Slayer

Slayer is a heavy metal musical group founded in 1981 by American guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King in Huntington Park, California. To complete his training, King and Hanneman recruited bassist and vocalist Tom Araya of Chilean origin and Cuban-born drummer Dave Lombardo. The latter has been fluctuating in and out of the band for several years. Slayer rose to fame thanks to the release of Reign in Blood, described as "the heaviest album of all time" by Kerrang!. Thanks to this reputation, the group was included during the early eighties in the Big Four of thrash metal alongside Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax.

Slayer has been strongly criticized by religious groups to be a satanic rock band, because both his lyrics and the album covers topics such as Satanism, violence, murder, serial murderers and war, and has been accused of nazismo.Esta support the latter charge was made because the fans of Jeff Hanneman of collecting material and Nazi-themed lyrics and the song "Angel of Death", which is about the doctor and war criminal Josef Mengele. Group members have always denied these allegations, ensuring that they are merely interested in the subject.

Since its debut in 1983, the band has released nine studio albums, two live albums and two compilations, and has sold over four million albums in the U.S. only. He has received two Grammy awards: one in 2007 for the song "Eyes of the Insane" and another in 2008 for the song "Final Six" and have headlined music festivals worldwide such as Ozzfest and Download Festival.

Slayer was formed in 1981 when Kerry King met Jeff Hanneman while they were doing tests to get into a heavy metal band. They recruited vocalist / bassist Tom Araya of Chilean origin and Cuban drummer Dave Lombardo, who met while working as a pizza delivery. The band started to play songs from Iron Maiden and Judas Priest music clubs in Southern California. His early gigs included inverted crosses and satanic images, and other paraphernalia anti-Christianity. During one of these concerts, the band drew the attention of Brian Slagel, a journalist who had recently founded the record label Metal Blade Records, who offered a recording contract training. There is a rumor that the band originally called Dragonslayer due to the film of the same name (in English). However, this rumor was denied in an interview by guitarist Kerry King, who said: "We never call it that. That is a myth. "

The band was offered a gig opening for Bitch at the Woodstock Club in the city of Los Angeles, where he performed eight songs, six of which were covers of other artists. Brian Slagel was one of those attending the concert and was impressed by the staging of the band. Thanks to this, joined them after finishing the show to ask them to record one of the original songs they had played at the concert for inclusion in the compilation of the label, Metal Massacre III. The song "Aggressive Perfector" managed a modest reception in the underground culture, which Brian Slagel offered a formal contract the band to his label Metal Blade Records.