TOM ARAYA On New SLAYER Album: 'People Won't Be Disappointed'

Peter Atkinson of KNAC.COM recently interviewed SLAYER frontman Tom Araya. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

KNAC.COM: It's been five years since the last album, so you obviously were pretty well prepared for this one?

Araya: "We usually rehearse our songs a lot, that's how we know whether we like them or not. There's a lot of time when someone will come in with a song that all of a sudden just disappears. Sometimes I'll ask, 'I wonder what happened to this one?' And they [Kerry and Jeff] will be like, 'Oh, we didn't like it.' 'Ah, OK, I thought there were some good parts in it.' 'Yeah, there were, but overall the song was terrible.' Sometimes they take the good parts and mutate them into another song, so by the time we get in the studio it's all pretty well rehearsed. On this one, we've been working with the material for a few years now. I think we've had it for about three years. But we've done a lot of touring, we've had a lot of opportunities come up. And, I'm not going to lie to you, it was all about money. Money and opportunities, and not only that, they were high-profile opportunities so we figured, 'Fuck it, we'll do this since no one was in any real hurry.' And then [Rick] Rubin [head of American Recordings] got into this distribution thing that was going on, so that allotted us even more time to take advantage of the opportunities that came along. And when it came time to record, I came out and we started demoing stuff and they started fine tuning it and to me everything was sounding really good. We were ready in December, that's when I started coming in so we could demo everything. I thought everything sounded great, it was tight. But then there were the usual delays. And we were trying for a June release date to have it out on the 'magic number' this year."

KNAC.COM: Kerry spoke of "Jihad" as a song that touches upon that belief system, but he also mentioned a song you wrote the lyrics for "Eyes of the Insane" that dealt with the after-effects of the war.

Araya: "Yeah, it was based on an article I read in Texas Monthly about the casualties of war, the soldiers. The article was about how a lot of soldiers are really having a tough time coping with the trauma and all of the shit that they witnessed, basically they get really mental. That song is about that part of the war, and it is a great tragedy and it seems to be neglected. At points in their tour of Iraq, they need help and the military tends to ignore that, they kind of brush it under the mat and hopes it goes away. They try to make everything seem hunky dory and fine and dandy, when in actuality there is a lot of shit going on that people can't handle. There's a lot of soldiers coming home with mental anguish. And the sad part is, we heard about post-traumatic stress after Vietnam and the first Gulf War and the military seems to want to wipe the slate clean with every new war. It's fucked up. This whole issue of Texas Monthly was about the war and the Texas military's involvement with it. It looked at all the services and talked about the good and the bad, it was very 'fair and balanced' (laughs). But it had an article about all of the Texas who had died, and that one article I mentioned about those who have returned from the war really blew my mind. They go and come home missing a few pieces."

KNAC.COM: Kerry mentioned a few other songs, but I'd like to get your take on the rest of the material?

Araya: "The two songs we were just talking about are the only ones that touch on the subject of current events, the recent war. There are some other songs that are loosely based on war, but it could be anywhere at any time. He must have mentioned the song he wrote called 'Flesh Storm'. The title alone says it all with that one. There's a song that we're still feeling that is almost done that Jeff and I have been working with called 'Black Serenade'. And right now there's one other song that needs to be written to that lately I've been trying to come up with some ideas for. But I want to write it first before I start talking about it (laughs). What else did Kerry tell you?"

KNAC.COM: Pretty much what he always seems to say, that they "sound like SLAYER songs."

Araya: "(Laughs) Well, that's about all I can tell you, too. It's a SLAYER record. People won't be disappointed. We're not going to come out with something completely different. And I don't want that to mean that this one sounds just like this, that or the other, but the minute you hear it, you'll recognize it as SLAYER. It encompasses everything we've done. And usually every record encompasses everything we've done, with something new added to it. And this one isn't any different. There's one song that has a new element for a SLAYER record and somebody yesterday was asking, 'Well, what is it?' And I'm not gonna tell you, when you hear it it'll be like, 'Ah, that's what he was talking about.' It's pretty obvious. It's SLAYER, but you'll realize that it's something new for us."

Read the entire interview at KNAC.COM.