Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography.

by Ferris, D. X.

  The band toured for a month in November, bringing their total number of shows for 1991 to 100. Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth may have been riding career highs, but metal was vulnerable. Nobody knew it was coming, but the grunge footnote from the Clash of the Titans tour represented the future. The Seattle sound’s imminent rise would erode the metal market. As Slayer powered on into 1992, the changing times were the least of their problems.

  Click here to Google search “Slayer photos 1991”

  Chapter 27:

  Lombardo Out. Again.

  Though it wasn’t apparent at the time, Slayer were coming down from a career high. Internally, things went from bad to worse quickly. The classic lineup shattered.

  As it had in late ’86, Lombardo’s time in the band ended in a classic “You can’t fire me — I quit” scenario. And once again, it nearly ended in a fistfight.

  As always, the problems, causes, and consequences were a complicated web. And none of the fallout was linear.

  By 1991, Lombardo was fuming. The band refused to formally acknowledge his contributions to their songs. He still hadn’t received an album credit for writing lyrics or music — and he never would.

  “I guess I’m the problem-causer in the band,” he told Krgin in a Metal Maniacs interview, “’cause now, I’m getting a little bit tired listening to the music and realizing what they do — OK, they do the guitar parts, they do the guitars leads, they do the guitar riffs; they put everything together — but I feel like, on some songs, I’ve worked so hard on it, there’s so many drum rolls, there’s so much things, it’s like, ‘Man, I should be getting paid for that shit…. What are they gonna do? Kick me out? Go ahead. I don’t care.”27-1

  But when things came to a head, for once, Slayer’s problems with Lombardo had some roots in true professionalism. Lombardo, the groundbreaking king of metal drumming, was not playing well.

  One of the band’s more memorable tours cracked the group’s foundation. Lombardo accidentally shredded his reputation as an ace drummer in the name of showmanship. It was a simple reason that Lombardo would not put together (literally) until it was too late. The king’s drum throne was too high.

  Over the years, Rubin has consistently played a role as the band’s executive producer. In that capacity, he helps the group shape not just their music, but their presentation. As a student of rock history, he knows what works, and he knows what it takes to make a great show.

  And Lombardo, metal’s most visible drummer, was not as visible as he could have been. Not in concert, anyway. So Slayer added a drum riser, a part of the set that would grow over the years, until it was six feet tall during late 1990s, in the years with Paul Bostaph on drums. In 1991, the drum riser was five feet high and rising. As King recalled it, the added altitude still wasn’t enough. So Rubin suggested Lombardo raise his drum stool higher.

  The way Lombardo remembered it, he attributed the higher drum seat to his drum tech. He was still dealing with his kit as little as possible.

  “We were touring a lot,” explained Lombardo. “I didn’t pay much attention to my drum set, its positioning. I kind of lost touch with my instrument. [My drum tech] was a lot heavier than I was, a big guy, tall and husky. His stature was different than mine, so he would set up the drum set to his position rather than mine.”

  Once his kit was higher, Lombardo started having trouble pulling off his signature move: the double-bass kicks in “Angel of Death.”

  Soon, all his foot playing required extra effort. As young drummer in the fledgling Slayer, Lombardo had grown tired of loading, assembling, dismantling, and unloading his kit. Now his wish had come true. He finally had someone to tend to his kit. But it still wound up driving him out of the band.

  With his performance off, Lombardo was no longer untouchable. Nobody traced the problem to its root. Lombardo seemed to have simply lost his touch. Considering how the drummer was playing, King thought he had to go.

  “Realistically, what it came down to, he wasn’t doing his performance that great,” reflects King. “He sat high, and he lost his kicks; his feet went away. And before he realized that was the issue, we’d already separated.”

  But, as is so often the case, the separation didn’t come about because of the core problem. With tension building, things came to a head due to a different issue.

  The Lombardos’ first child was due in late September 1992. Lombardo told the band he couldn’t play shows around the due date.

  The band received an offer to play Monsters of Rock, the legendary British metal festival, August 22. King grew up reading about the fest (which is also often referred to as “Donington” and “Castle Dnnington” after its location). Slayer had toured the world, but playing Donington was one of King’s few rock and roll fantasies he hadn’t achieved yet. He wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to be on the bill.

  (Iron Maiden headlined, with Skid Row billed second. Slayer, Thunder, and W.A.S.P. — in that order — split the poster’s third line.)

  And the group had taken off all year. So eight European festivals in August were the band’s only shows slated for the entire year — and, thus, their only major chance to get out and make some money. The dates were scheduled. As they rehearsed for the shows, the atmosphere at practices was tense — when and if the band showed up, that is.

  Slayer reconvened just outside Los Angeles, in Orange County suburb Anaheim, to rehearse their next set of shows. The drummer, as was his custom, would be the first one to show up at their practice studio, a warehouse crammed with old banners, set lists, stage props, and a stolen tombstone.

  Araya, Hanneman, and King had a custom of their own. They would have a pre-practice huddle at a nearby restaurant — Hanneman famously loved T.G.I. Friday’s, but Araya recalled it being a Chili’s. The pregame ritual often ran into overtime, with the Slayer frontline drinking, laughing, and having a good time while Lombardo sat at the practice space, waiting and fuming, but generally doing nothing, while his pregnant wife sat at home, without him.

  One night, in the practice spot, sitting alone long after the scheduled start time, Lombardo blew a gasket. He left the kit and stormed to the restaurant. Sure enough, the rest of the band were there, in a row at the bar.

  The drummer walked in and zoomed up to his bandmates. Araya recalled the scene:

  Lombardo pointed at Hanneman and Lombardo like a dad who caught his twin sons raiding the family liquor cabinet. Lombardo aimed a finger at each of them, in turn.

  “You and you,” he said. “I want to talk to you outside.”

  King, Hanneman, and Araya exchanged looks. The guitarists rose from their bar stools and followed Lombardo outside.

  Araya remained at the bar, watching the rest of the band talk in the parking lot. Animated and agitated, Lombardo was ranting at Hanneman and King, waving his finger and bitching them out. The angrier Lombardo got, the closer he moved toward them.

  “Man, I better get out there, see what the fuck’s going on,” Araya thought as Lombardo inched into arm’s length. The singer scurried outside before somebody punched somebody.

  Outside, the dialogue was even hotter than it seemed from the bar.

  The singer, who had voiced Hanneman’s most unspeakable ideas, dropped his jaw in disbelief when he heard the exchange. Lombardo was fuckin’ pissed. And he wasn’t holding back.

  As Araya watched, Lombardo delivered the guitarists a riot act that was ten years in the making. Araya diplomatically declines to recreate the exact dialogue, but says it was pointed and personal. Finger flying, Lombardo gave voice to every thought he’d ever had about the band’s co-captains being a couple of stubborn moron chuckleheads.

  Lombardo’s outburst was a blindside out of the black, but it wasn’t a complete surprise. Tension had been high in the group. Araya had envisioned some kind of scenario where Lombardo would confront King and Hanneman. But he never imagined this kind of venomous, soul-baring assault. Araya interrupted Lombardo’s flow.

 
; “I can’t believe you’re saying these things, Dave,” said Araya.

  Araya looked at King and Hanneman.

  King looked at Araya.

  Hanneman looked at Araya.

  Hanneman looked at Lombardo.

  Hanneman looked at Araya.

  “Tom, man,” said Hanneman, his surfer-like cool dangerously close to a critical fail. “You better talk to your boy.”

  Araya thought about it for a moment. Then the singer decided the time to talk was over.

  “Man, I ain’t talkin’ to him any more,” said Araya. “Later, Dave.”

  Araya, Hanneman and King turned around and walked away from Lombardo. As they stormed off, a stunned Araya tried to figure out what had just happened.

  “Dude, what was he screaming about before I was here?” the singer asked.

  “After all the years, maybe I’ve got it mixed up, but it threw me for a loop,” explained Araya. “I wasn’t expecting that…. He was upset about rehearsal. But he said a lot of other things that should have been said unsaid, because they were said in the heat of the moment.”

  The conversation was over.

  The drummer wasn’t fired on the spot, but the decision followed quickly. Cooler heads did not prevail. His long-brewing fury vented, Lombardo tried to backpedal. He told Araya he didn’t mean the outburst as a personal attack on the band’s twin axemen.

  “After the fact, you think twice about the things you said,” reflects Araya. “I know he did. But I heard them, and [thought] ‘Alright, I know you’re expressing yourself, and you can sit there and deny anything you want, but these are your true expressions.’”

  Lombardo got his wish: He didn’t have to go to Europe.

  The drummer’s time in Slayer was done for now. He wouldn’t return to the band for nearly a decade. And even after the reunion, Lombardo would never fully re-enter the band’s inner circle.

  Slayer recruited another drummer prospect, but practices were difficult.

  Elsewhere in California, drummer Paul Bostaph had just quit Forbidden, a Bay Area thrash band that rocked like hell. The next day, when Bostaph received an call from Slayer inviting him to audition, he was available27-2.

  The audition went well. At the time, Bostaph’s propulsive drumming — as heard in Forbidden — was closer to Lombardo’s swinging style than the mechanized assault he later brought to Slayer records.

  Hell bent for leather, Slayer packed up Bostaph and headed to the UK.

  King never did relax his position on paternity-induced band hiatuses.

  Though eventually, circumstances most unfortunate would demand King employ those very tactics to keep the Slayer Panzer running.

  In the ensuing years, the band would be remarkably frank — albeit vague — about the Lombardo-vs.-everybody-else schism that ended the golden era.

  “People always say ‘musical differences’ [when bands split],” Araya told RIP magazine’s Daina Darzin in 1993. “For us it was all personal.”27-3

  In Metal Maniacs, Lombardo would reveal that his bond with Hanneman, once tight, had degenerated to merely “so-so” by ‘91. And he would confess that he never got along with King27-4.

  On this point, Lombardo and King agreed.

  “There wasn’t much friendship [between King and Lombardo],” King told Kirk Blows of Metal Hammer. “He pretty much hates me…. Everybody in the band was fed up with babying Dave.”27-5

  After he left Slayer, over the years, Lombardo’s resentment toward King festered. He resisted taking shots as best as he could. Then in 2001, a German interviewer coaxed a rare — but coded — negative nugget out of Lombardo during a Fantômas interview.

  “Don’t even get me started on Kerry King,” Lombardo told German TV station Viva Zwei. Holding his fingers mere millimeters apart, Lombardo said, with relish, “The guy… his brain is the size of a Haselnüsse.” ”27-6

  “Haselnüsse” is German for “hazelnut.” Hazelnuts are small. Like the size of your fingertip.

  Click here to Google search “Slayer photos 1992”

  Chapter 28:

  Disorder and Divine Intervention

  Without Lombardo, Slayer finally stalled.

  The band didn’t tour in 1993. And they wouldn’t hit the road until August 1994.

  In 1993, nearly a full three years after Seasons, Slayer finally released some new material. It wasn’t great.

  With grunge on the wane, rap-rock was rising. The Judgment Night soundtrack was a curated series of collaborations between rappers and rock bands of all stripes: The white-hot Pearl Jam collaborated with Cypress Hill. Teenage Fan Club chilled out with De La Soul. House of Pain raged alongside Helmet.

  Some the crossover cuts were not so hot. Slayer manager Sales scored his band a slot on the record, but King was hesitant. He had never been a rap fan, and he wasn’t interested in crossing over — not for a minute, not for four.

  But Sales kept pitching King ideas. The manager suggested Ice-T, a fellow Los Angeles veteran with unimpeachable street cred. King decided he could deal with the rapper.

  Maybe King recognized a kindred spirit in Ice-T: Hanneman and Araya’s historic and metaphysical fixations made them the metal equivalent of deep thinkers like KRS-ONE or Nas. But King’s matter-of-fact opinions about daily life and how to live it put him somewhere closer to L.A. institutions like N.W.A. and Ice-T.

  The Raider fans teamed up on a track called “Disorder.” The cut was a medley of three songs by U.K. hardcore icons the Exploited: "War", "UK ’82", and "Disorder.”

  The Exploited medley is not good. It starts off promisingly with a whomping riff, then collapses into a mess. Ice-T’s presence is hardly discernable. King thought it worked, though.

  “That was a cool song,” King told Rei Rishimoto of Metal Hammer. “If you listen to that song in the context of the record, it doesn’t sound like a metal band with a rap act. It sounds like Slayer, only with another singer. I’m pleased with the way that came out.”28-1

  That collaboration lowered expectations for Slayer’s first album with a new bandmate.

  As Paul Bostaph joined one of metal’s top institutions, his initial reception was a chilly one. Later, when Bostaph joined Slayer for the third time, he told Metal Zone’s Nikki Blakk about his first audition: Bostaph found Slayer’s Anaheim compound. Inside, he met the band. A smiling Lombardo welcomed him. King asked if he was ready to kick ass. When he met Hanneman, the guitarist was sitting on a couch, watching TV.

  “Hi, Paul Bostaph, great to meet you,” the drummer said.

  Hanneman looked in Bostaph’s general direction, grunted, and turned his attention back to the TV. The conversation was over.

  “After I got to know Jeff, it became comedic to me, because he didn’t realize he did it,” Bostaph told Blakk. “Years later [I said] ‘Remember when you met me?’… When I told him, he couldn’t believe it.... It was really funny, and it was indicative of Jeff’s sense of humor, because back then they probably auditioned so many guys, I was just another drummer coming through, to him…. After that initial meeting, I thought, ‘That guy’s not really nice.’ But that was so not him.”

  After the successful audition, Hanneman warmed up to the new guy. When the band arrived in Europe for their first shows together, they boarded a Polish airline’s plane. The decrepit jet looked like it had been built in the 1950s. Hanneman didn’t like flying. Neither did Bostaph. The old vehicle didn’t make put either of them at ease. Hanneman defused the tension and welcomed the new drummer into the inner circle by busting his chops.

  The guitarist took a seat next to Bostaph.

  “We’re going to die,” said Hanneman, a devilish, playful tone in his voice. “We’re going to die!”28-2

  Two years after Bostaph — pronounced “BO-staff” — joined the band, the first of Slayer’s two true 1990s albums arrived.

  Bostaph, a monster in his own right, lacks a certain subtlety on the record. But he immediately one-upped Lombardo by scoring a writing credi
t on the title track, which splits the lyrics credits between all four members.

  For Slayer’s sixth full album, the trilogy team had broken up. Carroll did not return for artwork. Instead, Wes Benscoter composed a bony new variation on the Slayer pentagram of swords, incorporating parts of a humanoid skeleton and fanged skull that fall in a midground between H.R. Giger, H.P. Lovecraft, and standard-issue metal imagery.

  Wallace was also out. He mixed Sepultura’s 1991 album Arise, and after he worked with competition, King didn’t want to share him.

  Hit City West was also abandoned in favor of two California Studios: Oceanway in L.A. and the renowned Sound City in Van Nuys. In 1991, Rubin’s work on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ BloodSugarSexMagic had elevated him to a new, even higher level of superstardom. And since then, he hadn’t spent much time on the street level.