Honestly, I've mentioned in the past about how many fans wouldn't want to know the truth about what kinds of egos and attitudes their favorite bands truly have. I think alot of these people would be pretty bummed to find out, lol.
I think the overall sentiment most bands have towards these overzealous fans is this-- It's flattering and appreciated that these fans support them so staunchly and they are grateful to have them, but at the same time, these fans aren't the kind of people that the band would generally consider to be the type of people they want to become personal and overly friendly with and hang out with them. Mostly because they just have different personalities and interests.
I wonder how many of these Slayer fans realise that the guys in Slayer don't think or behave anything like they (the fans) do? The guys in Slayer are very laid back and most have families and are very "normal".
I'm not sure that the guys from Slayer, regardless of how normal they are (Tom Araya especially comes off as a pretty tame guy in interviews, practicing Catholic and all), disapprove of their crazy fans. Isn't the photo of the guy who carved Slayer onto both of his forearms on the Divine Intervention CD itself (as in the physical CD; I have it somewhere but I haven't seen it since I downloaded it onto iTunes many years ago).
That isn't a bad thing, of course; I just had the impression that Slayer was always one of those bands that got a big kick out of their own crazies.
And, at least, when I grew up the internet thing wasn't big until I got to college... it always was kind of neat, growing up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, running into another person with a Slayer shirt. It was like, FUCK YEAH, more people who listen to awesome music! And Slayer was, at least then, indisputably "metal" for us dumb youngins' who were desolated that Metallica and Megadeth had "sold out" (and we were too stupid to appreciate that Iron Maiden was perhaps the best metal band of all time). So I kinda feel a little warm fuzziness (not in my pants) for these kids being like SLAYER YEAH YOU KNOW SLAYER.
Aside from that, I enjoy quite a bit of Slayer's work up to Divine Intervention. Reign In Blood was their best, sure. My favorite piece that Slayer produced was the "Decade of Aggression" 2 CD live recording. That's the gold standard for all live metal album CDs, in my opinion. No metalhead should be without it!
And Tom also used to actually play bass, instead of really fast open E's.
I cried laughing at this, and I love Slayer and used to love playing it when I was learning bass as a teenager. =)
Hey, I started playing bass years ago, playing along to his open E basslines!!!!
(Specifically South of Heaven)
lol so did I
