Slayer vocalist/bassist Tom Araya spoke with Revolver about their as-yet untitled new album, which they recorded with Terry Date (Pantera, Soundgarden). He said of their progress with it at the time:
“We’re in kind of the beginning stages of the finishing stages, if that makes any sense. We’re doing the mixing and mastering now, but we still need to sit down and figure out the album title, the album cover, the song titles, and the song list. We’ve recorded 13 songs for it; we’ll probably put ten on there, but who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky and we’ll put all 13 on there!”
The album marks the bands first without late guitarist Jeff Hanneman, though he will be featured on one as-yet unnamed track on the effort. Araya explained:
“Ever since his passing, it’s been like that—just odd and strange, because he’s never gonna be there again, you know? Even when we were doing stuff without him while he was still alive, that felt strange. Yeah, I missed him during the process. But the way things turned out, I think he was definitely a part of it, even if he wasn’t there physically.”
“The whole process of this album started three years ago, when Jeff was still a part of it. There is one track on there that we recorded with him, that he did play on, which was completely done except we hadn’t finalized the vocals for it. So we were fortunate to have something that he had participated in.”
The band will be releasing a new track from those sessions, titled “When The Stillness Comes” on April 18th in celebration of ‘Record Store Day‘.
