Chilean born thrash/speed metal bassist Tomás Enrique Araya Valparaíso is cool, humorous, self-effacing. He doesn’t sound like the kind of guy you’d expect fronting one of the most notorious, button-pushing metal acts ever founded. But that is exactly what he does. Alongside guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King and drummer Dave Lombardo, Tom Araya’s brute vocal force and thundering bass lines drive the American thrash metal band Slayer – a group whose 1986 watershed release Reign in Blood is considered by many to be quintessential thrash effort and "the heaviest album of all time."
Credited as one of the "Big Four" thrash metal bands (along with Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth), Slayer’s punishing, aggressive sound and modus operandi are unmistakable; yet, their reputation as a coven of fascist, devil worshipping racists who hate everyone and everything has often overshadowed their sonic influence on the mainstream rock and metal of today. It’s been 25 years since the band arrived and people are still gripping about what the band writes about – jihad, serial killers, Satanism, religious zealotry, war – and it all makes Araya laugh.
Why? “People don’t take kindly to having mirrors pointed at them,” he says.
Araya, who resides in Buffalo, Texas, on a ranch with his wife and two children and pet Rottweilers, laughs about the role call of “hysteria” surrounding Slayer’s career: the lawsuits, criticism from right-wing religious groups, album (and cover) bans, the irony in God Hates Us All (released the day of the 9/11 attacks) and the general terror that a new Slayer release inspires. The band’s latest album, last year’s Christ Illusion, was no exception: the original cover featured an artist’s rendition of a dismembered Christ and naturally was censored.
It all cracks Araya up. To him, “it’s good to push buttons and to have people come to realizations and think for themselves, but it’s also just another day at the office.”
Araya and the rest of the band don’t see what they do as brain surgery or rocket science – Slayer just do what they do to and let the chips fall where they may. Those chips fell in the Top 5 of the Billboard chart with Christ Illusion. Their highest charting debut to date, the disc is the first featuring all four original members in a decade, it earned the band a Grammy (for the single “Eyes of the Insane”) and will keep them on the road for nearly 15 months from end to end.
Checking in with Blogcritics on a windy Thursday afternoon from his ranch, Araya was asked about the last 25 years of Slayer, the band’s sound, legacy, peers, and musical traits, the 1991 Clash of the Titans tour and a new co-headlining tour with Marilyn Manson – which starts tonight in North America after a leg overseas. The conversation went like this:
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