Reign of Terror June 1793 and the end of July 1794, there were 16,594 official death sentences in France, of which 2,639 were in Paris. There was a sense of emergency among leading politicians in France in the summer of 1793 between the widespread civil war and counter-revolution. Bertrand Barère exclaimed on 5 September 1793 in the Convention: "Let's make terror the order of the day!" They were determined to avoid street violence such as the September Massacres of 1792 by taking violence into their own hands as an instrument of government. Robespierre in February 1794 in a speech explained the necessity of
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