Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. by D.X. Ferris

otherworldly forces of good and evil: “Satan's morbid soldiers chant in lust / Destruction of the church / We'll burn the cross.”
     
    Slayer regularly revisit the EP’s song in live shows.
     
    “ Haunting The Chapel still kicks ass,” King told Metal Hammer in 2001 10-4 .
     
    The band is credited as a producer. The three-song, thirteen-minute EP is Slayer in a nutshell: sin, heresy, lust, violent military action, blasphemy, demented life after death, and terrifying demise on large and small scales. On the short player, Slayer no longer sound like they’re in league with Venom or trying to be Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing. They are smelting thrash metal.
     
    “ Haunting the Chapel was a real exciting turning point,” recalled Hoglan. “They went from an Iron Maiden type band, very Metallica-esque band, into something larger.”
     
    Metoyer was just 23 when he began working with Slayer — a little older, but still from the same generation. His work with the band took heavy music in a new direction, but he says he was just following their lead.
     
    “When we recorded ‘Aggressive Perfector’ and Show No Mercy , I don’t recall having heard the label ‘thrash metal’ at that time,” recalls Metoyer. “To me, it was all just metal . I think when you are in the eye of the storm of something like this, you are the last one to realize it. I had no clue I was involved in what become a new genre of heavy metal. The only thing I knew is what — in my opinion — Black Sabbath started. Bands like Venom and Metallica took it to a different level. And every time I walked in the studio with Slayer, their goal was to be the fastest and take this type of metal to a different level, one that no band had been to before.”
     
    And Lombardo’s unique, punk-influenced, superhuman synthesis of styles would whip crowds into a frenzy like nothing else.
     
     
     

Chapter 11:
    Slamming to Slayer: Metal Enters the Pit
     
    In 1984, Slayer took their first steps toward world domination. They started by conquering their home state, California. Over the course of the year, they shed their early influences, began composing an innovative new playbook, and developed their own cult. By the June 1984 release of Haunting the Chapel , Slayer had already changed metal culture. For a Slayer show, fans would risk life and limb.
     
    “The only other band that was as fierce live was Metallica,” recalled De Pena. “Slayer had probably the craziest crowds. Their fans are fuckin’ dedicated. They’re die-hard. Out here in California, there’s fires all the time. And if you were a Slayer fan, you’d drive through the fire to get to Slayer.”
     
    In late ’83, Slayer were taking their visual, musical and choreography cues from Judas Priest. But as the year came to a close, British black metal pioneers Venom were a key fashion influence, too. Feeling pressure to compete with L.A.’s endless batch of glam bands, Slayer added a theatrical element.
     
    The group began decorating their faces with black-and-white corpse paint. In an infamous early promo photo , the leather-bound band hover over Hanneman’s girlfriend Kathryn, faces smeared white, eyes circled black, like vampires with a bondage fetish, mouths dripping fake blood all over her ebony bustier. The black metal look didn’t last long.
     
    (The shot was taken by Headbanger zine staff photographer Rick Smith, who became a born-again Christian later in the ’80s and burned his catalog of Slayer pictures.)
     
    In the first nine months of the year, Slayer played a dozen shows in L.A., but closer to 20 in the burgeoning Bay Area and Central California.
     
    “The became, effectively, a Northern California band,” recalled former Slayer tour manager Doug Goodman. “[Thrash book Murder in the Front Row ], to me, is a yearbook of our metal scene. And you couldn’t have done that book in New York, and you couldn’t have done that book in L.A., because — no disrespect to