In a new interview with Louder, Slayer frontman Tom Araya looks back on a life on metal’s frontlines.

Asked if there was a point when he felt that Slayer had become a success, Araya replies: “You know, that’s a difficult question for me, because I really don’t see this band the way most people do. It’s always a surprise to me when people ask me questions like that, even after all these years. I really don’t think of the band as this big thing - even though everybody else does. I do find myself in awe sometimes when that reality hits me, and I think, ‘Wow! Damn!’ - but I don’t really think about it that often. What’s weird is that me and my family can be out walking somewhere, and out of the blue someone will just walk right up to me and say, ‘I know who you are!’ and he’ll shake my hand and it’ll be cool. It’s happening more and more frequently these days, too, which is really surprising to me. It can happen in really obscure places as well: we can be in the middle of nowhere and it’ll happen. Then we’ll look at each other and we’ll be like, ‘What just happened?’ Ha Ha.”

Louder: You’ve admitted that you and Jeff Hanneman were both rather fond of cocaine in the band’s early days... “Yeah, we used to do that stuff all the time," says Tom. "We stopped it when we were doing South Of Heaven [1988], or in that timeframe anyway. It was pretty stupid... it was real stupid. We just looked at each other one day and we were like, [exhausted voice] ‘We can’t be doing that shit anymore!’, so me and him made a pact that we’d quit.”

Read more at Louder.

(Photo - Tom Tronckoe)