Of the four bands that pioneered thrash metal in the early 1980s, only Slayer remains both successful and true to their original sound. Metallica has achieved greater commercial success, but they've strayed far from thrash's blueprint of metal ferocity combined with punk brevity. Megadeth broke up a couple of years ago and Anthrax, while still plugging away, has done so at increasing levels of obscurity.
But Slayer, who released their first album, Show No Mercy, in 1983, has remained both a commercial force and a pillar of the metal community. Their last album, 2001's God Hates Us All, debuted in the Billboard top 30 and they're still recording for a major label (Rick Rubin's American Recordings, part of the Universal Music empire). In the midst of recording a new record, their first with original drummer Dave Lombardo since 1990's Seasons in the Abyss, Slayer is headlining the latest addition of the Jagermeister Music Tour, playing with fellow metal hard-liners Hatebreed and Arch Enemy. They've recently released a concert DVD, War at the Warfield, and have a career-retrospective boxed set, Soundtrack to the Apocalypse, out at the end of the month.
"We're one of those lucky bands that didn't have to become something they're not to be popular," says guitarist Kerry King. Slayer's reputation is built on precisely the opposite of that principle; they stay popular by remaining exactly what they've always been. King scoffs at the notion of a change in the band's sound. "I wouldn't tarnish a spotless career with some crap like that," he says dismissively.
Not that he and his band mates are stuck in a rut. "This is what I wanted to do from the beginning," King says, with no hint that he's got, say, a folk album in his soul just burning to get out. He sees metal as a whole in a good place right now, citing the resurgent Headbangers Ball on MTV2 and metal show Uranium on small music-video network Fuse. "When you say 'the metal scene,' I don't count Godsmack and Disturbed and crap like that," he adds, quick to distance himself from hard-rock bands that get the most mainstream airplay.
There's an admirable purity to Slayer, who remain at the forefront of metal even as they've gone from young rabble-rousers to elder statesmen. And now with metal on the rise again, could King's band be at the head of a heavy-metal renaissance?
He laughs. "As long as we don't f--k it up."