Ex-SLAYER Drummer DAVE LOMBARDO: JEFF HANNEMAN 'Definitely Goes Through My Mind All The Time'

Former SLAYER and current PHILM drummer Dave Lombardo was recently interviewed by Metal Wani's William Richards. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether he still thinks about late SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman and whether he has any memories of Jeff writing the song "Piano Wire", which appears on the band's new album, "Repentless":

"I have to listen to the melody, listen to the song itself. But, yeah, he definitely goes through my mind all the time. You know, your fellow musicians… Another singer that I worked with in GRIP INC., Gus Chambers, he's gone through my mind lately, because I've been listening to some of the music and admiring the voice that he had. With Jeff, it's the same thing — he goes through my mind, whether it's the sound of his laugh to his jokes to his music. So, yeah, it happens."

On what he thinks is missing in modern metal drummers:

"Feel is the most important, I think, element in drumming. It's good to be metronomically correct when you're playing — like you're just on point, like a drum machine — but you kind of have to learn how to weave in and out of the tempo: slow it down, play behind the beat, play ahead of it, but never off; it's just your approach, your execution. That, I think, is one of the most important things. And also what in a lot of ways has been great for the recording industry, but also has damaged, I think, the approach that drummers have to drumming and thinking that it should be put through processors to align and to fix, when all that should be done in rehearsal with the band. In a lot of ways, it benefits, but in a lot of ways, I think it has kept these up-and-coming drummers to really try to master the beats and a lot of them relied on computers, and so their performances lack live."

On whether there was ever a moment when he first started playing drums that he realized that he was just a lot better than everybody else:

"I always felt I was a little different, because other drummers… I don't know what period of my life… I think it probably started when I was like in fourth grade — I don't know; I could have been nine years old or something — and when I was taught a drum beat by my teacher and I played it, but then immediately after learning it, I made it a lot faster than how he taught us; I just sped it up I don't know how many times, and he was kind of impressed. But then it went from there to when I first got my drum set and I was hanging out with other drummers that I noticed my drum rolls were different. It was because I was left-handed and self-taught, so I developed my own way of playing drums, which were unorthodox, you know."

Lombardo was effectively fired from SLAYER after sitting out the band's Australian tour in February/March 2013 due to a contract dispute with the other members of the group. He has since been replaced by Paul Bostaph, who was previously SLAYER's drummer from 1992 until 2001 and recorded four albums with the band.

PHILM released its sophomore album, "Fire From The Evening Sun", on September 16, 2014 (one day earlier internationally) via UDR. The band's lineup is completed by guitarist/vocalist Gerry Paul Nestler (CIVIL DEFIANCE),and bassist Francisco "Pancho" Eduardo Tomaselli (WAR).