By Martin Popoff
What tracks on here are the biggest rule-breakers in terms of what Slayer usually does?
"Oh God, honestly, I don't think any of them are," exclaims Araya. "I don't think any of them are rule-breakers. If anything, they're setting new standards, they're new rules (laughs), you know what I mean? We're amending new rules (laughs). I'm really surprised at the great reviews it's been getting."
The booklet and cover graphics for God Hates Us All have already caused a few flare-ups. "We had an idea to go along with the title of the album," explains Araya, "really cool ideas that were, not shot down, but were politely ignored and put aside because they thought they were a little too offensive. And then in the process of working on an album cover, Rick Rubin was going through a company change as far as distribution deals go, so it allowed us the time to really work on what we wanted to do. And then Universal said, how about if we do this? And they showed us the Bible, various Bibles and then we chose the one that we thought was the best of all of them. And then they showed us what they wanted to do on the inside, which was exactly what you're looking at, as far as black print for Bible quotes, and then red print would be the words for the songs on the album. And that black print, I'm not sure, I think some of it is actual Bible. I think they might have written some stuff in there on their own. Someone asked me, 'are these words taken right out of the Bible?' And they showed me the script and I was thinking, 'hmmm that looks like something that someone just wrote in.' but that was all the record company. They showed us what their idea was and we approved it because we thought, well, that's kind of cool. It was a really good idea, the way they put it together."
SLAYER - God Heeds The Call Page 3