Isle headbangers get back-to-back shows by founding fathers of thrash metal

Slayer (pronounced SLAAAAYYERRRRR!) is on the way.

The world’s undisputed No. 1 thrash metal band will play two shows in Honolulu, on Monday and Tuesday.

With fellow metal madmen Testament playing Sunday, it’s something of an embarrassment of riches for Hawaii’s headbangers. One might say our goblet runneth over.

To get an idea of the magnitude, imagine back-to-back bookings with Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand, Peter Tosh and Bob Marley, or Robert Johnson and Leadbelly — two acts that are not only at the top of their field, but also had a hand in creating the genre itself.

Slayer cut its first record in 1983, and Testament cut its debut just a few years later. They, along with Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and others, established thrash metal.

The record-buying public has responded with respect: Slayer’s new album, "Repentless," sold 50,000 copies (49,000 of them "pure album sales") in its first week of release and debuted on the Billboard 200 albums chart at No. 4. It entered the magazine’s Tastemaker Albums chart at No. 1.

A SLAYER fan doesn’t listen to a new album so much as learn it, and it’s a brutal education. The music cuts the air, with twin guitars marauding over cataclysmic bass and drums, topped with vocals that sound like they’re being rattled off by an angry auctioneer. The title track on "Repentless" moves along at quite a clip: 217 beats per minute.

Fortunately, some of the songs on "Repentless" are also extremely catchy.

The German word for tunes that are so catchy that they get stuck in one’s head is "ohrwurmer" — literally, "earworms." They’re pieces of melody that you can’t get out of your head. Some of the songs on the new Slayer album are so catchy, yet still so brutal, that they could be said to contain not earworms, but earcobras.

Slayer’s not-so-secret formula: Maintain a strong sense of melody while thrashing as hard and heavy — and as fast — as superhumanly possible. A study on earworms notes the catching power of notes in close proximity to one another, and Slayer’s ample use of the chromatic scale — that is, notes right next to each other — sets the hook.

The band generously uses rhyme and meter, propelling the listener along. Lyrics from "Repentless" track "Implode" give a sense of the music’s driving force: "So is it just me / Can everyone see / The world drowning in its own blood / Humanity’s decline / Dismantled over time / A fossil drying in the mud."

The band finds a deep, delicious groove, and singer/bassist Tom Araya’s voice interacts with the bass, drums and rhythm guitar to give the music a self-propelled, even perpetual-motion, feel.

This might be the album to propel Slayer headlong into the mainstream: The lyrics are understandable, the riffs as clear as they are belligerent. As a new rhythm pattern emerges, the band usually pauses or waits to start, isolating each riff to give the listener an introduction.

Combine the approach with Terry Date’s clean, cogent production, and the music is downright accessible.

HALF OF Slayer is gone. Long live the new half.

Drummer Paul Bostaph has replaced fan favorite Dave Lombardo. This is not Bostaph’s first rodeo, however: He was in Bay Area band Forbidden, has been in Testament and Exodus, and, most important, he was Slayer’s drummer from 1992 to 2001. His playing is absolutely explosive. He doesn’t merely keep a beat or maintain the frequently breakneck tempo, he also puts forth tremendous creativity in his fills.

Guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who co-founded the band, died a couple of years ago. His replacement is Gary Holt, founder of thrash metal titans Exodus. As Hanneman’s death was neither unexpected nor swift, Holt filled in for him on tour and has now been playing with the band for almost five years.

Holt was always a clean player, using major scales to give his work soaring melodies and an almost anthemic feel. But in replacing Hanneman, he adds a little deranged wildness to his usual melodic style.

Having Holt join Slayer and pairing him with long-standing guitarist and band co-founder Kerry King is like having baseball great Willie Mays join the Braves and pairing him with slugger Hank Aaron. A lot of Slayer fans won’t get that reference (they’re too young to remember the Say Hey Kid and Hammerin’ Hank), but many will: The band has been recording since 1983, and that brings fans of multiple generations to their concerts.

TESTAMENT released its first album a couple of years into the speed-metal age, as part of a San Francisco thrash revolution in the mid-’80s, and built a reputation on polished, intricate, extremely heavy playing.

The band’s lead guitarist, Alex Skolnick, is famed as a virtuoso (and has even played metal standards in a jazz format, with the Alex Skolnick Trio). The current drummer, Gene Hoglan, has a stellar pedigree, having started with Dark Angel and played with Death and Strapping Young Lad.

Testament singer Chuck Billy, calling from California, said the Bay Area’s thrash revolution began when metal musicians were influenced by another extreme form: punk, with its requisite speed and aggression.

"It was a new scene. San Francisco was really a punk-rock town, and it crossed into the metal side," he said. The newborn speed metal, or "thrash," he says, "was a little more melodic than punk, a little more accessible. Plus, we were all different. Nobody copied each other." Indeed, there was no "San Francisco sound" at the time because each band, from Metallica to Death Angel, was unique.

Billy is "probably" the only Native American to front a major metal act, he said, but concedes, "Well, there’s Joey (Belladonna) from Anthrax. He’s native but I think he’s more Italian."

The vocalist incorporates unbridled ferocity into his live performances. Ask him about it and he’ll talk about enthusiasm. "I was always that kind of person. I always gave it all my all," he said, first in school sports and then in music.

He slips into the second person when describing his stage attack: "You change into a different person onstage; the fears all go away, the stage fright goes away."

He looks fearless, as well, and might be metal’s most intimidating frontman, at 6-foot-4 and weighing 250.

For years Billy demanded during shows that the fans get into it as much as the band, calling night after night for the "Wall of Death." The crowd would split in two; each half would move to its side, and then run into each other in what looked like a gargantuan comic strip dust-up, limbs and cuss words marking its perimeter.

No more. "People were getting hurt," Billy said. "That responsibility and burden comes on me, so I stopped."

The fans still rise to the occasion with their own aggressive mosh pit action. Fists and elbows fly. In South America "they’re nuts for anything that comes," Billy said. "Bogota, Colombia, has the craziest fans, the most insane shows." He has seen pumped-up fans at concerts in Colombia circling the mosh pit while holding aloft lighted flares.

Despite the craziness, Billy is no yahoo. He went to college to improve his singing, and then for years took private lessons. He does warm-ups and vocal exercises, and credits that approach for his longevity. It’s kept him around, more than 30 years after he started, to appreciate an apparent resurgence in the popularity of metal.

The genre looks like it’s returning to the mainstream, the singer said, citing the use of Judas Priest’s music on TV commercials, and a Carl’s Jr. ad with a soundtrack by Death Angel.

"It’s coming back," he said.

The band expects to cross paths with fellow travelers at its Sunday show in Honolulu, with the guys in Slayer expected backstage.

"We’ve known them forever. We’re good friends," said Billy. "It’s going to be one big party."