Slayer: Awesome Then and Now

Thumbing through the Rolling Stone Album Guide from 1992, when the babyboomers were making all the calls, I found this review of Slayer.

Thrash metal of an ugliness extreme even for the genre. Slayer is Tipper Gore's proper nightmare. They flourish song titles like "Mandatory Suicide," "Necrophobic" and "Reign in Blood." Bassist Tom Araya is, of course, a tuneless shouter. Guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman blaze away with furious, misguided technique that distinguishes thrash from punk's engaging sloppiness. The house metal band of rap-meister Rick Rubin, this is amazingly depressing stuff. Nasty, brutish and endless.

In 2004, after Gen X gained a foothold within Rolling Stone, they updated the album guide. Here's the review of Slayer's Reign in Blood:

..it's Reign in Blood that was the breakthrough and remains the classic. Produced and reduced by Rick Rubin, he honed their sound to a diamond-tipped, impossibly heavy bullet, the soundtrack of to a million skater wipeouts. Killers such as "Criminally Insane" and "Angel of Death" (hello, Josef Mengele!) whip by, but not before turning your stomach. Old fans were thrilled, and punks who avoided metal couldn't deny this thing's sheer rage and velocity. Articulate, rude and, once again, really, really, fucking fast, Reign in Blood was a watershed moment for speed metal, its fans, and the parents who were scared of both.