In an interview with Loudwire, Tom Araya opened up on what he sees as the negative aspects of being in SLAYER now, telling (as transcribed by Ultimate-Guitar.com):
“I’m tired.
“This is our fourth show in, and we’ve got another 38 days. I like being home. I have my animals that I take care of. I’ve got a beautiful granddaughter now.
“I’m able to experience what I didn’t expedience with my kids because I wasn’t home so much – I’m watching her crawl. And now she’s not even crawling, she wants to stand up and walk. She’s bypassing the crawling stage. She’s trying to walk!
“So I’m able to experience a lot of development stages I didn’t get to experience with y kids because I was always gone.
“I like doing this, I just hate to travel.
“Dude, I can’t be any more honest than that. The first two nights we had late shows, we call them ‘the deadliners.’
“You’re the so-called headliner, but you play last. And it’s deadliner because by the end of the night everybody’s dead.
“Then it depends on the kind of concert you’re playing. The concert we initially started this tour with, the festival that we did, was like radio-type bands, and then us at the very end.
“And at the very end the it’s just people… You know, we played last before, but these people were just kind of like slowly trickling away.
“So by the end of the night there wasn’t really that many left. But we were still playing. It wasn’t like we were gonna play half-ass.
“We did the whole show. We put a 100% in, and when I was done I thanked everybody that decided to stay. [Laughs] ‘For those of you who decided to stay with us, thank you very f*cking much!’ [Laughs]
“I have a tough time sleeping on the bus. So we get here, the minute we get in I crash. I only sleep maybe 4 hours and then I wake up. I can’t sleep.
“It’s a road thing. And then I – see, now you’re getting into my private life – I wear CPAP when I sleep. I need that to sleep.
“So if I can’t sleep well I don’t sleep long. So I only slept 3 or 4 hours, I woke up, so I’ve been up since 10. So I didn’t really sleep very long.
“I don’t sleep good on the bus period, and then when I got off to the hotel I just didn’t sleep very long.
“That’s the part of the road that I’m not enjoying anymore. Because I can’t rest, I can’t get plenty of sleep. So now when I do this, and we’re on early which is great… You know, it’s a long drive.”
Repentless is the first album without Hanneman and first with producer Terry Date, to widespread rave reviews and the highest chart debut of the band’s career. The band also teamed up with director BJ McDonnell for three high-concept and brutal music videos for the album’s ‘Repentless‘, then for ‘You Against You,’ and the most recent, ‘Pride in Prejudice‘.
