SLAYER - A chat with Tom Araya
by Tim Henderson

HardRadio's "Metal" Tim Henderson spoke in-depth to SLAYER frontman Tom Araya recently about a number of topics including the band's recent tour with MARILYN MANSON, rumours of his retirement, the worldwide state of heavy metal, the roots of Reign In Blood and the band's newly-released Unholy Alliance Tour DVD/CD. Part I of the chat is as follows:

Thanks for filming your new DVD in Canada!

Araya: "Take a wild guess why it was done in Canada? The cost factor. But I'm just glad we did it. But yeah, the reason why it was done in Canada for one was that we hadn't played in Vancouver for a while. You say to yourself, 'ok, we want to do a live recording - where haven't we played in a while? Where is our strongest audience.' Just like anything else, you want to sell the big show, so you pick a venue that you know is going to do really well, and you do the statistics. If it looks like a really packed show ... in all honestly, Vancouver wasn't our biggest show (laughs) - that was in San Antonio where we had between ten and fifteen thousand. A lot of stuff comes into play when you decide where you want to record or where you want to do things. The same with movies 'we need this location - okay, we found two locations; one is ten times the price, the other is nothing. So let's go with the place that costs nothing and see how we do there."

What type of input does you or the band have when setting up such a massive project?

Araya: "You hire a camera company, you tell them how many cameras you want. You put together a bid, a contract and you throw it out to companies that film/record. And the one that comes in with the best bid is the one that's hired. You pick the company to do what it is you're asking. Then you figure out your cameras - where you want them, how you want your shots. That's a big part we are involved with. We tell 'em how we want the angles, where we want the angles and where we want the shots from. And then they record the whole show from those areas. And later on you pick and choose what you like. And the person who is directing the show puts together an initial show, we may stick with that. You get involved, because every process that comes up, they send you something and you look at it. Then it comes back to you after all the fixes. It's a very tedious process and we have to be a part of it because we have to make sure we like what we see."

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