Tom Araya - excellent interview in the Austin Chronicle

here 'tis:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:1087014

Quite a few interesting tidbits of information in this article that I didn't know previously.

I like this section:

AC: Slayer's playing Seasons in the Abyss on this tour. How does it sound 20 years later?

TA: It's an amazing album. I think all of our albums are amazing after all these years. Even Show No Mercy. People ask if we ever think of going back and re-recording the older stuff. No. "How 'bout remixing?" Nope. They're really great records for their time, and it's a statement of the time. Why ruin that?

Tom is a smart guy. i always enjoy reading his interviews.

Quote :

There was a time when none of my stuff was being used at all, as far as creativeness and lyrics for music and song. When I won the Grammy, that was the first song that I had written on my own. It was kind of a vindication for me. After that, on this last record, I contributed quite a bit [laughs].

Heh. I have found that the albums with more input from him are my favorites

Seems like a cool guy...

I had no idea he lived in Palistine, thats like less than an hour away. I ride the bike through there all the time!!

Tom always seems cool.I agree with his take on the re-issues and remixes.Why mess with a part of history?

I loved that interview. Araya's interviews seem so in depth compared to Kerry's - I know Kerry gives a lot of interviews but many of them are stock. However I found it interesting reading about the differences between Tom's songwriting style and that of Kerry and Jeff. It seems that Tom doesn't quite see eye-to-eye with Kerry when it comes to writing songs, and appears to be more comfortable writing with Jeff.

I also found interesting how Tom doesn't seem to like GHUA whereas Kerry when you read his interviews is all over that album and considers it one of Slayer's best - perhaps it is because he did a lot of the songwriting for that album.

Honestly, I couldn't stand GHUA when it was first released but the album has grown on me over the years. In fact all of Slayer's 90s albums have grown on me in time and my experiences with nearly all of their post-Seasons albums has been the same: didn't like it at first but started liking it more later on.

Really cool interview.

Very cool interview!

Never read a bad interview with him.

Cool guy. Was shocked to learn he's a Catholic

The interview Doug Van Pelt did for HM with Tom Araya in the So and So says was pretty darn good as well...

You know, it's funny how so often we (me, at least) tend to not see metal band members as real, regular people and we want to put them into a certain box or label them as this or that (the members themselves; not the music). Interviews like this one totally destroy that. I really enjoyed reading it, and thanks for posting it.

It's hard to not like a guy like Tom. He always gives a great interview.

The most interesting part to me was about the songwriting breakdown.

Hanneman & Araya work together and Tom helps out with melodic ideas. Kerry has a "hands off" approach to the songs he writes, thus Tom interprets them as Kerry wishes. So an album like God Hates Us All (which was primarily King) is more visceral in approach and the singing style is more yelling.

But an album like "Diablous In Musica" was primarily a Hanneman record, so I'm betting Tom had more input on that one.

You have to give these guys credit for tolerating each other's egos this long. I've read in interviews past where Tom says that they write the songs and record and tour, and that's it, they then go their separate ways.