Watch Slayer Cover ZZ Top + Led Zeppelin at a Recent Soundcheck
A band's soundcheck gives the group the opportunity to play a bunch of music they wouldn't normally do for their live show. This is true of legendary thrash metal band Slayer, who were recently caught on video playing a variety of different covers, including Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top.
In the video above, you can see the whole band getting in on the fun, a pretty cool change up from the band's usual crushing riffs. Guitarist Gary Holt easily riffs all the solos of ZZ Top's "Tush" while vocalist Tom Araya throws down the song's chorus with a huge smile on his face. Araya later does a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll," singing a low baritone and nailing the track. The band riffs through other tracks, generally having a good time playing fast.
Slayer have a history of digging into rock classics during soundcheck, previously teaming up with members of Testament to take on Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird." Catch a bit of that here.
We recently spoke with Tom Araya about a wide variety of topics, including his sleep apnea. “I need [a CPAP] to sleep, so if I can’t sleep well, I don’t sleep long,” Araya says. “I only slept maybe three or four hours [last night] and then I woke up. I don’t sleep good on the bus, period, but when I got to the hotel I didn’t sleep very long … That’s the part of the road that I’m not enjoying anymore, because I can’t rest, I can’t get plenty of sleep.”
Guitarist Kerry King recently spoke in an interview about his feelings on Donald Trump, and that he wrote a song about the President. “I think Trump is a more individual ideology, for sure,” King says. “The band, you know, whenever I try and address political songs, which we do, I can’t say we don’t, but I will base it on the U.S. Government because that’s the government I know, but I try to make it vague enough so that anyone in any country can relate to it. I hate my chancellor, or, I hate my prime minister, I hate my government, I try to make it so that anyone can get something out of it, because if it was pinpointed at America, only Americans would love that song – or hate that song depending on what I say in it. I have one on the next record that is basically about Trump’s nonsense, but it’s really going to be about the Republicans just f–king things up.”
Check out Slayer covering ZZ Top and Led Zeppelin above!
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