Angel of Death (song) - Music and Structure

Music and Structure

"Angel of Death" is the longest track on the album Reign in Blood, spanning 4 minutes and 51 seconds, where the total duration of the album is 29 minutes. Additionally, it has one of the most conventional song structures on the album, featuring prominent verses and choruses, where most tracks on the album eschew them. Hanneman and King deliver their 'intricate riffs', which offer the few hints of melody on the album according to Pop Matters reviewer Adrien Begrand, and Araya bursts out his piercing scream, with Lombardo performing beats of 210 beats per minute.

When drummer Lombardo left the band in 1992, due to conflicts with band members and his desire to bring his wife on tour, the band chose T.J Scaglioni (from Whiplash) briefly, before the giving task to Forbidden drummer Paul Bostaph as his replacement. Bostaph made one mistake out of the nine songs the band trialled him with, on "Angel of Death". Before the "big double bass part" there is a lead section, which Bostaph could not understand, as he had to learn from live records recorded with Lombardo. Bostaph could not tell how many revolutions the guitar riff goes before the bass sequence. The band members told him there were eight, "perfecting" the song afterwards.