Band Of The Week: Slayer!!!!!

Slayer is an American thrash metal band from Huntington Park, California. Slayer was formed in 1981, when guitarist Kerry King met Jeff Hanneman while auditioning for a band. The two recruited bassist and vocalist Tom Araya, who had played with King before in the band Quits. Drummer Dave Lombardo was recruited when he met King delivering a pizza. They started by playing Iron Maiden covers in clubs. At the beginning during their early shows relied on a Satanic image, which featured pentagrams, make-up, spikes, and inverted crosses.


The band was offered to open for Bitch at the Woodstock Club in LA. While performing the band was spotted by Brian Slagel, a former music journalist who had recently founded Metal Blade Records. Impressed with Slayer's performance, Slagel met with the band backstage and asked them to record an original song, "Aggressive Perfector". This gave them their first record deal with Metal Blade. During the the recording of their first album "Show No Mercy". Without a recording budget, the band was forced to self-finance its debut album. Combining the savings of Araya, who was employed as a respiratory therapist, and money borrowed from King's father. The album was rushed into release, hitting shelves three weeks after tracks were completed.
Some of their most famous albums and also the most controversial are "Reign In Blood" which contained their most famous song till today "Raining Blood". Then "South Of Heaven" which was a contrast to their past albums since they had a tempo change to a slower version and also more melodic sounding lyrics, and last but not least their most recent album "Christ Illusion", which up until today is known to be their most controversial album, not only for it's morbid lyrics and their heavy tones.

The band has admitted to have been inspired by bands such as Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax.

Some of the biggest controversies that the band has been blamed for have been being accused of holding Nazi sympathies, due to the band's eagle logo bearing resemblance to the Eagle atop swastika, and the lyrics of "Angel of Death." The lyrics of "Angel of Death" were inspired by the acts of Josef Mengele. Throughout their career, the band members were asked about these accusations, and have stated numerous times they do not condone Nazism and are merely interested in the subject. Slayer's cover of Minor Threat's "Guilty of Being White" raised questions about a possible message of white supremacy in the band's music. The controversy surrounding the cover involved the changing of the refrain "guilty of being white" to "guilty of being right," at the song's ending. When questioned about it Kerry King just laughed and said "people are just too sensitive these days".

Also Slayer fans have been known be deadly to the point of beatings and fights for no reason at concerts to carving of their bodies with the band's name such as the picture below, also up till today there have been 6 deaths at Slayer concerts.





















Here's a video that talks about Slayer fans:



Heres is their most famous song Raining Blood, tell me what you think.