SLAYER's DAVE LOMBARDO: 'Even At 43, I'm Still A Primed, Well-Oiled Machine'

Scott Mervis of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently conducted an interview with SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On new metal bands:

"I've been listening ... I've been trying to listen to these new and upcoming bands. I don't want to pass judgment on any one of them. My pet peeve with these bands is the fact that they record these records that they can't deliver live. They're so processed by computers. When I listen to a band, I listen to the drummer. They process and lose what the drummer is supposed to do. It just becomes a typewriter and there's no feel, there's no soul in the drummer. When you lose that, it becomes very bland. Yeah, you have all these breakdowns, all these tight jigajit-jigajit until they juice that and there's nothing left. It's very disappointing."

On the "Cookie Monster" vocalsL

"Yeah. Monster-sounding vocals mixed in with all that sweet vocal melody [b.s.]. It's like, 'C'mon man.' You know who did that well, though? SLIPKNOT. It was natural for Corey Taylor to jump from the melodic voice into the screaming voice, but bands these days? Huh. Very disappointing."

On how newer bands react to SLAYER:

"Yeah, of course, they've heard of SLAYER, but I think what they've done is, they've not looked at the roots. In other words, they learned how to walk before they learned how to crawl. These bands, sometime, they go straight for the sprint marathon and lose what this music is, what they need to put into it to make it breathe. You need to create life into the music."

On SLAYER's gruesome, controversial lyrics:

"It's all an art form. I don't have any problems with Stephen King or any horror movie writers or artists who depict horror or pain. If anybody has a problem, they're pretty narrow-minded to look upon music as the single source of problems in this world. It's the people who are born cracked. I mean, I play the music, I listened to the music. I'm not going out and killing anybody or trashing buildings or whatever. It has nothing to with the music."

On whether any organizations similar to the PMRC are still all over SLAYER's back over the band's lyrics:

"No, because they realize how dumb they are. Time has showed them that, hey, we're not going anywhere. You're not going to shut us up. You want a little sticker on our record? Fine, put a little sticker on our record, but it's not going to change anything."

On whether he's slowed down at all with age:

"Even at 43, I'm still a primed, well-oiled machine. I've seen bands where it's like 'God, please shoot me if I ever look or play like that.' With SLAYER, we're still as brutal as we were as kids. They could roll up in their wheelchairs and play guitars, just as long as I'm beating the [crap] out of the drums, it's all good."

Read more from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.