hello all, i have just uploaded a video of my attempting to play Slayer - Raining Blood, now I've been playing for a month and a half and was just wondering, am i lacking behind, or am i ahead of the crowd?

Neither. :) You will never stop learning to play/sing better with anything musical. What you are good at one point doesn't mean you're better or worse than anyone else at any other point. Sure there's guitar legends out there that you want to play like but they're just people like you and me, who have put in the hard work to develop their own personal style of playing... but even those people keep learning. The more you want to play, the more you need to know, the more you need to practise. :)

I have to agree with some of what hunter1801 said:

SLOW IT DOWN. Don't try to play like them, because you know you can't.

I prefer to say "Don't try to play like them because you are not them." but learning other people's music when you're starting out is a great way to motivate yourself to learn how to play.

If you can't play something perfectly, slow it down until you can. As far as practising goes, I'd say you should never be playing unless you are playing it accurately. If this means you have to play the song 100 times slower, then so be it. You sounded sloppy, not because you suck, but because you were trying to play it faster than you can (and I'm sure you know this).

I agree totally. However once you have the ability to play the song through to the end "perfectly".. experiment with making the song "better" (better is a very subjective thing :)) by making it a "cover song by you" rather than a "replica of the original". Though don't bother experimenting with someone else's work until you can, at the very least, play the replica of the original... listeners are still going to want to hear the original song's main themes and motifs, riffs and licks.. but you should be adding your own personality to it at the same time.

But yes.. slow down.. get the technique(s) down first then, using a drumloop or metronome, slowly work up to the speed you require. Alternate picking is very important for the type of music you are attempting to play as well as picking efficiency in general. If you have to move the pick, then you want it to be the least distance of travel. Technique, accuracy and efficiency are the most important things in my opinion.

You need good technique, accuracy and efficiency on slow songs just as much as fast songs.. there are no "easy" songs.. and there are no "hard" songs either. It's just whether you are good enough, at that point of your musical development, to play it. I've seen many times where someone can play fast but not slow ballad/blues stuff, and the opposite of that. Also different styles of music require different skills.. a notable example would be Flamenco guitar. My flatmate once asked me to reproduce a particular Flamenco guitar piece from some obscure movie I'd never heard of before. I couldn't play it at all.. just so different to what skills I have developed. I could play the basic melody of course and try to make it sound like Flamenco guitar.. but yeh..

I'd keep working on that song, even if you get sick of it, until you can play it with a reasonable amount of accuracy. Use it as your first goal but obviously practise other stuff like scales and playing around with chord construction/extensions, also a TINY bit of music theory (enough to get by :)) wouldn't hurt either. When you can play the song properly then give yourself a pat on the back and set another goal. The goals you set don't have to be as big or bigger than the one you just reached but it is important to set another goal. Always have a goal to work towards, whatever it is, it will motivate you to keep practising.