Add producer Rick Rubin and engineer Andy Wallace to the team, and that makes a lucky six.
Slayer Guitarist Jeff Hanneman
The de facto title track of Reign in Blood began in one of Jeff Hanneman’s nightmares. The guitarist is a ball-buster, a boozer, and a Grammy-winner. He’s the principle creative force behind the signature moments from Slayer’s signature album.
Like Snoop Dogg and Sublime, Hanneman hails from Long Beach. The popular version of Slayer history says he’s from Huntington Beach, though he isn’t. He was Slayer’s first punk enthusiast, so it’s natural to link him to the home of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks.
“At the time, it was pretty middle-class, white, whatever, nothing exciting,” says Hanneman, reflecting on the LBC. “I was the last of five kids, so my life was pretty…. My parents didn’t even bother with me. As long as I wasn’t doing anything wrong, ‘Ah, whatever, he’s fine.’ I think [Slayer] were all basically middle class children.”
Hanneman had an unusual tour guide to the metal. Real metal wasn’t on the radio often, and you had to learn about it from someone or somewhere. If you wanted more, you had to do some digging—and that arcane knowledge often came from the older local headbangers at school, work, or the record store. Hanneman didn’t discover it through the hesher network.
“My older sister Mary got me into Black Sabbath,” says Hanneman. “She was the 60s hippie-type girl, partying, into metal. And I think I was eight, nine years old, hanging out at her house. She was playing Black Sabbath. ‘Who the hell is this? This is good.’ ‘You like this? I’ve got some more crazy stuff …’”
Hanneman became his peer group’s metal evangelist, telling everyone the good news about Tony Iommi, whether they wanted to hear it or not.
“I rub off on people,” says Hanneman. “Like, ‘Listen to it. No, listen to it.’ I’m very forceful. If I’m into something, I make everybody into it. Ask Kerry about that.”
King, a fan of classic rock’s fretwork and soaring vocals, hated punk until Hanneman twisted his ear with D.R.I.’s Dealing with It in 1985. The two met when King was auditioning for a sub-Sabbath rock group called Ledger. On the way out of the practice space, King heard Hanneman working on some familiar tunes, and decided he’d rather be in a band with that guy instead.
King and Hanneman both play lead and rhythm, rejecting the traditional roles of star and backup player. Casual fans can’t tell their playing apart. Aficionados don’t even bother: in 2004, Guitar World ranked the team as number 10 on its list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Guitarists of All Time.
“Kerry and Jeff have their total own sound,” says Exodus guitarist Gary Holt. “It’s recognizable immediately. You know it when you hear it: It’s Slayer. It’s all about mayhem and chaos. They unabashedly go out and do their thing.”
Hanneman didn’t grow up dreaming of being a guitar hero; he just felt something calling him to the stage.
“I knew I was going to be in a band,” says Hanneman. “I didn’t know why. I didn’t sing. I didn’t play an instrument.”
Hanneman was a good student who became bored with school when booze, weed, and sex became options. He grew up listening to Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Once he reached Jordan High, hardcore punk rock put the zap on his head.
With strands of gray in his hair and beard, Hanneman now looks like a veteran Norse warrior. When Reign in Blood was released, it would catch heat for “Angel of Death,” the album’s opening cut, a song about Nazi Josef Mengele. With blond hair and blue eyes, Hanneman took the brunt of it, though he wasn’t a Nazi or white supremacist. Around Reign in Blood, he would become best buds with Rocky George, Suicidal Tendencies’ black guitarist. When Rick Rubin came calling, Hanneman was the only member of Slayer familiar with his rap work. But the guitarist did have some knowledge of the Third Reich.
Hanneman hails from a somewhat military family. His two brothers had served in Vietnam, and his father had fought in World War II. Mr. Hanneman brought back Nazi gear as souvenirs. The shiny relics and sharp uniforms caught Hanneman’s eye.
By high school, Hanneman preferred raging over history. At parties, he would hone his drinking skills. He was the charter member of Slayer’s O.A. Club, short for “Obnoxious Asshole.” Hanneman was the joker of the group—assuming that you could tolerate his needling as joking. No one was safe, not then, not later.
“We’re at a party,” recalls former Overkill drummer Rat Skates. “And [Metallica guitarist] Kirk Hammett is there. And all night long, Jeff kept badgering him, like, ‘Hey, Captain Kirk! Captain Kirk!’”
The members of Slayer would use O.A. as an adjective, noun, and verb. Making the rounds for Reign in Blood, Hanneman would O.A. Adam Bomb, a hotly tipped hard-rock guitarist and bandleader.
Slayer met Rick Rubin through Scott Koenig, then a record-store clerk who already knew the band from the inner circles of New York’s rock clubs. Once Slayer had signed to Def Jam, when the group were in New York, Koenig was assigned to keep an eye on the gnarly prankster. One night, Koenig and Hanneman found themselves at an Adam Bomb show.
“Jeff gets all drunk,” recalls Koenig. “And he’s like, ‘That guy’s fuckin’ really good. Take me backstage, I want to meet him.’”
Backstage, Hanneman cut a swath through a small crowd of poodleheads, barging his way to the deli tray. Holding a beer in one hand, he shoved cold cuts into his mouth with the other. The diminutive Bomb guessed Hanneman must be somebody, and introduced himself.
“He’s looking terrified,” says Koenig. “And he’s like, ‘Hey, what’s up? My name’s Adam. What’s yours?’ And [Hanneman] takes a piece of American cheese, smashes it on Adam’s forehead, and says, ‘So you’re the big cheese around here!’”
Bomb reportedly took the cheese incident well; maybe he could sense a fellow natural-born shredder. Hanneman had only been playing a month when he met King. With King and George’s guidance, Hanneman developed into a formidable wielder of the axe. More than anyone else in the group, Hanneman’s lack of formal music training defines his style.
“Jeff plays notes that are just angry to be together,” says King. “He experiments, just trying to sound different, trying to do something that’s never been done before, maybe. He never had lessons, so he’s not poisoned by what you’re supposed to think.”
What Hanneman does think is something of a mystery. He wrote just over half of Reign in Blood, the band’s most highly regarded album. At the time of the record, he and Araya were the two most-interviewed members of the band. He’s since become something of a recluse—in matters concerning the band, at least. He keeps some space from his coworkers, too.
In our interview, Hanneman casually mentions that his sister Mary—the one who turned him on to metal—died in a car crash. When asked how the death affected his friend, King says it’s the first he’s heard of it. And he’s not surprised.
“Jeff’s pretty hard-headed,” says King.
It’s hard to tell what goes on in Hanneman’s head, but this much we know: One night, he had a dream about murder most foul. And he would share that chilling episode with King. The bad dream ushered in a good era.
“He was really coming into his own,” says King, reflecting on the Reign period. “I think that was probably Jeff’s heyday.”
Drummer Dave Lombardo
Drummer Dave Lombardo’s past and future were always as important to him as his present in Slayer—to an outside perspective, maybe more so. Lombardo is the only member of the original to lineup to leave the band. And the drummer was the source of the camp’s only major internal conflict during the Reign in Blood period (and after). Though he’s since rejoined. Twice.
Lombardo met his wife, Teresa, at one of Slayer’s first gigs. She came along for Lombardo’s ride from obscurity to renown—much to the rest of the band’s chagrin. With Reign in Blood, Slayer was finally big enough to rent a tour bus. Lombardo, freshly married, decided to bring his wife along, despite a band policy prohibiting non-p
ersonnel. Escalating tension ensued, and Lombardo quit after the first leg of the U.S. tour, only to return three months later. Slayer are all from nuclear families. Lombardo’s family instincts run on nuclear power.
Lombardo was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1965. He came to American in 1967, with his parents, two older brothers, and an older sister. The Lombardos left behind Cuba, but not its culture. Percolating Latin rhythms are still important to one of extreme music’s top drummers, a pioneer of the chest-pounding double-bass-drum roll.
“Cuban music is a big part of my everyday life,” says Lombardo. “I listen to it habitually, religiously, all the time. I play it for my kids. I tell them, ‘I play drums because this is in my blood.’ I try to teach them as much as I can about where their dad is from culturally, and what songs inspire him. Even if it’s not Cuban music. Say it’s industrial music. Say it’s a Ministry record. I’ll tell them why it’s good.”
Even at Slayer’s peak, family was Lombardo’s top priority. In 1992, the birth of his first child would precipitate his second departure from the band. Over that decade-long hiatus, the Lombardos would have two more children. Sitting in the back of a tour bus, with dark mid-length hair and black wire-rim glasses, he talks like a mild suburban dad who can firmly dress you down without shouting.
In L.A., his brothers would fill the house with music by Ike & Tina Turner, War, and Mitch Ryder. Dave’s brother Danny drummed, and he gave Lombardo the bug. When Dave was a kid, Danny would set up a series of boxes in the living room, in front of their parents’ stereo, a huge piece of furniture the size of a dresser. Then he’d spin a record like the Rolling Stones’ Flowers, put pencils in Dave’s hands, point him at the improvised percussion set, and tell him, “Play.”7
L.A. had enough Cuban culture that his father never had to learn more than a few words of English. The Lombardos would take the kids to family-friendly parties. At social clubs like Holguinro, big bands with horn sections would make the L.A. parties like Havana nights, a frenzy of rumba and salsa. Much to his mother’s concern, Dave didn’t dance. For Lombardo, the action wasn’t on the dancefloor. He’d disappear backstage, find an empty stool, and take notes on the drummers.
Some rock crept into Cuban clubs like La Cofradia, where Lombardo once saw a band with a magnetic bassist he’d later recognize as Tom Araya. When groups would roll in a boulder like Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Takin’ Care of Business,” the dancefloor action would stop, but Lombardo’s blood would rise. In 1979, in ninth grade, he apprenticed as an assistant disco DJ, but he was torn between volume and rhythm. Volume started winning.
“There was this tug of war inside of me,” says Lombardo. “One side of me was listening to Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Cream. But culturally, my parents and the people my parents were hanging out with were into disco and style and the hair and the clothes. Maybe it was my rebellion. But whatever it was, Cuban music and disco was on the backburner.”
In his early teens, Lombardo continued his low-tech musical education. He learned to play on his bed, bashing out Zeppelin songs on pillows and books. By the time he had a Tama kit, he’d developed his own ideas about how to attack a set. Lombardo would replace a drum beat’s high-hat/bass drum pattern, hitting the bass drum instead of the high hat, instantly making songs like Iron Maiden’s “Genghis Khan” twice as heavy. Working the bass drum, he was instinctively gravitating toward one of metal’s biggest musical innovations: double-bass kicks as a major indoor sport.
“There were some drummers that were playing double bass, but weren’t interpreting it the way I wanted to play double bass,” recalls Lombardo. “And at the time, I heard Philthy from Mötörhead do the song ‘Overkill,’ and I think that was a big crossover point for me on what heavy was, and what made things heavy. It was another element I was able to use to enhance my drum playing.”
As a teen in South Gate High School, he developed a rep as one of the guys in the neighborhood that could really play. Delivering pizzas, he’d find himself at the Araya house. One day, he saw Kerry King in the yard, pulled over, and asked if he was the kid he’d heard about who had all the guitars—and if he wanted to start a band. King said he did.
“I’ve got guys,” King said. “I think we could be pretty cool.”
You don’t become a leading thrash drummer by being calm all the time. The same hyperdrive that made Lombardo an asset behind the kit could make him a liability on the tour bus.
“He’s a caffeine head,” says King. “He’s always ampin’. He can’t sit still. We call him A.D.Dave.”
After leaving Slayer, Lombardo would be the only original member of the group to record more than a song or a solo outside the band. He collaborated on a Vivaldi adaptation with Italian classical musician Lorenzo Arruga. He jammed with DJ Spooky. And played heavy arty noise with Fantômas—an all-star group featuring former Faith No More front-man Mike Patton and Melvins mainman Buzz Osborne. Osborne also found that the family man sometimes required kid gloves.
“Mild wouldn’t be the first thing that came to mind about Dave,” says Osborne. “I’d say he’s the exact opposite of mild. He’s a high-stress-for-no-reason-at-all guy, and I can’t figure it.”
The mixed distinction of being known as one of the world’s greatest thrash drummers may be part of the stress. Over the years, Lombardo has voiced frustration with the limitations of Slayer’s sound.
“[Slayer] would have had the same longevity, and our popularity wouldn’t have gone down that drastically because of a commercial song,” Lombardo told David Konow for Bang Your Head, a history of metal. “If it was cleverly done with Rick Rubin at the helm, we could have written a song that was heavy but would have taken us to the next level.”8
King remembers the drummer keeping his thoughts to himself.
“Jeff and I have this totalitarian my-way-or-the-highway thing,” says King. “If he’d said that, we probably would have been at the bar, laughing at him.”
Lombardo is the most acclaimed musician in the band—yet least involved in the songwriting process. The double-bass break at the climax of Reign in Blood’s first song, “Angel of Death,” would forever establish him as kit-thrashing metal machine.
“I don’t think Dave was happy being the drummer,” says former Def Jam staffer Georges Sulmers, agreeing with Osborne’s assessment. “You look back and think, ‘You caused a lot of drama for nothing. You ended up in the band you didn’t want to be in.’”
Lombardo doesn’t think he’s necessarily Slayer’s best musician, but he’ll concede he might be the best-known.
“One day, [my son] Jeremy came up to me, innocent as he is, ‘Dad, are you really one of the greatest drummers in the world?’” says Lombardo. “I go, ‘No. There’s other drummers that are better, but people think this of me.’ My drumming alone didn’t place me in the position where I am now. A record like Reign in Blood did something for my career.”
Singer-Bassist Tom Araya
Onstage, bathed in green and red light, Tom Araya is a demonic master of ceremonies, a heavy metal horror host like the Cryptkeeper, the Ghoul, or Chilly Billy. Offstage, he’s Slayer’s biggest anomaly. He’s its oldest member. And its most openly religious. Former Megadeth bassist Dave Ellefson calls the singer-bassist “the Geddy Lee of thrash,” but he’s the band’s least-metal music fan. On a tour bus outside Detroit, he pulls back his black mane, exposing a gold hoop in the top of his right ear, calmly nodding. Talking to him feels like you’re hanging with a jazz guitarist. He’s the only member of Slayer who had an alternate career plan.
Like Lombardo, Araya wasn’t born in America. In 1961, he was born in Chile, christened Tomás Enrique Araya. His dad moved to Los Angeles when Araya was five, where he worked, saved money, filled out paperwork, and brought the rest of the family north when he could.
The Catholic Arayas had seven children, and Tom was the middle kid. They brought a small dose of culture with them: some music, a few traditions, mostly food. After band practice, Mrs.
Araya would feed the band and visitors empanas. Unlike Lombardo, Araya was more influenced by the music of California than songs from his homeland.
“Growing up, I listened to 60s radio,” says Araya. “Back then, radio played everything. So all the music that was written influenced me, [what I heard] between the age of ten and eleven, with the riots, what they were written about, how they were written. That’s why I write a lot having to do with a person or something that’s real, as opposed to something that’s made up.”
The singer joined Slayer at twenty-two, and it was his first real exposure to metal. When Reign in Blood was released, he was listening to Springsteen’s Born in the USA and the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill. More recently, he horrified hard-bit legions of Slayer fans by revealing he likes emo band Taking Back Sunday. As most classic-rock fans do, he never put his musical past behind, and he still prefers Creedence and the Doors. Anthrax’s Charlie Benante recalls regular scenes from 1991’s Clash of the Titans tour.
“It was always funny,” says Benante. “After the show, I would hang with Tom, and we would talk about the Beatles, or we would jam on a Beatles song on the acoustic or piano, and just talk about how great the Beatles were.”
One older brother played guitar. Tom picked up bass and started to sing a little, without taking lessons for either. At fifteen, he joined a top 40 cover group called Tradewinds. The band played hits like “Night Fever” at parties and clubs like La Cofradia, where Lombardo saw him play. As the 70s drew to a close, the group started cutting Andy Gibb numbers in favor of more Van Halen. Araya didn’t mind playing the feel-good tunes.
“Everybody has their reasons,” says Araya. “For me, it was just to be in a band and play. This is where you start, you know?”
When Araya graduated from Bell High, his dad told him to go to school or get a job. Tom’s sister said respiratory therapy was a good foot in the door for the medical field. He signed up for a two-year diploma program.
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