when I was 40...it was a very good year...

SLAYER

SLAYER
An interview with Dave Lombardo
by Jason Walsh
Photos by Charlie Hatfield

SLAYER is still reigning high from their 2009 release, “World Painted Blood,” and spent the majority of this year getting this new music and decades of classics to every corner of the globe. This summer saw the undisputed lords of death metal join forces with ANTHRAX, MEGADETH, and METALLICA for the Sonisphere Festival tour throughout Europe, which had all of the “Big 4” on tour for the first time ever. During their stop in Sofia, Bulgaria, the concert was streamed live to theatres worldwide and metalheads everywhere had a glimpse of the biggest concert of the year. During METALLICA’s set, members of ANTHRAX and MEGADETH took the stage as well for a rendition of DIAMOND HEAD’s “Am I Evil?” SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo grabbed some sticks and jammed out alongside METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich, Shawn Drover of MEGADETH, and ANTHRAX’s percussionist Charlie Benante, while chaos erupted in Sofia.

Following the Sonisphere dates, SLAYER returned to the States to headline the Jägermeister Music Tour, with MEGADETH and ANTHRAX rounding out the bill. I had a chance to catch up with Lombardo as the tour wound its way to Hampton, Virginia. We had a chance to recap the Sonisphere shows, the future for SLAYER, and his new side project, PHILM.



JW: Tell me about this tour. You guys just started off, how are you guys doing?

LOMBARDO: Great. Everything is going really smooth. Everybody gets along. Shows are going well. Big crowds. It’s good.

JW: How does it feel to be on the road with all these guys? You just did the Sonisphere tours in Europe and now you’re back in the States with the three bands touring together. Does it feel pretty comfortable?

LOMBARDO: Yeah. Yeah, there’s nothing that would be different than any other tour with any other band that we would be with, so it’s, you know, not really much difference, but I mean of course we’ve known these guys for a long time so…

JW: And there’s something kind of special about keeping that metal legacy alive and having these three big bands come out and doing this.

LOMBARDO: Yeah, apparently so. It’s making a big impact so it’s good

JW: Tell me about the Sonisphere Festival. That was a pretty cool thing and all of us that were back here in the States, we obviously didn’t get to go over and see all that but we saw the video.

LOMBARDO: It was amazing. That day we flew in, I think we had about a half-hour drive to the venue and there was this helicopter doing tricks aside of the stage. I don’t know if you saw any of the pictures.

JW: Some of the video, yeah…

LOMBARDO: 81,000 people. It was amazing. It was exciting. The Poland show I think was bigger. That was the one that was 81,000. But that Sofia, Bulgaria, I think that was a little less.

JW: It still looked amazing on video.

LOMBARDO: Yeah. Phenomenal. It was really cool.

JW: So how did the Diamond Head song, “Am I Evil?” come about. I saw you out there banging on some drums with them.

LOMBARDO: Yeah. I think James (Hetfield of METALLICA) had an idea in the middle of the night. Yeah, he came up with some kind of idea, he called everybody up to see if they were into doing it. He thought it was a really good idea and I thought it was a great idea. So that’s why you saw me out there.

JW: Did you have fun out there?

LOMBARDO: Hell yeah.

JW: Looking around, seeing all these guys running around the stage.

LOMBARDO: Yeah. Beating on Lars’ drumset. It was great fun. Yeah.

JW: It looked like a good time. So, you are doing this tour. Where do you go from here? What happens next?

LOMBARDO: After this tour, I think we rest for about three months, well SLAYER rests for about three months, and then we go back out in early February to Australia. We do Soundwave with IRON MAIDEN, and I think we’re doing India as well, and probably do the Pacific Rim, which will probably be Singapore, hopefully Hong Kong and North Korea.

JW: Does all the traveling this far in your career, is it still fun for you or does in wear on you, or is it a combination of the two?

LOMBARDO: Well, after you do it for a long period of time, it does wear on you. You know, you get tired, little things get under your skin, but we’re at a point right now where we’re not feeling like that yet. We were feeling like that at the end of the European run. We were feeling a little burned out because we were flying a lot and doing international gigs and international gigs, you have to go through borders, customs, which delays the whole process (of) getting to your hotel and relaxing. It’s a bit stressful.

JW: So coming home sometimes, is a good thing.

LOMBARDO: Yeah, yeah. It’s good. You have to recharge. You have to have somewhere where you can recharge.

JW: Now next year are you guys looking to record, are you trying to figure out what’s going on?

LOMBARDO: Next year, well we do the Soundwave Festival in Australia, the Pacific Rim. I know we’re doing South America, so we still have…

JW: I mean that might take the whole year?

LOMBARDO: It could very well go a whole year and then, you know, BIG 4 might be coming, so that’s the summer right there in the U.S. Maybe we’ll do some festivals in Europe. You never know, but it’s all very promising, it’s all very positive. We’re very grateful to be in this position, you know, that we still got momentum in our career, because a lot of bands don’t.

JW: And at the end of the day, it’s still got to be fun.

LOMBARDO: Yes. That hour, hour and ten minutes, that I play on stage is worth every bit of hardship, if you want to call it hardship, because nothing compares to other things that people go through, but in our own little world, it does get a little rough.

JW: So has there been any talk about recording in the future? Is that something that you guys will see when you get there?

LOMBARDO: No…yeah, we’re not there yet. Jeff (Hanneman) fiddles around with the guitar and comes up with some things every now and then. I don’t know if there’s actually anything in the works. I haven’t heard a single thing yet.

JW: Very cool. So do you still have any side projects going on?

LOMBARDO: Yeah. I have Fantômas, I mean where obviously Fantômas is still just on a hiatus, but I have this band, PHILM, which I’m going to be putting out, hopefully something, by the end of this year. It’s a trio. I’m kind of trying to bring back the kinda-the-sixties-kinda vibe. You know like Led Zeppelin was a trio, of course let’s say the music part of it: bass, drums, guitar, and Jim Hendrix, same thing: bass drums, guitar. There wasn’t that second guitar player, there wasn’t that keyboard…well, there was in Deep Purple…but also Black Sabbath. All these bands were really big influences on me so I scaled down my drum set, brought it down to four pieces, and brought a powerful bass player which is Pancho Tomaselli, he plays in the band WAR with Lonnie Jordan, you know all those famous songs, “Spill the Wine,” “Cisco Kid,” all that. He’s only 35. I know the band’s a lot older, but he’s been playing with them for the past six or seven years. And, Gerry Nestler, from a band called CIVIL DEFIANCE from like the late 90s. He was signed to Atlantic and I always thought he was a very unique musician and has very interesting sounds on his guitar. It’s very ambient, kind of groovy. It’s not metal. I don’t need to make another metal band. I’m totally going somewhere else.

JW: That’s the thing, and I’d read some of this, some of the side projects that you’ve done you had said that it makes you a better musician because you are doing different kinds of things. It’s not just metal, it’s not SLAYER, it’s just all these kinds of elements that make you a better musician all around.

LOMBARDO: Yeah, it does, because you learn the different methods of operation of other musicians, how they work, their process, and that only enlightens you and makes you just a better musician and you can’t buy that knowledge. It’s only knowledge that you gain from experience and so I absorb it, and try to seek it as much as I can because it’s really good.

JW: Now when you come back and you do this, SLAYER, does it help you out or sometimes can it be distracting?

LOMBARDO: No, not at all. It’s all inspiring. You know, this band inspires me in a certain way where another band will inspire me, and they will cross-inspire each other, or cross-pollinate or something like that(laughs). It does do that, but in ways that maybe nobody will notice. Just I do, that I notice that I’ve kind of enhanced, let’s say, a part of my playing because of that. But people really wouldn’t notice, they would probably just take it as that’s normal.

JW: But you do…and it makes you better.

LOMBARDO: I do. Yeah, I know it does.

JW: I think that’s all I got, man.

LOMBARDO: Awesome.

PHILM opened for HALLFORD with dates in December and will be releasing something in the not-so-distant future. As for a new release from SLAYER, well, as you heard in this interview, only SLAYER knows.



HAILS & HORNS article ONLINE

ANTHRAX

ANTHRAX
by Jason Walsh
Photos by Charlie Hatfield

Over their three decades of bringing the noise, ANTHRAX has gone through an astounding number of lineup changes, especially in the vocalist slot. The announcement came this past summer that Joey Belladonna, frontman from the classic “Among the Living” era, was returning for the Sonisphere Festival Tour in Europe. Dubbed the “BIG 4,” ANTHRAX shared the stage with MEGADTEH, SLAYER, and METALLICA, the first time all four thrash metal bands would tour together. The experience was broadcast live by a high-definition, multi-camera shoot on one of the stops in Sofia, Bulgaria, which allowed fans around the world to see the show. One of the highlights of the night was a performance of Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil?” which saw members of all the bands on stage at once, most significantly the first-time reunion of MEGADETH’s Dave Mustaine with his former bandmates in METALLICA and replacement, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett.

The Sonisphere shows began a buzz throughout the metal community worldwide, with video clips from Sofia running rampant virally, and instilled some hope for the future of thrash. Following the European dates, ANTHRAX returned to the States and once again toured alongside SLAYER and MEGADETH for the Jägermeister Music Tour this past fall. On the road, the guys worked on some new songs with Belladonna and following the onslaught across the nation, ANTHRAX released that the band would be dropping an album of new material in 2011 featuring Belladonna on vocals, the first time since 1991’s “Persistence of Time.”

The question now is will the record happen. Belladonna was fired from the band in 1992, as many others before him and since. ANTHRAX reunited in 2005 with the “classic” lineup as well, with hopes of releasing a record of new material with Belladonna, but that never came to be. Founded in 1981 by guitarist Scott Ian and fellow Stormtrooper of Death, Danny Liker, who was also fired from the band and later went on to form NUCLEAR ASSAULT, ANTHRAX really hit the mark in the era of Belladonna. “Among the Living” was their crucial release, marking the beginning of the wave of crossover, which saw the fusion of metal and hardcore in the latter part of the 80s. They were also pioneers in bridging the gap between heavy music and hip-hop with their PUBLIC ENEMY collaboration, “Bring the Noise.”

Since Belladonna’s departure in ‘92, ANTHRAX continued onward in the age of grunge with former ARMORED SAINT frontman John Bush for over a decade, and later DEVILSIZE vocalist Dan Nelson. Bush would return to the band briefly and ironically, on the 2009 Sonisphere Festival Tour, but that would be short lived and brings us to now.

I had a chance to catch up with Belladonna on the phone as the Jägermeister Music Tour began. We talked about the reunion, the excitement of Sonisphere, their current tour, the future of ANTHRAX, and of course, important points of interest such as hurricanes.

JW: So Joey, how are you doing?

JOEY BELLADONNA: Ah great. Where are you guys?

JW: I’m in Norfolk, Virginia.

JOEY BELLADONNA: Ah, ok. How’s everything? How’s the weather down there?

JW: Not too bad. We’ve got a hurricane spinning off the coast right now but hopefully it won’t hit us too bad.

JOEY BELLADONNA: Still that same one or is there another one coming?

JW: Another one. Yeah, they just keep coming. They don’t seem to stop this time of year. This one is Igor and he’s out pretty deep so hopefully he won’t bring anybody behind him. So where you at right now?

JOEY BELLADONNA: I’m upstate New York right now.

JW: Oh, ok. So man, how are you doing right now? Are you pretty excited?

JOEY BELLADONNA: Yes, it’s a good time for metal, you know.

JW: You’re getting ready to start that U.S. tour. Tell me a little about that and how your looking forward to doing this with MEGADETH and SLAYER.

JOEY BELLADONNA: Yeah, you know, that’s a great lineup. We’ve been all familiar with each other quite a long time. There’s a lot of history involved with us, so we’re just happy to be together and play, and everybody got along on the BIG 4 when we did the METALLICA thing, so you know we never really had a problem. We’re easy. It’s all about the music for us, you know.

JW: So let’s talk about SONISPHERE. That festival tour was incredible and a lot of us back in the States got to see some of the video. I mean how was that? You guys go over there and play for some gigantic audiences.

JOEY BELLADONNA: Yeah, it’s something when you get a crowd like that. Most of the crowds are pretty big anyhow, you know you’re talking on average about 30-35,000, maybe as high as over a hundred. On average, you’re getting 30-50,000. It’s just a sea of people but most people are just so excited for the whole package and to see all the lineups the way they were presented and everything.

JW: Now a lot of us back here also saw when you guys took the stage and did “Am I Evil” with METALLICA, MEGADETH, and Dave Lombardo from SLAYER. Tell me what that was like?

JOEY BELLADONNA: Wow, you know I never thought I’d be asked to go up and sing in that setting with them, you know maybe on some other place, but even to do a song that I’ve never done before was kind of challenging. It was fun. I remember getting the email late at night, we’re riding in the bus, saying we’re going to do a song together, so learn a section, and there we went, you know. It was really very cool, you know. I’m glad to be a part of it. I hope we can do it again maybe.

JW: Was it kind of amazing to be on stage and looking at all these guys from all these other bands that you’ve known all these years, and you’re like, “Wow, we’re all up here together doing this song? How cool is this?”

JOEY BELLADONNA: Yeah, it was a great idea, you know, bringing all the extra amps up for everybody to play, and just taking every step to do it correct, and METALLICA ran a great set up. Everything was just spectacular.

JW: So now 2010, you’re back in ANTHRAX. What made you decide this was something you wanted to do at this point?

JOEY BELLADONNA: You know what, as far as I was concerned, I mean we could have just stayed, continued. I know it’s “old hat” talk. For me, I never really wanted to make a change. It was something they were looking for vocally, I guess, that wasn’t there which still to this day is kind of puzzling for me, but I know people have their own different styles that they’re looking and what direction they were looking into. But I got a call from management to rejoin, and it’s a business, and we try to put this thing together and make it right and it sounded like for them, for me to join was the right thing to do on their part to ask me. If they were welcoming me in to the band at a right way, I’m all for it. I’m there. I’ve been doing the songs for a while. I played just last night, you know, doing my own group and just working on new music here, and we do ANTHRAX stuff, working on a new record, just keeping busy musically so it’s not like I…hell, I even play in a cover band on the weekends. I’m working all the time, singing, performing, so it’s just…ANTHRAX is a great band and there’s no reason for it to not be together because we really…when we do it, we do it really, quite good, you know. It’s a great chemistry. You can’t really recreate that.

JW: And that was kind of my next question. Now, after doing all these shows over in Europe, how does that chemistry feel? Does it take you back to the old days?

JOEY BELLADONNA: Yeah, I guess it’s like the old days, and if anything, it’s even more fresh because we’re all matured, everybody’s musicianship and talent, all the achievements and the growth of being a musician has gotten way better.

JW: That’s awesome. Now I read here in this release that following the U.S. Tour you guys are planning on recording a new record of new material for 2011. Tell me a little about that.

JOEY BELLADONNA: Well, I got one song together right now at this point. I’ve heard quite a few songs. I haven’t really got to all of them yet. It sounds really good and hopefully, you know we’ve been so busy but, I mean there’s music that’s already been laid out that I could probably start hitting vocally and then we have to revisit everything again that they’ve worked down and recorded. Just do some vocals, maybe rewrite some stuff, restructure some stuff, remix stuff. You know, all the above, and hopefully we can get to it. Hopefully, we do some stuff on the road too, you know, just to get an idea, you know, with some down time and we have some extra equipment with us to roll through those sections and maybe get an idea better on the songs. It would be pretty exciting to be able to do something like that without being distracted in any way, being busy on the tour.

JW: Now Joey, my last question, do you think this is something you think you’re going to be doing for a while? Do you see some longevity with this, staying with the band for a while?

JOEY BELLADONNA: I sure hope so. I mean I don’t like jumping around anyway. Even my own band, I don’t like, you know, “God, I don’t want this one dude. You gotta get somebody else.” Every time you do something different, everything just changes. I mean like should stay the same, for everybody that’s up for it, and there’s no glitches, there’s no, you know, misunderstanding as far as we make the band function right, business-wise. Got a great management now and I hope everybody is willing to take it there and I think they are, you know, I really do. Without any complications, we should and hopefully we will.