Maximum Ink has issued an interview with SLAYER frontman Tom Araya, conducted by Paul Gargano. The following is an excerpt:

Q: Being on the road for as much as you guys are, does it sometimes feel like you're living in a bubble?

A: "You do an album and you go on the road, and that's two years. Unless you sit down and make yourself pay attention to what's going on… In two years a television series can come and be gone, a band will have a hit and be gone, then you get home and hear about. I remember coming home once and hearing about Kid Rock, and I was like, 'Who the fuck is he?' That happens all the time: You come back and people are huge, but you've never heard of them before. I'm assuming that there are a lot of musicians, like me, that don't watch MTV, and don't see who's on top of the world at the moment, they just see who's survived and who people are talking about so often that they become a fixture."

Q: So you end up hearing about Justin Timberlake, but not necessarily some of the up-and-coming bands in your genre.

A: "Yeah… Like that [Timberlake] song 'Sexyback'. I get exposed to those songs through my kids and through my wife. When I heard that song I thought it wasn't really that bad a song, then I saw the video and listened to the words and realized that he's poking fun at all the other guys that haven't done shit, so now he's got to bring sexy back because nobody else can do it! [Laughing] The song is good, even if he didn't have anything to do with writing it, and there are a lot of one-off songs like that… Like the 50 Cent song 'Just A Lil Bit', I like the music and thought the Middle Eastern vibe was clever. There's that 'Gold Digger' song [Kanye West], I think that's fucking great! I go out on the road, come back, and that's what my wife and kids are listening to. It may not be my taste, but I can still enjoy it."

Check out the full interview at this location.