Dave Lombardo

• By Billy Ramirez
• Originally published in the July 2006 issue of DRUM! Magazine

And lo, the underworld tore asunder and belched forth four sardonic sprites of impossible speed and anger that deafened humankind for a generation until the release of Decade Of Aggression: Live, when the demon drummer flung himself into the steaming magma of numerous side projects and the band fell dormant under the spell of other rhythmic black masters. An uncertain time of anguish ensued, but stones were thrown and planets aligned, and with a mighty upheaval, Dave Lombardo – surrounded by familiar thrash metal legends of past conquests – was once and for all …

Back With Slayer!

They said it couldn’t be done. They were clearly wrong. But the fact remains that after Dave Lombardo left Slayer in 1992, it was hard to picture the original lineup playing together again. The smell of bad blood was in the air, and Lombardo never considered it to be a possibility, after all. “No. I think I’m a little too stubborn for that,” he confides. “I just went off and did my own thing. I never had any concern for what they were doing. People would bring me their records, but I would never go buy them. I never cared what they did. I was fending for myself.”

Slayer moved on and hired former Forbidden and current Exodus drummer Paul Bostaph, who lasted almost ten years and in the process developed his own worldwide reputation for brutal double bass bashing [read our Bostaph interview in issue #119]. Lombardo gives props to his doppelganger’s performance on Slayer’s 2001 release, God Hates Us All: “He’d been in the band eight or nine years, and he was adapting. He was starting to express himself.”

But love gets lost when asked to describe the difference between his drumming and Bostaph’s. “Feeling and no feeling,” Lombardo says firmly. “I have feeling when I play drums. I make the drums speak. When he plays, he plays machine-like. That’s what I think distinguishes drummers. There’s the mechanical player, and there’s the player with feeling and groove.”

All Hell Breaks Loose. Then Bostaph left in 1996. Former Testament drummer John Dette lasted only a few months before Bostaph returned and stayed until 2001. Stranded again without a drummer, necks craned as Slayer invited Lombardo to fill in as a hired gun. “When they called me back, it was great. I gave them my answer in about 24 hours.” But he had a proviso, agreeing to fill in only temporarily while the band continued to search for a new drummer. “I was doing them a favor,” he clarifies.

Meanwhile, Slayer accepted a truckload of audition tapes, but no drummer rose to the occasion. In truth, it was difficult to imagine anyone filling such colossal shoes. Soulfly’s Joe Nunez was reportedly offered the gig but turned it down. Still no direct hit. Five years later, Lombardo was still “filling in,” still not a full bandmember. “It was weird,” he ponders. “The first tours, it would hit me like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I was on stage, and here I see Kerry, Tom, and Jeff; seeing these guys in front of me, it was odd. I soon overcame that.”

By sheer brute force, the band’s chemistry reanimated in the guise of its original creation, which was captured in stark, brutal glory on the Still Reigning DVD, filmed during a memorable 2004 tour. Nearly every night, Slayer played the Reign In Blood album in its entirety, and select cities witnessed the band drenched in fake blood during the closer “Raining Blood.” Not only does it look wicked on DVD, Lombardo is probably still trying to wash some of that sticky gook out of his mane.

“It was a mess,” he states. “It was an absolute mess,” he emphasizes. “For the video, I did it only one time, but they chose to do it almost night after night. I had two drum sets – one I spilled blood on and one I played for the rest of the tour. My stick bag got full of that stuff. Sticks were flipping out of my hand.”

But despite the odds, Lombardo stuck around and made history. Again.

They Were Just Jamming. He thought he was recording some demos with guitarist Kerry King in mid-2003, but Lombardo was in fact working on material for Slayer’s new album, still untitled when this issue went to press, his first studio release with the band since 1990’s Seasons Of The Abyss. “Kerry had a bunch of ideas, and we had demoed them,” says Lombardo. “We worked on those ideas, and eventually we started elaborating on certain sections and creating other parts that would go together and have it flow together. Basically it stems from that demo.”

Slayer got the green light to go into the studio, and the band started to assemble the pieces. “The basic structures and rhythms and the drum tracks were done. All the drums were ready in three and a half days,” Lombardo brags. “After I did my drum tracks with the scratch guitar, they came in and found some nice guitar sounds and layered their rhythm tracks, and then they worked on vocals and leads. Everything pretty much stayed the same, except for one of Jeff’s songs – we extended the end a little more.”

Then there was Rick Rubin, the iconoclastic mastermind behind the band’s 1986 classic Rein In Blood, who signed on to produce the new album. What was his input into the songs? “He didn’t really have any part of them at all,” Lombardo insists. “Not even the producer [Josh Abraham]. We basically kept [the music] how it was from rehearsal. There were some suggestions, but I don’t think they went over well with the guys.”

It’s been a long 16 years since he appeared on his last Slayer studio album, Seasons In The Abyss, and 14 years since he has appeared on any Slayer album [the live release Decade Of Aggression]. We asked Lombardo to describe the new disc: “It’s a little bit more than just a Slayer record. [It has] the chemistry of the original members and it’s definitely different. There’s a vibe, there’s a feel in the music rather than the records they did without me. It’s got a real punk feel to it, which really is what Slayer was about, blending the two vibes together. That’s kind of how Slayer started creating its style. It was pure adrenaline and enthusiasm.”

Lombardo’s drumming underwent its own dramatic changes after he split from Slayer, and by coming back, he had to strike a new balance between his old and new self. “Musically, I had so much experience prior to doing this record,” he says. “But the music needs to be a certain way and there are boundaries that I have to stay within. A lot of the drum rhythms stem from the actual guitar rhythm. I can’t veer too much.”

Who does he think he’s kidding? The manic speed, frantic fills, and organic drum sound are vintage Lombardo. No compressors or triggers. Just live drums in a room. “I used the exact same setup I use live,” he explains. “I like the big drum sound and that particular drum set. My drum tech, Norm Costa, really tunes it in right. He knows what I’m talking about when I say, ‘The toms are too low, bring them up.’ We definitely achieved everything we wanted on this record.

“You can hear the shells of my toms. It’s not like some of these metal bands that use these electronic sounds. They’re missing the whole point, because a drum resonates. When you’re using these electronic sounds, you’re not capturing the warmth and the craftsmanship that the drums are actually made for. We did it. You’re definitely going to hear some good drums on this one. This is a very open drum sound.”

Lombardo is braced for the upcoming Unholy Alliance tour with Lamb Of God, Mastodon, Children Of Bodom, and Thine Eyes Bleed. With so much work looming ahead, he already anticipates being apart from his family. “It’s rough,” he admits. “I’ve been home now since last September. I’ve been home this entire time and me and the kids run around, we do things, we do chores around the house and I take them to school in the morning, make them their lunch and stuff like that. I’m going to miss it. It’s a lot of fun.”

Independence. Even after rejoining Slayer, Lombardo still likes to test himself. In recent years, he formed a side project called Philm, and released albums with Grip, Inc. and Apocalyptica. You could even say that he was technically in Metallica, albeit for only a few minutes – he filled in for an ailing Lars Ulrich at the Donnington Festival in 2004, only to be replaced by Joey Jordison a couple songs later. He ventured far beyond his comfort zone when he joined Mike Patton’s Fantômas. He still tours with the band and has recorded five albums with them. “The music is extremely different,” he explains. “I really enjoy playing avant-garde style of music. Although Fantômas is not like free-form jazz – I did that with John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Fred Frith – Fantômas is very challenging music and very complex. Everything is real. We perform everything.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Lombardo revealed his funky side last year in Dave Lombardo Vs. DJ Spooky – Drums Of Death. “I’ve always liked the hip-hop rap beats,” he says. “Although they’re electronic, they teach you a certain rhythm that makes you really groove. I really enjoyed playing that stuff and trying to mimic it and learn it from particular songs.

“It turned out really cool because we got Chuck D to sing on some of the songs. We just got into it. [DJ Spooky] came over my house, and we recorded the drums at my house. We spent two or three days. He would play something with his CDs and scratch a little bit and I would play along. I would listen to stuff that he really liked, and I would take those pieces and do something in that vein and that style. I made up my own stuff. It was a lot of fun.”

Lombardo has never been a regular on the clinic circuit, though he has played a handful over the past few years. Those few drummers who saw him up close were wowed, but we advise readers not hold their breaths for an encore. A clinic tour doesn’t appear to be coming any time soon.

“I just feel that it’s not my thing,” he says. “It kind of puts me out of my element. I could do a drum solo, but I’m more of a stage performer. There is a difference. There are teachers, and there are players. I’ll really show somebody if there was a guitar player there and I’m jamming with him and playing a song with him. Can you imagine having a drum clinic behind my drum set at a Slayer show? ‘This is how it’s done. This is the energy you have to put in. This is how much sweat you have to pour out to really get your drumming across.

“You can’t be lame playing drums. It has to be pounded.’”

The Slayer Set Circa 2006

Drums: Tama Starclassic (in Wine Red)
24" x 18" Bass Drum
14" x 5.5" Bronze Snare Drum
8" x 7" Tom
10" x 9" Tom
12" x 10" Tom
13" x 11" Tom
14" x 12" Tom
15" x 13" Tom
18" x 16" Floor Tom
20" x 16" Floor Tom

Cymbals: Paiste
15" Rude Sound Edge Hi-Hats
18" 2002 Novo China
16" Rude Crash/Ride
17" Rude Crash/Ride
18" Rude Crash/Ride
22" Signature Power Ride
22" 2002 Novo China

Dave Lombardo also uses Remo heads, Pro-Mark sticks, Tama pedals and hardware, and Meinl percussion.