#009 - The Voice of Tom Araya
South of Heaven is an atypical Slayer song.
It's slow, atmospheric and bare. Jeff Hanneman's guitar riff is not as important as the cavernous space it navigates in the intro. It feels desolate, like something terrible happened and you're helplessly bearing witness. It's vivid. You can't quite name it, but you sure can feel it. You're fucking lost and powerless for thirty-five seconds. A lot of Slayer songs take their sweet time to get off the ground, but this one almost never does. It keeps revving and revving like a faulty engine or a bull stomping its hoof.
But it does when Tom Araya starts howling the obsessive, mantra-like chorus at exactly 2:47, well past the midway point of the song.
On and on, south of heaven
On and on, south of heaven
On and on, south of heaven
On and on, south of heaven
What he says doesn't really matter. Slayer songs are fundamentally impersonal and therefore have a personal meaning to every listener. It's the sound of Tom Araya's voice that matter. Rising like the burning hot embers from a dying fire in a pitch black night, it tells you something important: the devastation you've felt while listening to the opening riff belongs to you. You can either spend your life running from your worst fears or embrace them and let them become a part of you. They can be your secret power.
The older I get, the more people ask me why I love heavy and extreme music. It's apparently normal for a young person to lacerate their eardrums with distorted guitars, unrelenting blast beats and screeching vocals because they've got intense feelings and a lot of figuring out to do. There's this perception that when you get older, you level out to some degree and it's partially true. I don't care about many extreme bands now. But I still do about many of them and found many, many more to care about along the way.
I use Slayer for example because 1) most people know who they are 2) most people agree on what they represent and 3) they’re one of my favourite bands of all-time. But I feel similarly about many artists to varying degrees. To me, listening to a Slayer record is the emotional and psychological equivalent to putting armour on. It instantly alters my mood: I feel more confident, more at peace with what I can’t control and, most important, like someone else in this goddamn forsaken world feels the way I do.
Once again, it's not the lyrics. I've never been a lyrics guy. It's a lot about the guitar riffs and the emotion they inspire, but a lot of metal bands have killer riffs. What makes Slayer stand out head and shoulders above the others is the sound of Tom Araya’s voice. Ranging between scalding fury and demon-like rasp, it communicates an unspoken emotion that can be triangulated somewhere in-between anger, horror, disappointment, sadness and heartbreak. You can’t name it, but you sure can feel it.
Araya could sing the words printed on the back of a cereal box, if he did it with his Slayer singing voice it would give me the same rush. I mean, two of his most memorable Slayer moments were wordless: the scream at the start of Angel of Death and the scream at the start of Seven Faces. There's a furnace inside that man’s gut that keeps me warm and fed, spiritually. His voice sounds how I feel. That's why it makes me feel so good to listen to his records. It liberates me from what's inside my head.
Metal is a subculture by nature. It is extreme and therefore repelling to people who feel like nothing is inherently wrong with them. But it exists because it born out of a visceral need for self-expression and therefore attracts a certain kind of people. You don't choose metal. It chooses you. If you have the emotional and psychological disposition to enjoy it, you're going to gravitate towards the band that reflect what you're feeling the most. Armour designed to specifically protect and heal your personal wounds.
First time I heard the voice of Tom Araya singing South of Heaven, I was eight or nine years old. It scared the shit out of me. Because I wasn't yet equipped to understand what it meant, but I already knew that it changed my life. I hadn't made peace yet with the fact that I was different. I had a decade and a half left of heartbreak to get out of my system. I can't say it's pleasant in a way a bubble bath or a glass of wine is pleasant, but Tom Araya's voice makes me feel good. It makes me feel empowered.
I understand that I'm telling you something about myself more than I'm telling you something about Tom Araya or heavy metal in general. I'm an angry person. I'm always afraid to hurt or crush other people with my feelings. Slayer (and extreme music in general) is a way for me to wrangle these noxious feelings and turns them into productive energy. A decibel-powered machine that sublimates my self-destructiveness into motivation. A soundtrack to self-aware creativity. It literally alters my own mind.
I would not be passionate like I am without Tom’ fire.
