Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. (35 page)

Araya would later explain that he meant “right” as in “The ideas and sentiments expressed in Ian MacKaye’s song are correct.” But the damage was done.

“Personally, I think Ian should relax and have some fun,” Hanneman told
Kerrang!
^31-9
.

The band thrash up another Minor Threat cover, “Filler.” Araya screams MacKaye’s lyrics: “Is it really worth it? / She cost you your life / She’ll never leave your side / She’s gonna be your wife.” King told me the song choice wasn’t a jab at Lombardo, and that’s plausible: It also features the line “You’re full of religion / You’re full of shit.”

Other punk signers didn’t mind the adaptations.

TSOL frontman Jack Grisham, one of the credited writers of the single “Superficial Love,” was happy to have a bonus payday. He bought a trampoline with the royalties check, spraypainted a giant white pentagram across the black bouncy surface, then added a giant SLAYER
^31-10
.

If you can stomach hardcore, it’s the band’s most exciting release since the Trilogy. But the album is encoded for a punk filter, literally: The Slayer version of “Superficial Love” ends with an Araya growl that’s all but indecipherable: “[Mumbly-mumble] can suck my motherfuckin’ dick!” The original song ends with TSOL’s singer shouting “President Reagan can shove it!” Once you know that, Araya’s garbled shout becomes clear: “President Clinton can suck my motherfuckin’ dick!”

The album has another Minor Threat cover, “Filler.” Araya screams MacKaye’s lyrics: “Is it really worth it? / She cost you your life / She’ll never leave your side / She’s gonna be your wife.” King says the song choice wasn’t a jab at Lombardo, and it’s plausible: It also features the line “You’re full of religion / You’re full of shit.”

If you’re the kind of metal guy who hates punk — and in the metal world, that’s a vocal majority —
Undisputed Attitude
is the most optional release in the Slayer catalog.

W
estword Online
's Michael Roberts, who liked
Intervention
, later dubbed the record their "biggest mistake."
^31-11

Ivy League egghead Tyler Doggett wrote what might be the band’s most blissfully whiny review, for a student newspaper the
Daily Princetonian
.

“The vocals aren't mixed so prominently, lucky in that Tom Araya sings like a man with a mouthful of mashed potatoes,” Doggett griped. “Slayer sound — chumbawambawamba, ‘Aaaaargh, War, Aaaaargh’ chumbawambawamba — to songs by Minor Threat, TSOL, Verbal Abuse et al, ad-raw-zeum, head thumpingly hypnotic. This album, as with every other Slayer album I have heard, grants Beavis and Butthead [sic] credence in at least two ways: they are a cogent justification for heavy metal and they are absolutely as dumb as rocks.”
^31-12

Some supposedly educated people need art to follow certain rules. And when “sounding pretty” is your chief criterion, Slayer will always disappoint you. Even if you claim to like metal.

Attitude
is one of the great covers albums, but due to the metal-hardcore disconnect, it isn’t widely considered a classic. Its initial reception was warm, though: American released it May 28, 1996, and it peaked at number 34 on the
Billboard
200.

Promoting a record of thrash-velocity punk jams was tricky. The album had two singles. The band released a split 45 of “Abolish Government/Superficial Love.” Slayer’s version graced on one side. TSOL’s original got the other, with the punk band’s “Silent Majority” in the middle. Grunge quarry Sub Pop released the 7”.

The more visible single was the album’s second-worst song, a take on Verbal Abuse’s “I Hate You.” With a halfway hummable riff, the midtempo tune reads like one of King’s first-person songs from
God Hates Us All
. A token video captures the band playing the dull grind. Araya screams in the face of a mother figure who’s wearing pink curlers. “Institutionalized” it ain’t.

The album complete, Bostaph left to play original music in The Truth About Seafood, a funky alt-rock band with zero Slayer overlap.

“I’d been playing heavy music for a long time, and felt like I wanted to explore different elements of music,” Bostaph told Paul Gargano of
Metal Edge
. “It was just something that just kept gnawing at me. I just felt like it became a distraction in my head and it needed to be something I needed to explore and find out.”
^31-13

After Bostaph bailed, Slayer auditioned drummers including their old drum tech, Gene Hoglan
^31-14
. But the winning candidate was the malleable John Dette, pronounced “Detty.” Though Dette didn’t play on the album, he appears in the “I Hate You” video
^31-15
.

Dette had thrash cred: With a scant body of recorded work, he was best known as drummer for Evildead. The archetypal late-’80s/early ’90s California crossover thrash band featured speed metal veterans from Agent Steel and Abattoir. The group’s studio albums featured artwork by Edward J. Repka, the illustrator renowned for Megadeth and Death covers.

And, as all three Slayer drummers have, Dette had played in Testament. He joined in 1994, replacing Exodus/White Zombie drummer John Tempesta, who recorded the
Low
album after Bostaph left the band.

Testament guitarist Eric Peterson contrasts the drummers’ styles:

“They’re all pretty good,” says Peterson. “Dette’s a hard hitter and plays things a little bit fast, which is cool — it keeps you on your toes. Bostaph is really solid. Paul’s right in the middle there, not too swingy, but meat-and-potatoes. His tempo and the way he plays — Dette’s more spastic and fast. Lombardo is a little more jazzy and loose.”

Dette’s audition tape for Slayer was a performance of
Reign in Blood
. At the time, King told Toazted Dette was “a big guy, and he beats the shit of his kit….”
^31-16

Slayer needed a monster on the
Undisputed
tour, which was as speedy as the album. It began with a ferocious one-off show in Miami. Then, a month later, they played another one at L.A.’s Troubadour. In June, they spent three weeks playing European festivals like Dynamo. Then followed a monthlong US tour with Unsane.

Slayer made the
Undisputed
US tour a special affair, playing smaller clubs like Cleveland’s Odeon. In New York City, the band played a two-night stand at the 1,000-capacity Irving Plaza.

Drugs had been off the menu since the
South of Heaven
era, but Slayer still had a good time on tour. Hanneman’s drinking became heavier but less recreational. And Araya started to wind down for good.

“I honestly don't know how I did the first 15 years of Slayer,” Araya told UK newspaper
The Guardian
years later. “How did I get so fucking wasted then play every fucking night? Then, immediately after playing, do it all over again. How the fuck did we all do that?"
^31-17

On the road, the band mixed metal and hardcore songs, ripping up the room, taking a break, and blitzing it again. The stage set was a minimal affair, just two walls of black Marshall stacks with giant Slayer eagles hanging on the amps. The band took the stage in shorts, T-shirts, and tank tops. King banged his shaved head doubletime the whole set.

With the group playing exceptionally fast and furious, crowds got rowdy. Drew Schinzel’s show review recounts an Araya on the edge:

In Philadelphia, a shoe flew out of the crowd and cracked Araya in the head. He stopped playing and bitched at the crowd, “You guys are fucked up!”

Araya was still smarting from the blow to the head, and as the night went on, he refused to let it go.

For the rest of the set, his between-song banter was a bunch of barbs at the crowd: "I want to dedicate this next song to this place, it's called ‘I Hate You.’”

Later, he followed with ‘Why don't you guys fucking shut up?"

At the evening’s end, he closed with, "Normally at this point in the show I have a few words of kindness, but not for you guys."
^31-18

The proper tour ran from late June through August. It wrapped with a special two-night stand at LA landmark the Whiskey a Go Go, which holds around 1,000. The small club witnessed a big set: With deep catalog cuts and double-shot covers, the shows tied for the band’s biggest set lists ever, with 24 songs:

1. “South of Heaven”

2. “War Ensemble”

3. “Abolish Government”

4. “Superficial Love”

5. “Captor of Sin”

6. “Filler”

7. “I Don't Want to Hear It”

8. “Gemini”

9. “Dittohead”

10. “Richard Hung Himself”

11. “Necrophiliac”

12. “Mr. Freeze”

13. “Hell Awaits”

14. “The Antichrist”

15. “Sex. Murder. Art.”

16. “Dead Skin Mask”

17. “Seasons in the Abyss”

18. “Die by the Sword”

Encore 1:

19. “I Hate You”

20. “Chemical Warfare”

21. “Raining Blood”

22. “Killing Fields”

Encore 2:

23. “Mandatory Suicide”

24. “Angel of Death”

The band closed the year with a couple West Coast appearances at Ozzfest, but no more major touring followed. The 1996 gig count was a low one, around 40, most of them between August and October. For all intents and purposes, the year began and ended with
Undisputed Attitude
.

“The whole thing… is like a second wind to us,” Hanneman told
Kerrang!
’s Steffan Chirazi. “There’s no doubt we were in a rut towards the end of the last tour, and that we needed to get motivated again.… After we’d finished this record [we said], “Wow, we still have it, don’t we?”
^31-19

Click here to Google search “Slayer photos 1996”

Drummer Jon Dette. 24 February 2013. Live with Slayer at the Soundwave festival in Sydney, Australia. Dette joined Slayer for the 1996
Undisputed Attitude
tour, but didn’t gel with the band, and was dismissed before 1998’s
Diabolus in Musica
. In 2013, when the group suddenly faced a split with Lombardo, Dette was the solution to King’s immediate needs. Dette has also played with Anthrax, Testament, and others. Photo by Cameron Edney,  www.Facebook.com/WickedPixPhotography.

Chapter 32:

Bostaph’s Back (I of II)

Things in the Slayer camp were tense when Dette arrived, and they remained so. After the
Undisputed
tour, Dette was gradually vibed out of the band.

Bostaph returned in short order. In 1998, the drummer and singer recounted the episode for
Metal Edge
’s Paul Gargano.

The former Forbidden drummer had enjoyed spreading his wings in The Truth About Seafood. Improvising and getting funky was fun, but he missed the all-encompassing physicality of bashing away at the kit, beating double-bass drums until his heart was racing and the crowd was thrashing.

“I felt like somebody cut off my left foot,” Bostaph told Gargano. “Fuck this, I need to go back and do what I enjoy.… Okay, I tried that, that’s not me.”

And Bostaph missed being in a band that some people had heard about. Hoping for a career boost, Bostaph called Slayer manager Rick Sales.  

“Hey, I’ve got this project,” Bostaph said. “Can I send you some tapes?”

Sales kept him talking.

Bostaph shared his story. He told the manager he wanted to return to heavy music. Sales sensed a chance to restore harmony to the Slayer camp.

“Well, if you’re interested in getting back to heavy music,” said Sales, “what do you think about getting back together with the guys?”

Bostaph was confused. He asked, “Don’t they have a drummer?”

Sales played it coy and said, ‘Well, I don’t know.”

Sales returned to the band. Araya, Hanneman, and King were receptive to the notion of Bostaph returning. They told Sales Bostaph was welcome back if he was  up for it. Attempts to write a new album were going slow without him.