Tom Araya — Tomás Enrique Araya Díaz, born in Viña del Mar, Chile, on 6 June 1961 — has been Slayer's singer and bassist since the band was founded in 1981, and is one of the few Latin Americans fronting a central band of extreme metal. He emigrated with his family to California as a child and was working as a respiratory therapy technician in a hospital when Slayer began — by the band's own account it was his salary that financed the recording of Reign in Blood. His voice is what makes Slayer's lyrics intelligible. In a repertoire of fast riffs and continuous drumming he does not scream indistinctly: he articulates every word, even at extreme tempos, so that the texts about war, violence and death reach the listener instead of dissolving into noise. It is a deliberate choice, and it explains why "Angel of Death" and "Raining Blood" caused so much controversy — people understood what was being said. Combining voice and bass on tracks played at that speed is a considerable technical demand, and he did it for nearly forty years. Cervical spine problems, aggravated by decades of headbanging, required surgery in 2010 and forced him to stand almost motionless onstage afterwards. Slayer ended its activity in 2019 with a farewell tour.
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