Emerald writer Craig Wright sat down with Gary Holt and Paul Bostaph of the legendary thrash metal band Slayer on Sunday, March 20 before a performance at Portland’s Roseland Theater. Bostaph is the drummer for Slayer and has been a member of the band for a cumulative decade in two separate stints. The first was from 1992-2001, taking over for Dave Lombardo. Bostaph rejoined the band in 2013 following Lomabardo’s dismissal. Holt joined as a temporary fill-in for founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman in 2011 while he was ill. After Hanneman’s death in 2013, Holt was named a full member of Slayer.

In a small room that reeked of incense backstage at the Roseland, Holt and Bostaph spoke about their worst nightmares, back problems and why not even metal bands want dead cats as a gift. Below is the full Q&A, which has been lightly edited for length.

Emerald: Tonight’s show sold out in a matter of minutes. Does that give you guys a little extra edge to want to put on a good show?

Paul Bostaph: Well we always want to put on a good show. That doesn’t matter, but yeah we’re always excited to play for a sold-out house.

Gary Holt: I have a good feeling about what’s going to snap-off tonight. I think it’s going to be fucking nuts. This club has just got that vibe of violence to it and I like it.

Bostaph: Any club with a pole in the middle of the stage is setting the stage (for a good show).

E: How does Slayer prepare for a show? What do you guys do?

Holt: (Guitarist Kerry King) and I about an hour before start warming up. We don’t prepare by like slaughtering small animals or anything like that. It’s actually pretty tame. It’s mostly just getting warmed up to play this kind of high-energy music, you know? For a guitar player you’ve gotta get the wrists and the arms pumped up so you can keep up and then stretch so you don’t pull something (laughs).

Bostaph: I do the same thing they do. I prepare like an hour before. I stretch, I’ve got a little practice pad kit and I warm up on that and I’ve just got to get myself mentally into the right place to perform.

E: Both of you seem very calm right now, so at what point do you guys become Slayer?

Holt: For me, it’s when the kabuki screen drops. That’s when the shit gets real.

Bostaph: Yup.

Holt: Other than that, standing over in the wings just being generally stupid. It’s not like I’m pacing around breathing hard and shit like that. I’m relaxed until (Bostaph) counts off the first song and then it’s go. That’s like the green light.

E: You’ve both been in Slayer for a few years now. Paul, you’ve been in the band for about a decade now, right?

Bostaph: Yeah. Well, it’s been over a decade now. But I was in the band a decade prior.

E: How does Slayer of the nineties compare to today?

Bostaph: There’s obviously changes that have happened within the band, but Slayer has a different chemistry now because we have different personalities. We have Gary because Jeff (Hanneman) is no longer with us anymore. That’s the obvious thing and whenever you lose a guy and somebody new comes in, that changes the chemistry of the group. It was great with Jeff, it’s awesome with Gary and how does it compare? Well obviously that was the nineties and this isn’t the nineties anymore. I’d like to say I’m a little older, a little wiser. I think I’m a better musician now. I probably say that, I don’t know about for everybody in the band, but from my perspective, I feel the musicianship level is better. The older you get, the more you play your instrument, the more you try to master it, so maybe that’s something that’s happening a little with all of us.

E: Was it is a pretty easy decision to rejoin?

Bostaph: Yeah. It was a no-brainer.

E: In the last few years, reunion shows have become the musical equivalent of superhero movies, especially for festivals like Coachella. How has Slayer avoided breaking up for 34 years?  Obviously you guys have only been there for a few of those years, but how has Slayer managed to keep going through the decades?

Holt: I don’t think any of us know how to do anything else other than play heavy metal, thrash metal, and do it well, be it Slayer or Exodus, or any other project. It’s what I do. I don’t know how to do anything else. Why would I walk away from any of it? And I think it’s the same for Kerry and Tom and Paul. What else are we going to do? You get to play a sold-out show with a pole in the middle of the stage in front of a bunch of people who are going to go nuts, or I could go to trade school. I’d rather be here. It’s kind of an easy choice.

Bostaph: I totally agree with Gary, and the other thing I think would be that when you’re traveling and you’re around each other all the time… We have a relationship and the longevity part of it is not pushing each other’s buttons. We’re out here to play music. Within this band I think it has always been that, that’s been my experience. I think that’s what adds to it. You just don’t push each other’s buttons. Go home. Do your own thing, but when you’re here, let’s play some music because it’s supposed to be fun.

E: Gary, I’ve seen pictures of your blood-stained guitar you made with Vincent Castiglia, so I have to ask, what made you want to make that?

Slayer guitarist Gary Holt rocks a custom guitar painted by artist Vincent Castiglia. The guitar required 18 vials of Holt’s blood. (Meerah Powell/Emerald)

Holt: Because Vincent Castiglia is one of the most well-respected, sick artists walking this planet today. He’s the only American ever to have his work shown in the Giger Museum in Switzerland. To have one of his pieces done on a guitar, well it’s never been done, and you’re lucky if you have one of his pieces to hang on the wall, and I have a functioning piece of destructive art and I get to play it every day. It wasn’t made to hang on the wall. I met Vincent through my friend Brian Werner, the singer for Vital Remains and I think Brian was the first to broach the idea to do a guitar, and we were both like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” It’s just a meeting of the minds, and he came to a show when we did a two-night stand in Huntington, New York and he pulled 18 vials of my blood and painted a guitar with it.

E: That’s dedication. Let’s talk about the “Repentless” and “You Against You” videos. I have a very dark sense of humor and I know Slayer likes to piss people off. I see an underlying humor in them, so am I crazy, do I need psychological help, or am I accurate in saying that they are supposed to be at least a little bit funny?

Holt: No. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s funny at all. It’s dark and twisted, and that just means you’re fucked up in the head, and I totally admire and respect that (Bostaph laughs). I think that’s awesome. But I mean yeah, I guess you could find some, you know over-the-top violence can always be viewed as a little tongue in cheek and I love it. I think it’s totally a kick to watch, so I’ll watch it smiling and going, “Whoa that’s awesome,” so yeah, I can see where you’re coming from.

E: So it’s not just me. Good to know.

Holt: I’m not like covering my eyes and shrieking away. I’m smiling too, so yeah I guess there’s some fun in that.

Watch the video for “Repentless” below.

E: It’s a bit shocking for a music video to see Danny Trejo gouging a guy’s eyes out.

Bostaph: I think that’s, for me, where the over-the-top humor part of it is, when you have Danny Trejo in your music video and he’s gouging some guy’s eyes out.

Holt: He’s got both his thumbs in his eye sockets (reenacts the motion in the air). That’s awesome.

Bostaph: That’s way over the top.

E: Do people still complain about Slayer music and videos, or has the band reached a point like South Park where people just kind of let it slide?

Holt: I don’t know. The only person who complains about music videos usually is me. Having to do them. The end result is fun, but I have always hated making videos because you’re basically lip-syncing to a song and it’s an unnatural element to being a musician. You’re pretending to perform, and it goes on and on all day, over and over. A typical concert lasts about an hour-and-a-half to two hours. A typical video can be two, three days. It’s always great, the end result, but the “Repentless” video was done on the hottest day of the year in L.A.

E: Of course.

Holt: (laughs) You see the video, and we were outside. We were told to headbang furiously over and over and it was about 110 degrees.

Bostaph: It was very, very hot.

Holt: It was brutal.

Bostaph: We didn’t get a break from the heat. We would stop a take, everybody would go stand against a building which had the only bit of shade, but we’re standing outside drinking water and we were out there for eight hours doing the same thing over and over again.

E: Wearing all black.

Holt: Wearing all black.

Bostaph: Yeah. I got back to the hotel and I had heat stroke. My whole face was red. It was brutal, like Gary said.

Holt: Those are the things directors do to musicians (Bostaph laughs). That’s why my goal in life is to do a video I don’t have to be in. Animate it! Then you can make me a bit more buff, make me a little bigger, take the gray out of the beard. You could have artistic liberties. It would be awesome (laughs).

E: My angle for this story is to describe what it’s like to see Slayer for people who have never been to a metal show, or who may be afraid to go to one. Can you give me a quick synopsis of what a Slayer show is like?

Holt: It’s electric energy. It’s not a scary place to be. There’s plenty of safe havens to observe from. I’ve had people I know come out to shows that have never been to a metal show in their lives, and, will they go again? Maybe not. But they spent the next three hours doing nothing but talking about how awesome it was and how they’ve never seen anything like it. So I would highly recommend everybody come to every Slayer show everywhere. Yeah. Whether you like metal or not, you should just buy a ticket (laughs).

Bostaph: Another way to describe it is when you come to a show like Slayer, you’re not going to see a band onstage expecting the crowd to do something. We’re all in it together. We’re giving as much as the audience gives and every bit of energy, every bit of intensity we have, it’s right there on stage. When you really get the right combination with the crowd, it feeds off each other.

Holt: Yeah. It’s kind of like a vortex. Like entering the maelstrom. It just builds and builds into like an F5 tornado because we do feed off them, they feed off us. If the crowd is a little bit laid back, sometimes we’ll go the extra mile to get them to join us. Sometimes it’s harder. If they’re really going nuts, sometimes it’s an energy burst for us. It just builds to this big apex; a shitstorm. It’s awesome.

Bostaph: It’s a must-see event.

E: This is my first metal show tonight. 

Holt: No shit! (laughs).

Bostaph: Excellent.

Holt: We’ll try not to disappoint.

E: Gary, what do your wife and three daughters think of Slayer?

Holt: They’re not metalheads, they like a little metal, but my youngest is into stuff like Of Mice And Men and Black Veil Brides and all that. I think the coolest thing for Slayer for her is that she gets to meet Black Veil Brides and Of Mice and Men and gets her picture taken with Austin Carlile and people like that from her favorite bands, so yeah, dad’s really cool all of a sudden. But they think it’s cool. A couple of them have been to a couple of shows and they like seeing their dad play, but at the same time it’s not the music they listen to.

E: Would you say Slayer is a full family activity?

Bostaph: I would say yes. My mom, she can’t come to shows anymore but when she could, she would come all the time.

Holt: Same here. My mom’s seen me when I was 17 and she’s seen me play auditoriums and little bars, but she can’t get out to those anymore.

Bostaph: Geez, whenever we play the Bay Area, more of my brothers and sisters have moved away, but it’s like the family that is in town whenever I come to town there’s a bunch of people that I’m related to that come to that show: cousins, nephews, nieces, friends. Friends are family for me and I’m sure for Gary as well.

Holt: And it’s a nightmare.

Bostaph: It’s a nightmare (laughs).

Holt: Hometown shows. There’s a lot of good there’s and a lot of bad, you know? It’s a hometown show, you want to be at your best but you also have to entertain, police, and be traffic cop to all of your family who, despite how long we have done it, they aren’t really aware of all the protocols. They come barging in everywhere, they get in the way, they’ve usually had too much to drink, they’re super excitable, and you want them to just leave me alone, come see me after the show, just let me get in a zone for this and not have to be traffic cop to every niece, nephew, cousin, brother, aunt and uncle and everything you’ve got here. It’s a lot of work. I’ve been working on my guest list for these two San Francisco shows for about three weeks now. I think I’m done.

E: What does the future hold for Slayer?

Holt: Ride this out until we can’t ride anymore. Stay in the saddle until we fall off and can’t climb back up.

E: If given the opportunity will you both continue with Slayer?

Bostaph: Absolutely.

Holt: It’s been five years now here for what started as a helping hand for some old friends, and it turned into a half-a-decade endeavor. It’s kind of one of those strange journeys. Unexpected.

E: After three decades of thrash metal, is it getting easier to play, or has age started to affect how fast you can play?

Holt: Easier? I have really bad back issues. I have an inversion table in the other room that I have to hang up on several times. I’ve had two epidurals. Any woman who has ever had a child, I know your pain. Not the actual childbirth, but actually having four needles put into your spine, it really sucks, but I will do whatever it fucking takes to keep doing this. I get onstage and I’m not going to half ass anything. I’ll stop doing this when I feel I can’t do it at the level I demand of myself. The older I get, the more I want to show people half my age how this shit is done, and make them look tired. The only difference is I walk off stage and start gobbling more ibuprofen, then I go hang upside down and call my back doctor and they’re riding skateboards down the street or whatever, but I still feel I can do this at a very high level, so I’m going to continue.

Bostaph: Honestly, we don’t have a problem playing fast. As a matter of fact, I play better fast now than I did when I was younger. That’s part of what I was saying earlier is that when I was younger, I could play fast, but shit, I listened to the first record I ever did, and I played way too fast. But now I can control the tools that I have and speed is not a problem. We can play fast, faster. We can play so ridiculously fast if we wanted to that it would make the songs sound like a trainwreck. Speed is never an issue. It’s the control of speed that is a tool we all have. We’re not slowing down in that respect.

Holt: I mean there’s things that I was able to do better younger, things I do better now than when I was younger. Some things are related to just 30 years of repetitive motion on your knuckles and they’re a little bit crooked and enlarged and arthritic now, but there’s certain things that when I was younger, I listen to now and I go “Man, that was fucking really good. Let me try to do that. Wow.” There’s things that I do now that were hard for me then and they’re much easier, mostly right-hand-based stuff. My right hand is stronger, my left hand is, you know, it gives me that… ugh (shakes hand in the air) sometimes, but you know, you just motor through it.

Slayer guitarists Gary Holt and Kerry King solo together during a show at the Roseland Theater. (Meerah Powell/Emerald)

E: Slayer is an intense live act. How do you guys unwind after a show? You mentioned you hang on a bar, but what else do you guys do?

Holt: I go hang upside down again (laughs).

Bostaph: Obvious unwinding is I’ll have a beer. That’s the first thing I do is just crack a beer and sit down. Obviously get changed and just let the adrenaline go away because that’s a huge adrenaline rush and it still exists when you’re offstage, and it takes a little while for me to come off of it. We eat some food, then meet in the dressing room. Sometimes we will have an after-gig shot with Kerry and just unwind.

Holt: I barely drink at all anymore. I have that rare ability to turn that adrenaline off and go straight to bed (laughs).

E: That’s impressive (laughs).

Holt: Yeah, by the time I’ve eaten dinner, an after-show meal, I can go to bed right away. I don’t have to unwind like I used to. He’s a drummer. He’s gotta pump up his adrenaline a little harder, more advanced than I do, but when I’m done, I’m ready to relax. I’ll have a beer, eat some food, go to bed.

E: That actually leads perfectly to my next question. So I had lunch with my grandma today and I told her I’m interviewing basically the founders of thrash metal, and she wanted me to ask: do guys ever have nightmares?

Bostaph: Good question.

Holt: Nightmares? I love nightmares. I love a good nightmare. One that wakes you up in a cold sweat, it’s awesome. It makes you feel alive.

E: Any good ones recently?

Holt: Not recently. I always have had them. I usually get them in the day when I take naps. I have some really, really good ones. Two Exodus albums ago I wrote a song about my nightmares. I love them. Most people are terrified of them. Those are the dreams I remember. The ones that fucking terrify you. 

Bostaph: Yeah, I have tons of nightmares. When I get them, they’re super intense. I wake up from a nightmare, and I couldn’t tell you any one in particular, but I’ve had dreams where I go into a dark room and I know there’s something in there. I know it’s coming to get me. I can feel it. I can feel the goosebumps. When I was younger, I used to run out of that room, but there are some times in that dream where I stand in the middle of that room and I go “OK motherfucker, let’s go” and I’m actually throwing blows with whatever it is and I wake up. Then there are some of those nightmares where it’s whatever that fear is, I wake up from it and I get this cold goosebump energy that passes through my body, and sometimes I wonder if that’s even a ghost that’s in the room. You wake up from it and you go, “That was fucking creepy and weird.” When I get that goosebump feeling that passes right through when I wake up, it’s intense.

Holt: I have some terrifying nightmares. In Exodus my dreams are legendary because I’ll wake up and be like “Guess what happened last night?” And they’ll be like “Dude, you’re fucked up.” I had a dream once many years ago, a simple dream, no fantasyland type shit that I murdered somebody and I swear for a month I believed that shit. I thought it was a repressed memory thing. It was so real that I was asking myself, “Did I really do that shit? No, I couldn’t. I didn’t kill a man and bury him in a park by my mom’s house.” But it kept fucking popping back up as this repressed memory before I realized what it was which was just the memory of this dream coming back. It was pretty gnarly.

E: So how did that affect you for that time span?

Holt: It was scary. But cool as fuck at the same time.

E: I have to ask: What’s the strangest thing you have seen or experienced on this tour?

Bostaph: I can’t think of anything strange on this tour.

Holt: It’s all normal to us now, so it’s not strange at all!

Bostaph: It has to be way outside of this environment, as Gary said, we’re so used to it. It has to be way out there.

Holt: I’d have to go back years to find the really strange shit, like when I was in Europe with Exodus and some super-fan came up to a show with this black plastic bag and he brought us a gift that was a dead cat he found on the road.

Bostaph: OK, that’s weird.

Holt: I really don’t want that. You can get the fuck out of here with that dead cat right now. Why do you think I’d want that?

E: Do fans ever think to take the lyrics literally because a lot of Slayer is about murder and death and violence?

Bostaph: Look. I’m just going to say that 100 percent of people who that show up to our shows don’t take it literally. That being said, there’s always somebody out there that just, I couldn’t explain to you who they are or where they are, or why they are, but maybe there is somebody out there that does, but I don’t know any of them.

Holt: There have been far more killings in the name of Christ than there have been in the name of Slayer. Like the year before last, some guy in, I think from Kentucky, had posted the lyrics to the Exodus song “Class Dismissed” which is about school shootings through the eyes of the shooter, and someone took the lyrics very literally as it was his own manifesto and they arrested him. It would only have taken a cursory Google search to realize he was just reposting lyrics, but some people thought we were condoning (school shootings). Of course not. I have three children in school. What kind of a person condones it? (The song) was inspired by the Virginia Tech shooting, and the guy went to jail. He happened to be in a very Red State place to live, and it took him a little while to get himself out of that one.

Bostaph: Not just to look at lyrics, but look at movies that you go see. If you go see a movie, say JFK for instance. It’s about an assassination. Tons of people went to go see that movie, but nobody was questioning if anybody who went to the movie is going to go out and shoot somebody. It’s the same thing.

Holt: But if you write a song about the Kennedy assassination, all of a sudden, you’re all for it.

Bostaph: It’s weird because if you can pen something to paper, it’s almost like, “Is this really what he thinks?” But if you can make a movie…

Holt: Then it’s just entertainment.

Bostaph: Yeah, it’s just entertainment. But in the same sense they’re related because they’re art. They’re art forms. People can be really sensitive when it comes to art. They only like the art that makes them feel comfortable, and something that doesn’t make them feel comfortable, not everybody, there are people who can accept all kinds of art, but we all have opinions about what we like. But sometimes there are people who do like the macabre and the strange, and that’s an art form.

Holt: I always say it like this: if you can take this world and turn it into a perfect paradise that’s completely hate-free, I’d be happy to stop writing about hate. I’m not that selfish that I’m like, “Well what else am I going to write about?” if we lived in this tranquil, perfect society where there’s no hate and there’s no racial prejudice, no violence, I’d write about happy shit, but that’s not the world I live in. We live in a fucked up place, so that’s where my inspiration comes from.

Bostaph: There it is.