SLAYER: Third Time's Not The Charm For Paris Concert

Tomorrow night's (Wednesday, July 7) SLAYER concert at the Bataclan in Paris, France has been cancelled — reportedly due to voice-related issues experienced by the band's frontman, Tom Araya. This marks the third time the California thrash metal veterans have called off a show in Paris in the last few months.

SLAYER was originally slated to play the French capital in December (see poster and ticket below),but was forced to postpone the concert due to Araya's back problems. A rescheduled March date was also pushed back in order to allow Araya time to recover from his back surgery.

In a recent interview with Ultimate-Guitar.com, Araya stated about his surgery, "I apparently had compressed discs on my neck which caused bone spurs. The compressed discs were causing compression on my nerves that was affecting my left side, and basically that was it. I was in Australia, and that's when I... I mean it was severe pain. I had had a case of pain here and there, but this was non-stop. It got to a point where by the time I got to Japan, I hooked up with a doctor, and was able to make an appointment. As soon as I got home, I went and saw him. I had three discs that were compressed, and they removed them, and put a plate in. I'm fine now."

He added, "[The surgery] entailed them cutting a small little hole in my throat, moving everything to one side, clearing out cartilage in between the discs, putting bone spacers in there, and putting the plate in. That's a two-to-two-and-a-half-hour procedure. Yeah, it was pretty serious."

When asked if his back surgery presented any potential danger where his vocals were concerned, Araya said, "No. That was a concern of mine, and rightly so. He said that it wouldn't affect my vocal cords, and wouldn't affect anything other than moving everything to one side, and having to put everything all back. That discomfort was the only thing I felt. "

Regarding whether his back surgery will affect how often SLAYER performs at concerts, Araya said, "It shouldn't. It shouldn't. Like I said, I just need to build up my strength again and get back to where I was. I don't think it'll affect how often we tour. I think time in itself is a factor; we're not playing as many shows in a row as we used to, which is normal. Now we may do three in a row, as opposed to four to five in a row. . . We're just being sensible. We've been doing that as time has progressed. We've gone from doing five in a row to 'Hey, let's cut that down to four,' and now we're at a point where we've said 'Let's cut that down to three.' Every now and then we'll do an occasional four. That's just being smart (laughs)."