After Slayer dropped the makeup, the band replaced it with one of the era’s iconic metal artifacts. From clubs to arenas, the wristbands and belts were standard-issue metal fashion accessories at the time. Some had rounded metal studs, most often a silver color on a cheaper metal. Some were dense with short, pointy pyramids. King decided to take it further.
He created his own extreme armband, pounding 250 3.5-inch nails through a forearm-length piece of leather. Over 30 years later, Slayer’s vests and big hair may look suspect, but King’s armband still gives the band a dangerous edge. (King later hand-made more replicas and sold them via his apparel business, KFK Industries, short for “Kerry Fucking King.”)
That month, Slayer thrashed the Bay repeatedly. Early in the month, they played Ruthie’s in Berkeley and the Real Rock Club in Oakland. Later, they returned for a three-night swing through Berkeley and San Francisco, returning to the Keystone, followed by shows at Ruthie’s and Wolfgang’s.
Metallica were so popular in the exploding San Francisco scene that they relocated there. Slayer bonded with the locals too, but never considered making the move.
“It worked for Metallica, but I can’t see myself relocating because the scene’s hotter,” explained King. “I can drive up in seven, eight hours on the weekend. Drive up, hang out for a few days, drive back…. Metallica, they’re a fuckin’ Southern California band. It always bothers me, ‘Oh, they’re from San Francisco.’ I’m like ‘No they’re not, I played the Woodstock with them when they were in Norwalk.’”
The visiting team’s 45-minute sets made a hell of an impression. During that first stand at the Keystone, before Slayer took the stage, the band played a four-minute intro tape of eerie music that sounded like John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. In the dark, Araya took the stage and pumped up the audience: “You guys wanna hear some heavy fuckin’ metal? Alright, let’s go crazy!”11-1
Minutes later — though it felt like forever in the darkness — the band appeared in an orb of light on the stage, storming into “Evil Has No Boundaries,” raging in full leather, the bastard sons of Judas Priest, ready claim metal for a new generation. Araya was on fire through the show, hitting the high-pitched screams just as they appear on the early albums.
At the end of “The Antichrist,” a wound-up headbanger squeezed from the front row onto the stage, with the aid of a bouncer. The denim-clad hellion did an abrupt 180-degree turn and leapt into the crowd.
Front-row heshers who caught a knee in the head learned to get used to it. Stage-diving quickly became a convention at shows, and the new phenomenon rapidly escalated. Harald Oimoen and Brian Lew’s essential Murder in the Front Row: Shots from the Bay Area Thrash Metal Epicenter presents photos of more longhairs stage-diving at Ruthie’s in Berkeley in late January 1984. As Slayer developed a distinct sound, its live shows redefined the experience of a metal show. As new material entered the set, fans began reacting in different ways.
Gallery 1:
Slayer Killing It, Photos by Harald O
Slayer, 1984. At the atmospheric Ruthie’s Inn, Berkeley, CA. Hanneman out front, King screaming his way to the foreground, a howling Lombardo pushed to the side, Araya in the background, teeth bared. Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Live at Ruthie’s, 1984. Headbanging in unison, like their
heavy metal heroes in Judas Priest. By Harald Oimoen.
Kerry King: thrashing it up on the West Coast.
Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Slayer: Living the life.
Photo by Harald Oimoen.
A wild-eyed Lombardo in action.
Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Lombardo, drumming his way to the next level.
Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Even in the early days, Lombardo could barely be contained.
Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Rare foto (sic) collage from the Stone, San Francisco, 1984. By Harald Oimoen.
King on Hanneman: “We were just like the same person.” By Harald Oimoen.
King and two dark towers of amps. Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Shining steel, black leather: King dressed for battle at the
Kabuki Theatre, San Francisco. 1985. Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Hanneman. Representing New York Hardcore on the West Coast: Note the Agnostic Front T-shirt. Hanneman, who once shaved his head, was the first of the frontline to outgrow the hell-bent-for-leather look. Photo by Harald Oimoen.
At the Kabuki, brothers in arms. 1985. King and Kirk Hammett, whom Metallica poached from Exodus, leaving future Slayer guitarist Gary Holt to hold the frontline in the oldest of the Significant Seven thrash bands. King on Exodus: “I think Metallica took the wrong dude. Gary Holt’s bad-ass. And that’s not to say Kirk Hammett isn’t.” Photo by Harald Oimoen.
Metal fans like Hanneman had stumbled across hardcore bands like TSOL at parties, bought their records, and followed them to punk shows, where they discovered full-scale slamdancing.
“In the beginning, Dave and Jeff were into punk, and I hated it,” King told Guitar World in 1995. “I think that’s what made Slayer what it was — they were listening to punk, and I was listening to Judas Priest. The reason I didn’t like punk was that I was really into singers like [Judas Priest’s] Rob Halford, and I couldn’t get into punk vocals…. Now I’m the punk guy in the band.”11-2
Slamming and stagediving were old news to punks, but punk energy was still new to most metalheads — most of whom, at best, still regarded hardcore kids as junkie cousins, distant members of the family at best, certainly not brothers in the underground scene. But moshing stirred the melting pot.
Whether inspired by punks or provoked by Lombardo, pioneering crossover fans brought the slam to Slayer. At metal concerts, the floor in front of the stage had traditionally been filled with furiously banging heads, hair waving back and forth, fists pumping in the air. With Lombardo pushing 200 beats per minute, Slayer was so exciting that banging your head wasn’t enough. In Southern California, Slayer is the band that fully cracked the crowds open.
“I can tell you the first song where a stage dive and a pit broke out,” recalled Hoglan. “That was during ‘Necrophiliac,’ I think they were playing somewhere in South Gate, or maybe Pomona. This would have been ’84. Tom was like, ‘This is the first time we’ve ever played this song. It’s called ‘Necrophiliac.’ And he had the very same rap about the maggots crunching in the teeth.
“A dude jumps on stage, dives off, starts a little pit, and the crowd didn’t know what to do,” says Hoglan. “The crowd was very shocked, like ‘What is this guy doing?’ And people wanted to beat him up for bumping into them. And I’d been to every single Slayer show and all the Dark Angel shows and all the Hirax shows, and Abattoir, and Bloodlust, and nobody had busted out with a pit before.”
(As far as I could discern, “Necrophliac” made its live debut at Madame Wong’s in L.A., March 2, 1984; Hoglan passed on follow-up requests to identify the exact date. He stages spoken-word/drum clinic sessions called The Gene Hoglan Experience, in which he answers questions from the audience. If you see him, ask.)
Between January and June 1984, Slayer had played around 30 shows all over California. Pits spread through the Golden State like wildfire. In those months, the stage-diving, elbow-throwing, circle-pitting crowds became a permanent part of the concertgoing experience. Worlds collided and combined later in the year, when Slayer played shows with Suicidal Tendencies.
Technically, Suicidal was a hardcore band, but the group was the center of a self-contained scene that the collective Southern California punk scene hated until crossover kings became undeniable. Though Slayer and Suicidal were not major influences on each other, their connections were significant.
Hanneman was best buds with Rocky George, the black Suicidal guitarist known for wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates ballcap. The jazz-influenced George coached along Hanneman’s nontraditional playing style. They were bandmates briefly.
In 1984, George joined Hanneman and Lombardo in P
ap Smear, a punk side project. The group recorded a demo with Hanneman writing the songs and singing them. Slayer rerecorded two of the tunes — “Can’t Stand You” and “Ddamm” (a play on the parents group Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) — for 1996’s punk covers album, Undisputed Attitude. “DDAMM” is an archetypal hardcore jam about bad boys running wild, but the songs aren’t standouts in that set.
Pap Smear was still going in 1986, when Slayer joined Def Jam. Rubin, the band’s shepherd into the larger rock world, sensed some potential in the group, if only the potential for disruption. Rubin, always the student of rock history, urged Hanneman and Lombardo to break up the band because spinoff projects tend to wreck the mothership. They relented.
(Lombardo is the only member of the original unholy four with a real body of work outside the group; Araya has written acoustic material, but never released it. He cameo’d on Alice in Chains’ grunge classic Dirt in 1992. In 2000, he quoted “Criminally Insane” in a duet with Max Cavalera on Soulfly’s “Terrorist.” And he recorded a cover of Black Flag’s “Revenge” with the Rollins Band in 2002. King, like Metallica’s James Hetfield, has turned in a series of guest appearances over the years: He soloed on Pantera’s “Goddamn Electric,” Sum 41’s “What We’re All About,” Witchery’s “Witchkrieg,” and Rob Zombie’s “Dead Girl Superstar.” In 1987, King and future Metallica bassist Jason Newsted made a guest appearance during a Sacred Reich set, helping cover for a sick Phil Rind at Phoenix’s Mason Jar club. Hanneman only recorded Pap Smear demos.)
Rubin came to Slayer through a Suicidal connection.
Araya had popped up in Suicidal’s classic video “Institutionalized” in 1983, popping up at the :35 second mark, shoving singer Mike Muir mid-monologue. (King also appears in the clip; during a concert scene, a longhair with a pentagram shirt is in the front row, but George has said he appears toward the back.)11-3
The video was co-directed by the album’s producer, Glen E. Friedman. Friedman, also a renowned photographer, would later take iconic pictures of the Beastie Boys, Fugazi, Public Enemy, and Slayer. In 1986, when producer Rubin landed in L.A. in search of Slayer, Friedman would deliver him to Tom’s garage.
For a time, Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies co-existed on the same stages. In August 1984, a four-day fest at Berkeley’s Aquatic Park featured a harder-rock day that became known as “Day in the Dirty,” with Slayer, Suicidal, Exodus, and others on the bill.
“We headlined the metal day,” recalled Muir. “There was [usually] no love for the punk thing. A lot of those people were more accepting, and they’d never heard anything [punk] that they really liked. And we took it to another level, and people saw that and accepted it for what it was.”
A month later, Suicidal opened a show Reseda Country Club in the San Fernando Valley11-4, and Muir introduced the headliners as “Suicidal Slayer.”11-5 They were one of the few opening acts that ever went over well with a Slayer crowd.
“If you’ve got all that Satan stuff, you can’t really be prejudicial against Suicidal,” reflects Muir. “I think a lot of it was that we were the first ones that were playing leads, and it stuck out. And I heard a lot of people say, ‘Dude, I wasn’t into punk, but it was just cuz I didn’t like any of the stuff. But when I saw you and heard the Suicidal, I could see what you guys were doing.’”
It’s also worth contrasting the bands’ relationship with their fans. ST were part of their mob. Slayer existed on their own plane.
“Suicidal Tendencies had an entourage,” recalled De Pena. “Slayer never needed that. Slayer just had rabid fuckin’ fans. The word just spread, and everybody loved them. The people that hated them were pussies anyway, so no one cared.”
Slayer seemed to materialize for shows, whip the crowd into a hellstorm, and disappear back into the nether realms. A Slayer gig was the only place you were likely to see all four members of the band together. The band didn’t even drink at the bar before shows. Gigs were all business. And the members were never more social then they needed to be.
“We don’t really like hanging out with anybody,” said Araya. “Me and Jeff hung out quite a lot for a bit. And Jeff and Kerry hung out too.”
King said he never looked at the clubs as an opportunity to socialize or network: “It’s like: Get up there, just bust balls, and say ‘See ya.’”
At that point in its evolution, the very definition of metal was up for grabs. Suicidal and late-period Black Flag were being hailed as “the new metal.” In punk journal Maximumrocknroll, Metallica visual artist Pushead described Suicidal’s self-titled debut "blistering rough-arsed metal thrash.”11-6
It was a sudden sea change from just a few years ago, when punks couldn’t be bothered with metal, and few music fans listened to both.
“I don’t remember anybody doing it,” recalls D.R.I. singer Kurt Brecht. “[In 1982, 1983] when we first started playing shows in San Francisco, there was the Stone, that was across the street from Mabuhay Gardens. So we’d stand on one side of the street to see a punk rock show, and on the other side of the street, there’d be a line to go see Metallica or something. And that’s right on the other side of Broadway. They’d be throwing stuff at each other, and there were no longhairs on our side, and no punks on their side. It was just completely segregated. And it was pretty integrated by ’86 or ’87.”
Adds Dan Lilker, “It would be hard to talk about thrash metal as a complete entity without talking about the influence of hardcore.”
The overlapping punk and metal scenes spawned the crossover movement, which enveloped next-generation bands like Cryptic Slaughter and Crumbsuckers, as well as reconstituted hardcore outfits like D.R.I. and Dr. Know. But Slayer’s epic shredding made it clear: There was a huge difference between going metal (a pejorative term applied to punk bands who slowed down and added hesher signifiers like solos) and being metal.
By 1985, pits were commonplace. The Venom/Slayer/Exodus show at the Hollywood Palladium — capacity just under 4,000 — saw three simultaneous pits break out over the venue’s vast floor, surprising nobody.
Slayer shows weren’t the only incidents of primal metal moshing. Megadeth and Metallica had comparable intensity, but they never gigged with A-list hardcore bands and their ready-to-slam crowds. Slayer shows at the time might have been unpredictable, but fans always knew what to expect, and the band always delivered it: chaos.
Chapter 12:
Undead Live & Live Undead
As Slayer’s sound grew bigger, so did their crowds. By mid 1984, the band was edging its way toward 1,000+ capacity clubs and auditoriums like Seattle’s Mountaineers (also known as the Norway Center).
In October 1984, Slayer truly took the show on the road. A crew of seven stuffed themselves into Tom’s bronze Camaro, with gear in a 15-foot U-Haul truck rolling behind as they bounced all over the country — and beyond. The personnel on hand were the band, Goodman, lighting technician Kevin Reed, and all-purpose tech John Araya. (Over the years, the younger Araya would hone his craft as Hanneman’s guitar tech, and even worked for Lou Reed in the late 1990s.) Goodman, 21, was able to take the trip because he had two weeks of paid vacation from his union job at a grocery store.
The drummer took a break of sorts, too.
“He gave me a promise ring the night before his first tour,” recalled Teresa in the Lombardo’s divorce documents, “and the very next day he had sex with a stranger and broke my heart. Petitioner [Dave Lombardo] promised me he would never do this again, but he did time and time again.” 12-1
(Lombardo declined to address Teresa’s claim, but offered, “Reading these allegations, the only truth I see is: We are divorced. That is accurate. Period.”)
To start, the band worked its way up the West Coast, with a stop at the Stone in San Francisco. In Portland, Slayer were scheduled to have the honor of opening Mercyful Fate’s first U.S. show, at the Starry Night club. Unfortunately, the Danes’ gear was held up in customs. The show was pushed back two days, and went on without S
layer12-2. The California band hit the city anyway, for a couple photo opportunities.
With the show postponed, Mercyful Fate still went through with an in-store appearance. Slayer stopped by and had pictures taken, smiling beside their heroes. And King had some pen pal-tape trader friends in the city that he had planned on seeing.
“We stopped in Portland basically to sign autographs for these kids and to take pictures with them,” recalled Goodman.
Slayer’s first real tour — and very lives — nearly ended in Montana, en route to Canada. The caravan was speeding down a highway in the dark. Kerry took the wheel and put in a demo tape of Exodus’ Bonded by Blood. Zooming down the freeway at cruising velocity, the Camaro hit a patch of black ice and spun out, turning in multiple circles before lodging on the side of the road, firmly stuck in the gravel.
Everyone unpacked, checked, and exchanged a round of “Are you OK?” Tom took a step on the ice and fell on his ass. Everyone laughed, temporarily dispelling the tension. They were OK. They were also stranded. As they spun toward oblivion, the U-Haul had continued barreling down the road, unaware of near-calamity unspooling behind them.
Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. Page 8