War in the Vendée was not until the social unrest and the fear of The Terror (a period between 1793–94 where tens of thousands of people were beheaded by use of guillotine) combined with the external pressures from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and the introduction of a levy of 300,000 on the whole of France, decreed by the National Convention in February 1793, that the region erupted. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy required all clerics to swear allegiance to it and, by extension, to the increasingly anti-clerical National Constituent Assembly. All but seven of the 160 bishops refused the oath,
Reign of Terror (Sleigh Bells album) the latter also describing the flag as being "ostentatious". Because the songs on "Reign of Terror" have more guitar harmonies than previous releases, Sleigh Bells employed Jason Boyer as a backing touring guitarist for live performances. Miller also liked the symmetry of having two guitarists on both sides of a vocalist. Prior to the album's release, several publications listed "Reign of Terror" as an anticipated release for the first part of 2012 including "Spin", "Time", Metacritic and NPR. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of