[1] Since it was released nearly four years after its predecessor Seasons in the Abyss (1990), vocalist Tom Araya said there was more time spent on its production compared to the band's previous albums.

Its songs' origins came not only from television shows, but were also inspired by various other subjects including Rush Limbaugh, Holocaust architect Reinhard Heydrich, and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Its cover artwork was painted and designed by Wes Benscoter as a re-imaging of the band's early "Slayergram" graphic.

Although so much time was spent on its production, Kerry King has expressed his disapproval over the album's final mix, saying it should have had more attention.

"[3] The production of the album posed as a challenge to the record company, "how to market a group whose gore-soaked, extreme music is anathema to radio programmers."

It is the company's first attempt to "hit the thrash band's core-audience of rabid enthusiasts with a fan-orientated marketing assault.

"[5] The College Music Journal said that "the band deals almost exclusively with realism" in the album, and noted that it "shocks and splatters like a severed artery, painting crimson pictures of murders, necrophiliacs, and the ravaged, chaotic world they inhabit".

[12] AllMusic said that "instead of doing something calculated like emulating Nirvana or Pearl Jam—or for that matter, Nine Inch Nails or Ministry—Slayer wisely refused to sound like anyone but Slayer.

Tom Araya and co. responded to the new environment simply by striving to be the heaviest metal band they possibly could.

[25][26] It was reported that in the same year of its release, Kevin Kirk from the Heavy Metal Shop "ordered 1,000 copies of Slayer's Divine Intervention and sold every last album in a matter of weeks".