SLAYER's TOM ARAYA Says MAYHEM FESTIVAL Attendance Was 'About What We Would Draw If We Were Doing Our Own Tour'

SLAYER bassist/vocalist Tom Araya has dismissed the suggestion that the band was playing to a smaller audience than usual as the headliner of this year's edition of the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival.

"We have a fanbase of about five or six thousand at every place we play, so the crowd that we [had] for Mayhem [was] about what we would draw if we were doing our own tour," he told Billboard.com. Besides, he added, "Everybody seem[ed] to be having a good time.'

Araya also praised fellow Mayhem main-stage performers KING DIAMOND, saying: "When we started as a band, we knew KING DIAMOND as MERCYFUL FATE and I was a big MERCYFUL FATE fan, I love their first two albums. I like him [KING DIAMOND singer and namesake]. He's different, but he's also part of the scene that we were part of, so we were the ones that chose KING DIAMOND [figuring] it would be a great bill."

The 2015 Mayhem Festival generated controversy earlier in the summer after festival co-founder Kevin Lyman blamed the event's low ticket sales on the fact that metal has failed to produce new and younger headlining bands, adding that "metal got gray, bald and fat" and "chased girls away." SLAYER guitarist Kerry King responded by saying that the problem with this summer's event lay not so much with the metal bands themselves but with the way the festival was organized. He told Metal Insider: "Do I know this tour wasn't booked correctly? Absolutely I know this tour wasn't booked correctly. [Fellow SLAYER guitarist] Gary Holt made the comment that usually there's the main stage, a second stage, a third stage, and then that piece-of-shit record stage… Now what they're calling a second stage is at best a fourth stage and they're wondering why people aren't showing up." He continued: "It's easy to fill these stages, but I guess they wanted a different price point, take away the second and third stage which I think had a lot of value. To me, a second-stage headliner is ANTHRAX, MACHINE HEAD…"

King told Unrated Magazine in a separate interview: "We did a show at the Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee last year — it was us, SUICIDAL [TENDENCIES] and EXODUS — and it was sold out. We had Mayhem there four days ago, and it wasn't sold out. That tells you something."

Regarding the relatively low cost of the tickets for this year's Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, Kerry said: "Nah [tickets are not that expensive], but they're expensive on this tour for bang for your buck. Because a bang for your buck… other than one band I know of on the second stage and a handful of main-stagers, you know, it's… This is usually where people would come out and just party all day, and they're passing on the party 'cause the bill's so shitty."

SLAYER's new album, "Repentless", will be released on September 11 via Nuclear Blast.