In a brand new interview with Drum!, the legendary Gene Hogan (Dark Angel, Fear Factory, Death, Strapping Young Lad, Testament) talks about a number of topics including working for Slayer when he was 15 and helping Dave Lombardo develop his double kick drum technique.

Hogan explains: 

“One day, (Slayer’s) manager didn’t show up to one the gigs, and Tom [Araya] turned to me and said, ‘Hey, man, do you know how to run lights?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ He showed me the board and it looked pretty simple and I said, ‘Ah, I can do this.’” Hoglan hit the road with Slayer as their lighting tech, during which time, Hoglan legend has it, he helped Lombardo develop his double kick drum technique.

“The very first double bass kit that I ever played on was Dave’s,” he says. “A couple of months before they recorded [1983 debut album] Show No Mercy, Dave had added the second kick. When I went down to the Show No Mercy recording sessions, he was only using a single kick, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve already done a gig with double bass. I watched you play with a double bass kit!’ And he said, ‘I couldn’t get my double bass together in time for the recording, so I figured I could just use single bass. I’m good at that.’”

“I remember going to one of their rehearsals one afternoon and Dave was explaining to me all the issues he was having, like, ‘I’m having problems lining up my left foot; it just wants to lag behind.’ I sat behind his kit and just started flying on the double bass, and he said, ‘Hey, wait a minute: I’ve been to your house, I’ve played your kit, you have a single bass. How long have you been playing double bass?’ And I looked at my watch and said, ‘What time is it? I’ve been playing for five minutes.’”

Over the next few months, Hoglan gave Lombardo tips and pointers on double bass technique. Within six months Lombardo’s double bass work was intense enough to pull off Show No Mercy’s “Haunting The Chapel,” “which, at that time,” says Hoglan, “was the most brutal double bass ever written. Like, wow, those bass-drum thirty-second-notes don’t ever stop for the first two minutes of the song. Damn!”

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