DEAD KENNEDYS originally recorded In God We Trust, Inc at Subterranean Studios in June 1981. Due to defective tape the session was unusable, so the version we know, released by Alternative Tentacles in December 1981, was recorded eight weeks later - on this day in 1981 - at Möbius Music.
This goes way back, we're talking 1983/84 here. Jeff Hanneman from Slayer brought a tape of it to rehearsal once and I was just blown away by the energy that that album had - the fire and the anger; the angst was just unreal. The Dead Kennedys were a big inspiration, maybe not musically, but as far as energy was concerned and how to execute the music; the drive, the relentlessness of the record and the sound, it just has bite, it has this aggression that's just like a damn race car, y'know? A ripped raw, aggressive sound. They inspired Slayer in a lot of ways because we fed off it and we wanted to mimic that energy - not the songs, it wasn't about copying them as a band, it was about delivering that same intense energy.
- Dave Lombardo / Slayer interview, The Quietus, 2012
The Subterranean Studios recordings do survive, both as video shot by Target and some audio has been restored over the years. The material was released as The Lost Tapes in 2003.