who clearly thought outside the box.
So culturally brainwashed are we to see heavy metal and hip hop as different scenes, each hermetically sealed, that no matter how often they mix, insist on mixing, it tends to hit unexpected when they do. Once upon a time, however, a hip-hop label published thrash metal. Are Nuclear Blast, Gore House Productions and Satanas Death Kvlt Records dropping new hip-hop classics? No, but if they did, I’d nod along and raise my metal horns.
