"That’s just what we do. Some

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Slayer really needs no formal introduction. They have been the embodiment of uncompromising thrash metal brutality, rage and genuine evil for 25 years — a band justifiably feared by parents, church officials and moral purists everywhere. And with their rampaging 1986 masterpiece Reign In Blood, perhaps the most vicious 28 minutes ever caught on tape, they set a standard no one else has been able to touch.

And unlike nearly all of their early-era contemporaries — from Metallica and Anthrax to Megadeth and Exodus — Slayer never strayed from their signature style and sound, which continues to influence other bands to this day: no rap-metal shenanigans, no friggin’ horn sections and no bowing to mainstream convention. They may not have sold as many records as some, but Slayer’s integrity has never been in question.

Today, Slayer remain one of the consummate and most formidable live acts in any form of music. Up-and-coming underground bands — from Machine Head and Testament way back when to Arch Enemy and Mastadon — look at playing with Slayer as a rite of passage. Survive a Slayer tour — and the derisive "Slay-er! Slay-er! Slay-er!" chant from the band’s always ravenous, unforgiving audience — and you can survive anything.

With prodigal drummer Dave Lombardo back in the fold, the original Slayer line-up that debuted with 1983’s Show No Mercy with frontman/bassist Tom Araya and guitar tandem Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman are now finishing up work on their first studio album together since 1990’s Seasons In The Abyss and preparing to headline the first Unholy Alliance Tour of the U.S., which kicks off, fittingly, on 6/6/06 in San Diego.

On the phone from said studio, the typically terse King spoke about what it was like to work with the enigmatic Lombardo again, what can be expected from the new album and whether God really does hate us all.

KNAC.COM: I read this morning that you’d just finished the actual recording?

KING: Pretty much. We’re probably 70-75 percent done. Most of the basic recording’s been finished, we just have to put the leads done, work out some of the lyrics and vocals and probably do a little fix-it work. We’ve done all the heavy lifting, I guess you could say.

KNAC.COM: How’s it gone so far?

KING: Pretty good. We usually come in pretty well prepared, and we know what we wanna do, which is make a Slayer album! So there’s not a lot of sitting around trying to figure out what the fuck’ going on. We usually go in and just hammer it out. By the time it’s mixed, we’ll probably be looking about a two months on the studio, which is pretty quick in this day and age.

KNAC.COM: As opposed to Metallica, who’s probably going to be taking up a lot of [producer and label head] Rick Rubin’s time over the next year or two.

KING: That’s just a waste of time, (laughs). I don’t know why anybody does that. I don’t know how much of that kinda shit Rubin will put up with, but guess we’ll see.

KNAC.COM: If that psychiatrist enters the picture again ...

KING: (Laughs) That’s what rehearsals are for. You work out your shit there — at least that’s what we do. You’re already paying that monthly rent, why try to work it out in the studio when you’re paying by the day. They probably don’t have to worry about shit like that, as many albums as they sell, but we do. Rubin’s worked with some pretty "unique" personalities [Johnny Cash, Beastie Boys, Slipknot, Neil Diamond] over the years, so I’m sure he’s up to the challenge, but he’s probably gonna have his hands full with them.

KNAC.COM: Have you seen much of Rubin this time, has he had much to do with this album?

KING: I haven’t seen Rick this entire time, and I don’t expect to.

KNAC.COM: If he’s going to be credited as "executive producer," what does that actually?

KING: For him it means, "I own the record company" (laughs). It’s been pretty much just us and Josh [Abraham], who’s really producing the album.

KNAC.COM: How have things gone with him?

KING: It sounds really good. Josh says it’s one of the best sounding album’s he’s ever done. At the end of the day that’s probably 75 percent what we bring into the studio and the other 25 percent is how he and the engineer get it from where it’s making noise to where it sounds like Slayer. And that takes a lot of skill and technique as well. But we’re not trying anything fruity, it sounds like a damn Slayer record (laughs).

KNAC.COM: That was my next question. As far as the Slayer pantheon goes, would you say it’s more like a God Hates Us All/Seasons kind of record or a South Of Heaven/Diabulos record?

KING: I think it’s definitely got more God Hates flavor to it. But I said before we even started recording what I thought it was going to sound like, which was a mix between God Hates and Seasons, because this is the first time Dave’s recorded with us since Seasons. And that’s probably right about where it is.

KNAC.COM: What’s the big difference between recording with Paul [Bostaph] on drums and recording with Dave?

KING: With Dave, he was the one who was there in the beginning, he created this with us. And now that he’s back, it’s really cool. He’s still really into the music. It flows really good and when he goes into the recording you never know what he’s gonna play. We’ll hear it and we’ll be like "well goddamn! Dave’s making shit up again" (Laughs).

KNAC.COM: Has his work with Apocalyptica and, especially, Fantomas had an effect, do you think?

KING: Probably, because he’s dabbled in some things that we haven’t. So it might bring a different flavor to something by him doing his own thing. It was probably in our best interest that we parted ways when we did, I know it was because we were ready to kill him at that time (laughs). Now that he’s back everyone is over all the issues we had back then and it’s the same band down the line. We’ve all grown up.

KNAC.COM: For a while there the drummer situation was like Spinal Tap.

KING: Yeah, except no one died (laughs). It did seem like that, because Dave left and came back, then left again. The Paul left and came back. But at least we had the stability of having two major drummers, instead of 15. Jon [Dette] was only on board for a little while before Paul came back and Tony [Scaglione] wasn’t there for very long before Lombardo came back the first time.

KNAC.COM: The main songwriting duties seem to slingshot back and forth between you and Jeff. Is this more of a Jeff album, or a Kerry album?

KING: I think I did most of Divine, Jeff did most of Diabulos, I did most of God Hates and I think I did most of this one, too. But Tom and Jeff definitely wrote for this one too, just like with the others that I wrote the majority for.

KNAC.COM: How does that work, is it whoever comes up with the most stuff or the best stuff or is it just who is more inspired to write?

KING: That’s probably it. It’s not who comes up with the most or the best because we pretty much write for the record. There’s no extra songs this time. I’ve got ideas I haven’t finished and Jeff and Tom have some ideas they haven’t finished, but when we get one we feel is done, we just present it and start learning it. If a riff don’t fly it gets taken out before anyone gets too attached to it (laughs).

Me and Jeff have been doing this for a long time and if he says that riff’s not gonna be happening, nine times out of 10 we’ll change it by the end of the week. Or if I think it’s really gonna be cool, I’ll like wait, wait, wait, I’ve got some lyrics that really go with it, just bear me out, and usually he comes around. That happened a lot on the last album. So there is a lot of back and forth no matter who’s actually putting the songs together.

KNAC.COM: How many songs will be on the new album?

KING: As far as I know, there’s gonna be 11, because that’s how many we wrote. And that’s worldwide. Usually we have a couple leftover for the foreign markets, but this time I don’t think we’re going to do anything extra, even cover songs, because we’ve already torn down the drums, we’ve changed studios, we’re working on stitching everything together, so we’d be hard pressed to do anything else.

KNAC.COM: Is there anything that’s dramatically different this time? Or, like you said before, does it just "sound like a Slayer record?

KING: That’s pretty much it. Different ideas, different riffs, but the meat’s still what you think of when you think of Slayer.

KNAC.COM: How about lyrically?

KING: It’s pretty much saying the same thing in a different way (laughs). That’s just what we do. Some people would say a song or two sound like equals to "Disciple." Songs about God and Satan. That’s what we write about.

I think probably the coolest angle is one Jeff did, I’m not sure if Tom helped him or not, but it was Jeff’s idea, it’s a song called "Jihad." It’s more from the other side, the other perspective, not our perspective, of what’s behind this war we’re in now. You see it through the eyes of "the enemy" and what they might be thinking.

KNAC.COM: Steve Earle did something like that about the American kid [John Walker Lindh] who joined the Taliban and was captured in Afghanistan, trying to see things through his eyes, and he got no end of shit for it.

KING: I’m sure we will, too. But it’s just one song and it’s the only one that really has to do with anything like that. No. 1, we don’t want to dwell on it because every band on the planet already has. And No. 2, every other band on the planet came from a certain perspective and we had to come up with a different one, otherwise what’s the different. We’re Slayer, we have to be different. So we said our piece and moved on.

It’s not like we’re trying to promote the other side’s perspective in the war, or their ideology, or whatever you want to call it, but I’m sure some people will see it that way.

KNAC.COM: Kinda like what happened with "Angel of Death" where people were branding you Nazi sympathizers.

KING: Yeah, that was blown out proportion. People thinking they know what it says without really reading it. And that will happen with every record for everybody, because people like to take an opinion without being informed about anything. It’s easier to just shoot your mouth off because the more noise you make the less basis in fact your argument has to be because people are too dumb to recognize the difference.

KNAC.COM: God Hates Us All came out on Sept. 11, 2001. What was your take on that, tragic irony or proof of the album’s title?

KING: My take on it was, "I told you so!" If there was ever any doubt, how could there be now. Everyone has tragedy and that was our first bit of tragedy on that scale in many, many years. If it’s God, if it’s Buddha, whoever the masses have as the basis of their faith, everybody has tragedy. If God is all knowing, if God is all good, then why doesn’t God stop stuff like that?

KNAC.COM: Still, some of the lyrics, especially in "Disciple," "New Faith" and "God Send Death" are so eeriely prophetic, when you read ‘em now it’s spooky.

KING: A lot of that kind of shit was going on before Sept. 11, obviously just nothing of scale. Fundamentalism, extremism, fanaticism, whatever you want to call it was on the rise all over the place, here too, and there were bombings and shit happening everywhere in the name of God, or Allah, or whatever deity people choose to bow down to. My point was religion, God, is the world’s great divider. It preaches love and peace, but it splits people up and sets them against each other, and I reject it all. Like I was saying then, "I got my own philosophy," which is to hate everyone equally.

When you’ve got all these fanatics lining up in this corner and that thinking they’re right and everyone else is wrong, something’s gonna go down. Unfortunately for us, it went down here [on Sept. 11]. And I doubt we’ve seen the last of it.

KNAC.COM: Comforting thought. Going back to "Jihad," is war a prevailing theme on the new album?

KING: To a certain extent. Tom wrote one about the after effects of war called "Eyes of the Insane." I’ve written one that at the moment is called "Flesh Storm." It starts out being about if you’re a soldier and what it’s like to be in the midst of war, but then it changes to the media’s perception of it and how the media sensationalizes everything. It’s kind of cool how it worked out.

KNAC.COM: How about some of the other material?

KING: I have one called "Supremist." Jeff did one called "Black Serenade." There’s another one called "Consfearacy." Then there’s, let’s see, "Cult," "Catalyst," "Catatonic" — a lot of one-word titles (laughs). That’s just about all of them. It’s a pretty good mix of fast, brutal stuff and slower, moodier stuff. It’s pretty intense.

KNAC.COM: This year is the 20th anniversary of Reign In Blood. You did a few "Raining Blood" shows on your last tour two years ago, will you do anything more, or is the celebration over?

KING: I would imagine we did it and it’s time to move on, but never say never. I know Japan never saw it, South America and Australia never saw it. So you never know.

We only did a few of those shows. There was the one in Maine for the DVD, which was a one-off that was done a certain way that we didn’t do when we did those shows on the Jagermeister tour. On the video, it was a different effect where we were literally doused by a bucket right before "Raining Blood," whereas during the tour it was more of a sprinkler system toward the end of the set, and the liquid had to be diluted so it was make through the system. It was better for us too, because that stuff on the DVD was thick like tar and really sticky. My guitar didn’t like it, that was the last time I played it. Right after that, I gave it to the Hard Rock Cafe.

KNAC.COM: When you were recording the "classic" that Reign In Blood would become, did it feel any different than any of your other albums. Was there a certain magic there, or was it like any other Slayer album?

KING: Yeah, it was the same we feel every time. I wish there was more to it than that, I know it sounds boring. But that’s just how we work. With that one, that was the best songs we had. They were the 10, which is why it was so short. At that time, Rick told us if we had 10 songs we had an album, so that’s what we had.

It could be the same thing with this record. These are the songs, the best of the ideas we had. If this record, for some reason, turns into that, 20 years from now you can look back at this and hear us saying, "yeah, it’s just the next record, dude." That’s all there is to it.

KNAC.COM: That album seems to grow more revered as time goes on, it’s quite a phenomenon.

KING: It’s fine by me, it means we must have done something good. I don’t spend much of my life dissecting what people think about this or that, but it is pretty cool that something you did that long ago is still making such an impact. So good for us (laughs).

KNAC.COM: "Raining Blood" even ended up on a South Park episode a little while ago.

KING: Yeah. That was pretty funny. And I’m glad to know Matt and Trey are fans because I think their show is brilliant. It’s too bad the network’s been pussying out on them lately [with the Scientology and Prophet Muhammed episodes]. But it was good to see the song being put to good use, if we can horrify some hippies we’ve done our job.

KNAC.COM: Like you were saying before, you’ve been doing this quite awhile. Have you thought about how much longer you might want to carry this on, or will we be seeing your version of the Rolling Stones "Steel Wheels" tour when you guys are 60?

KING: I hope not. I don’t see how this music would translate that late in the game because it is a workout. I don’t want to come out on some reunion gig where we’re all lethargic and can’t even headbang. That’s part of seeing the show, not just listening to it, not just the lights and the backdrop, but the energy we all deliver on the stage. That’s probably going to have the most bearing on when the band hangs it up, that or if for some reason it becomes unfun, and I’m hoping it stays fun forever.

It just depends how long everyone wants to do it. We’ve got this record pretty much in the bag, I could see us doing one more or maybe two at least. It kind of depends on the cycle, because we haven’t done a record in five years. I don’t want to do that again. I’d like to have another in three, if we can pull it off. But if we keep getting offered tours, it might take that long.

For us, when we go on tour, we drop any new stuff we’re doing to concentrate on the live show. And the types of tours we’ve been doing have been frequent enough, but sporadic enough that is becomes difficult to get much done on new material. We’re always coming up with ideas, I have a lot of ideas that are left over from this record, but we really need to stop completely from touring to be able to work them into songs.

KNAC.COM: Do you have anything special planned for your Unholy Alliance tour? Is it going to be a big production because it’s playing bigger places?

KING: We’re trying to figure all that out now. We’ve been so focused on the record that we haven’t talked that much about the tour. So I don’t know what we’re going to do, but it starts in two months, so we’re gonna have to throw something together pretty quick (laughs).

KNAC.COM: You could always do a Gwar take on your Reign In Blood shows and spray the audience with blood instead of you, or something.

KING: You know, someone already brought that up (laughs). But the problem with anything like that is you always get some clown who’ll complain about his faggoty T-shirt getting messed up, and the less we have to deal with lawyers the better. We get in enough trouble as it is.

In Part 2, frontman Tom Araya offers his take on Slayer’s latest chapter, how many chapters he thinks Slayer has left to write and how sometimes the band really does do it for the money. Read it here