Reign Once Again

Erik Hinds once stared at the cover of Slayer's Live Undead until the zombies started to move. Now he's gone and reinterpreted their career-defining statement of destruction, Reign In Blood, for a solo instrument. No, not a church organ, but the h'arpeggione, a particularly evil-sounding upright 12-string acoustic job that sounds something like a (bloody) cross between a 12-string guitar, a sitar and a cello. But Hinds isn't just riffing on King and Hanneman's killer guitar licks, no way — he's gone and redone the whole ordeal. For instance, "Raining Blood" mostly draws on the original's atmospheric breakdown, presumably to capture the feel of its character being in purgatory, but then pulls out Slayer's killer riff for the subject's rebirth at the end. Heavenly evil.