Slayer – Hell Awaits

I bought this pressing a few weeks after it came out from my LRS. My copy did not come with the lyric/photo insert or the fan club flyer. It just had the poly bag that most of the 80s metal LPs came with. I being pissed off that it did not come with the insert, because my good friends did. I we went to the library at school and I made a photo copy of my friends insert lyrics. I still have them in the LP. I feel a lot of the smaller record companies neglected to put a lot of care in making sure everything was in the package. Just a heads up if you find one in the wild with no insert.

Clearly this is the first hell awaits pressing cause the chains around the vinyl label appears in other later pressings from 1986

my copy has the OG Possessed Seven Churches insert. anyone has a spare or scan of the original? thanks!

Slayers most progressive album to date. Great songs, great performances but mediocre leads and horrible 80's production. This is a bad thing but also part of its charm. Its funny to me that the EP "Haunting the Chapel" that came out before this sounds more like what we all would know as the "Slayer" sound captured on RIB, SOH and SITA. Its to bad they never played all the songs from this and "Show No Mercy" in a concert to give them the treatment these songs deserved. Sure they played a few here and there like At Dawn They Sleep and Hell Awaits was a staple of their live shows but they ignored the rest as if they never existed. There are some gems on here if you can get past the poor 80s production.

***UPDATE*** I listen to this album a lot more after having it on LP. While I bashed it for its bad production it isn't that bad. While it does not have the sound of later releases it is a solid album. Tom was still trying to find his voice and the guitar tones are not as good as you would like from Slayer but over all its an awesome album and deserves a good listen looking forward not backwards.

The bass lines where now Tom just yells KILL when they play At Dawn They Sleep live is how much Rubin has been an awesome influence on the band but also not that great either. Those bass lines fit with what the 2 guitars were doing melody wise one after the other and then the bass came in and the, silence, and then massive speed comes in..... Tom played Reign in Blood with his fingers, but afterwards he played with a pick so he didn't really play the fast first riff of War Ensemble, he just goes 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 under the riffs, he didn't do that here, or in Reign, but in Reign the bass already has been Rubenized...

opps, i was wrong. the brown one has a release page. says 3rd press from 87.

Which is the original 1st pressing of this LP,the one pictured for this listing, or the one with the chains around the outer edge of the labels on the vinyl?