SLAYER's TOM ARAYA: 'We'll Sell Records But We Won't Sell Our Souls'

Michelle J. Mills of DailyBulletin.com recently conducted an interview with SLAYER frontman Tom Araya. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

On the songwriting process:

"Kerry [King, guitar] likes to present his songs complete and that's pretty much how they stay. It's the more experimental songs, the songs that have a little soul. You can tell the difference."

On his lyric-writing process:

"I like to choose words and play with words and try to paint the picture as vivid as possible. It's fun because with me, English is my first language although it's not my native language, so a lot of the time I'll write something down and then I'll go to the dictionary and look up each word and see how it sits well with what I've written."

"I remember going through a rhyming dictionary thinking it's kind of ridiculous, but there's certain words, they sound similar and when they sound similar it makes them all that. And then you discover this new word and you're like, 'Whoa, it sounds so close to this, but it means something completely different.' "

On the band's longevity:

"I'm thinking what our staying power is, I guess it's our integrity, it's staying true to what we create that comes naturally for us. We haven't deliberately done anything to purposely make a change. If we do change, it's something that's come naturally, it's not something we've forced upon ourselves because it's the in thing like, 'We're writing a song like this because our manager wants us to sell records.' We'll sell records but we won't sell our souls."

On spending time on his Texas ranch with his wife, Sandra, and their children, Ariel, 11, and Tommy, 8:

"They make me go out and jump on the trampoline. It's everybody, not just the two of them, the three of them get me on the trampoline. They keep me active. I play basketball with them."

"Apparently while I was gone, my kids were doing little shows for my wife. She would sit on the grass and they would get up on the porch and do a song together or dance. I'm hoping that they do follow me, if only just for fun. It's about having fun, and if your fun starts making you a lot of money — awesome."

On touring:

"We want to pound your face for 70 minutes with sensory overload, lights and sound, and you're not only hearing it, but you're feeling the music and I think that's the best part of what we do. We know it's an awesome show because the crowd is so into what they're doing they don't even know that we're there. That's what you want, you want it to be them. It's all about them having a good time."