Slayer

Slayer formed in Huntington Park, California, in 1981, when guitarist Kerry King met fellow guitarist Jeff Hanneman at an audition. The two recruited Chilean-born bassist and vocalist Tom Araya and drummer Dave Lombardo, assembling a lineup that would become one of the most feared and imitated in heavy music. Starting out playing Iron Maiden and Judas Priest covers in Southern California clubs, the band quickly sharpened into something faster, uglier and more menacing than anything around it, and its 1983 Metal Blade debut Show No Mercy announced a group determined to outrun and out-blaspheme its peers. Alongside Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax, Slayer became one of thrash metal's "Big Four", the quartet of American bands that dragged extreme music from tape-trading underground circles into arenas and, eventually, festival headline slots played together decades later. The band's defining statement arrived in 1986. Reign in Blood, produced by Rick Rubin and released through Def Jam, compressed ten songs into roughly twenty-nine minutes of relentless tempo, atonal soloing and clipped, brutal precision. Bookended by "Angel of Death" and "Raining Blood", it is routinely described as the most influential extreme metal album ever made, a record whose speed and severity set the template for death metal, black metal and countless bands that followed. Slayer refused to soften afterward: South of Heaven (1988) slowed the tempos to increase the menace, and Seasons in the Abyss (1990) balanced the two approaches, completing what many consider an untouchable run of four albums. Slayer's lyrics were deliberately confrontational, dwelling on war, Nazi atrocities, serial killers, religion and the occult. "Angel of Death", Hanneman's account of Josef Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz, provoked accusations of Nazi sympathy that the band always rejected, insisting the songs were journalistic rather than endorsing. Later records such as Christ Illusion (2006) drew protests and were withdrawn from sale in India, while the God Hates Us All era kept the band a fixture of censorship debates. Controversy proved inseparable from the band's identity. Lineup turbulence was constant. Lombardo left in 1986, returned, left again in 1992, returned in 2001 and was finally dismissed in 2013 amid a pay dispute, with Paul Bostaph and briefly Jon Dette filling the seat. In early 2011 Hanneman contracted necrotising fasciitis, reportedly from a spider bite, which destroyed tissue in his right arm and required skin grafts and a long rehabilitation. Exodus guitarist Gary Holt stepped in as a touring replacement, and Hanneman played only one more show with Slayer. He died of alcohol-related liver failure on 2 May 2013 at the age of 49. Holt became a full member and played on Repentless (2015), the band's twelfth and, so far, final studio album. In January 2018 Slayer announced a farewell tour, and after roughly 150 shows across two years, they played what was billed as their last concert at The Forum in Inglewood, California, on 30 November 2019. The retirement did not hold. In February 2024 the band announced reunion appearances at Riot Fest in Chicago and Aftershock in Sacramento, and has since played a limited run of festival and headline dates, including Black Sabbath's Back to the Beginning farewell in 2025.