Tom ArayaTom Araya
Tom Araya's family had fled political unrest in their native Chile and settled in the Huntington Beach area; Araya was a health care worker studying to become a nurse when he was invited to join the band. "I had a job as a respiratory therapist at a hospital"
Tom has two brothers and four sisters. One of his brothers is his bass technician when Slayer is on tour.
Tom owns a Rottweiler called "Damien".
"As far as thinking about death and murder and various ways of killing people and how people die... I probably have the most twisted mind in Slayer. But I'm not going to confess anything. (smiling) Can I see myself doing such things? Not to that extent. I could see myself doing other things..."
"Whenever I see something, I've got this little Slayer chip in the back of my mind that tries to Slayer-ize everything I do. This chip's like a little circle with a pentagram in it! It goes into overdrive and it means that everything gets translated into the Slayer way."
"Lyrics is a major fuck-up of mine. Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse! The kids don't notice, and when I'm singing the wrong verse I'm looking at them all giggling and they don't realise it, ha ha."
The Abyss
Maintainer: Janek Hellqvist
Feedback to janek@slaytanic.com