In a recent interview with The Skinny, Slayer’s Tom Araya gives more details on the departure of drummer Dave Lombardo, who parted ways with the band back in 2013. Lombardo discussed Slayer financials at one point, and now bassist Tom Araya explains how things went down.
Said Araya in the interview,
“I’m just going to set the record straight on that. Going back a long time now, fifteen years nearly, we were looking for somebody to sit in for Paul Bostaph – that’s how long ago it started with Dave. Paul decided to move on, but he stuck with us until we could find a replacement. Dave said, “yeah, I’ll sit in for a tour or two,” and in the process of doing that, we drew up a contract for Dave, because that’s what you’ve got to do – make sure everybody’s taken care of, everybody’s happy. We came up with a simple agreement that lasted a while, and then we were in the process of trying to make it better for Dave, because after so many years of playing with us you figure, well, shit – we should redo this, we should figure out how we can make it better for Dave. We came up with a deal and he basically was getting everything he wanted, but it was a three-year term, and three years into that, we still hadn’t been able to get him to sign it.
We had some obligations that came up and when you’re given an ultimatum or put on the spot, you have to do something, so we moved forwards, and Dave got really upset. We went back to him again and told him that if he signed the deal, we could move forwards, but he had other plans, so we made a phone call to him and ended it, because he was beginning to put us into a bad spot. We managed to find somebody to sit in, we went off to play in Australia and Dave went on a rant and told a lopsided story, and we let him talk and do what he does best. I hate to say anything bad about him, but he did what he did and we had to move forwards. He was beginning to put us in a really bad light, and we didn’t want to stop the wheels from turning.”
Araya also explained why they signed with Nuclear Blast:
“We did our homework. Nuclear Blast know all the ins and outs of how to work with metal. We went to Europe to do press and met up with everybody at the company, around the time we were mastering and sequencing and finishing up the artwork. I was blown away by how methodical they were – they had this really meticulous road map for the record. Plus, everybody there’s a metalhead! I was thinking, “fuck, this is cool, everybody in this building is a genuine metalhead.” There’s obviously a big difference there between those guys and the major labels in America; they have people working your record, but there’s a standard model of selling albums in the U.S. that doesn’t really work when you try to apply it to metal.”
Slayer’s new Repentless album comes out this Friday, September 11th on Nuclear Blast.
(via Metal Hammer)
