The Slayer Reign In Blood anniversary tour got under way on 4 September at Mystic Lake Amphitheater in Shakopee, Minnesota, with the band performing their 1986 album in its 28-minute entirety for the first time since 2014. Footage of the complete Reign In Blood section of that show has since surfaced online, giving everyone who wasn’t there a proper look at what went down.
According to setlist.fm, doors at Mystic Lake opened at 5:00 PM, with the show itself running from 9:00 PM through to 10:45 PM. The band worked through a set of hits before closing out with Reign… front to back, beginning to end. The tour then picked up again at Rocklahoma in Pryor, Oklahoma on 6 September, where doors opened at 11:30 AM for what was a full festival day.
Why the Slayer Reign In Blood anniversary matters
Few records in metal carry the same weight. Reign In Blood was produced by Rick Rubin, then best known for his collaborations with hip-hop acts including the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, and released through Rubin’s label, Def Jam. It charted in both the UK and the US and pulled in serious critical acclaim on release. In 2017, Rolling Stone placed it at number six on their list of the 100 greatest metal albums of all time.
The album was not without controversy. Conservative commentators accused Slayer of Nazi sympathies, centring on the opening track ‘Angel of Death’, which dealt with Josef Mengele and the experimental surgeries carried out at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The band have repeatedly denied supporting Nazism. Guitarist Kerry King addressed the controversy directly in a 2015 Loudwire interview: ‘My rebuttal to that has been since day one, if you put that on the History Channel and took Slayer out of it, it would be an educational, intriguing ride through World War II. You put Slayer in, and heavy metal, and it’s, “Oh, they meant that shit!”‘
Where the Slayer Reign In Blood anniversary tour goes next
The North and Latin American leg continues with a stop at Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City on 21 October, before rolling through further dates across the continent. The full run of upcoming shows is listed below.
Slayer retired from touring in 2019 but reunited in 2024, playing standalone shows and short tours since then. King was blunt about the scope of that return when speaking to Australia’s Metal Roos in 2024. ‘Mark my words: we’re never gonna make a record again, we’re never gonna tour again,’ he said. ‘Because that was the last thing. We said [in 2019], “This is our final tour.” It took five years for us to come and say, “Hey, here’s a couple of shows, five-year anniversary.”‘
Slayer’s final album, Repentless, came out in 2015. King took ideas originally intended for a scrapped follow-up and channelled them into a solo project, releasing his debut album under his own name, From Hell I Rise, in 2024. A second solo album is currently in the works.
For anyone tracking the Slayer Reign In Blood anniversary run, the full list of remaining dates is below. The Slayer live machine, however briefly it’s been switched back on, is clearly not messing about.
Slayer Reign In Blood 40th Anniversary tour dates:
21 Oct: Mexico City, Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico
24 Oct: Fort Worth, Sick New World, TX
13 Nov: Inglewood, Kia Forum, CA
14 Nov: Inglewood, Kia Forum, CA
5 Dec: Bogota, Vive Claro, Distrito Cultural, Colombia
10 Dec: Santiago, Estadio Santa Laura, Chile
14 Dec: Buenos Aires, Movistar Arena, Argentina
17 Dec: São Paulo, Nubank Parque, Brazil
