Are we witnessing a mass punk revival? If so, Slayer arenīt being led by the crowd - their new LP is a collection of early `80s hardcore, Selected & Exhumed. Reviewed last issue, it features delights from bands like DI, DOA, TSOL, as well as the less acronymical Minor Threat and The Stooges, all in a mince-your-granny Slayer-type way.

Kerry King: "The record was supposed to be influences. Jeff Hanneman was on vacation for a while, so we just messed around and I tried to take all our influences and say īthis is what made Slayer Slayer`, obviously including bands like Judas Priest, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden and Rainbow. We played Burn and Gates of Babylon for a while and it just didnīt work - I couldnīt make them sound ī70s. In context with all the punk tunes we were playing, they just sounded out of place, so we shifted gears and started looking for more punk stuff to play.

"We had a list of twenty and we played them all, but some didnīt pan out. We were playing a Kennedys song for a while, for example, but it didnīt work. There was also a Minor Threat song we didnīt do vocals on. My trouble was I didnīt want to have a big family of punk songs that youīve got to pay publishing on. Theyīre only fifty seconds to a minute and a half long, so I was trying to keep the number of tracks down".

SHORT, NOT SWEET
As guitarists, we all know the joy of playing short, more intensive pieces - Slayer are well known for their intensity, coupled with the ability to write some seriously long tracks (as their late ī80s album Seasons In The Abyss demonstrated). They fared well with the change of pace that these hardcore covers demanded, though. Kerry: "Yeah, itīs easier, itīs not as technical - you can go off a bit more and make it your own. Itīs not about being precise as Slayer is". So could this be the start of a more diverse band in the future? "Itīs hard to say - now that weīve done this I can certainly see something coming from it. I like the way it came out and if thereīs a demand for it, that might sway me to have something come out writing wise". Thereīll certainly be a demand for it; both punk and thrash fans alike (at our local - that passes for market research around here!) have taken to the album, though with vague trepidation. Still, everyone awaits the next album proper. Will the next one be as punk-fuelled? "We certainly arenīt planning on it, but then we didnīt plan on this one - we just came up to it and said īhey, letīs do thisī. Thatīs about all the reason for doing this was to put up something out in a quicker time frame than it would have taken for a real Slayer record. We want to stay in the publicīs eye and put out something with credibility.