“I’m not a Satanist, I’m an atheist, but I write the best Satanic lyrics on the planet” How Slayer went from thrash provocateurs to metal’s unlikeliest elder statesmen

Slayer posing for a photograph in 2006.

The recently reunited Slayer formed in 1981 in Los Angeles and helped pioneer the whole thrash genre. In 2006, as they marked their silver jubilee with new album Christ Illusion, Classic Rock caught up with a band who refused to mellow with age.

It is the most innocuous of mini-malls, buried in the back of an industrial part of Corona, California, a typical So Cal suburb complete with a freeway running close by. Amid the glass-plated store fronts sits Napa29, a quiet, serene restaurant. And when your Classic Rock scribe saunters in (wearing a skull-adorned T-shirt) and starts to ask about a “reservation for Mr King”, the hostess interrupts, saying: “Kerry King isn’t here yet. He always sits in the corner of the bar though, so you can wait in there if you like.”