Quotes from Jeff Hanneman

Don't overthink things. Make the next record, and keep rolling with it.

To us, being the bad guys is cool, because we always root for the bad guys in the movies.

My first guitar was a Les Paul that I bought off a friend for 500 bucks. I worked a long time to save up enough money for it.

We read a lot from the Satanic bible. It's not quite the opposite of the normal bible - a lot of its principles are just about being yourself, if you want to do something you do it, if you wanna have affairs you can. But we never hold daily rituals or anything.

Rock 'n' roll was never supposed to be polite.

We've met so many people you'd never even suspect of being Slayer fans: suits, lawyers, and people like that.

We don't like preaching, we don't like love songs, we don't like fun songs. We just like the dark side.

It's kind of weird to think about our fan base now, where our hard-core fans have kids, families and jobs.

I don't listen to much rap outside of Run DMC and the Beasties, but then I'm pretty burned out on most new music.

I read a bunch of books about Mengele because he was pretty sick. That was how 'Angel Of Death' came about. I know why people misinterpret it, just because we don't say Nazism is very bad. They get this knee-jerk reaction to it.

Me and my dad were so much alike that we would just butt heads. I pretty much hated him from the age of 16 to 24 for no real reason.

I like playing guitar I don't like talking about it. I like writing riffs, I don't like explaining them.

We write the songs that we do because that's what we like. But they are just stories - not things we actually do or recommend anyone else go out and do.

I remember in the days when we started, when we first went on the road, we went to Berkeley and played with Exodus. We couldn't believe another band was playing the same kind of music we were playing because there was only a handful of bands that were doing it.

I love hockey, and I go to a lot of the games.

My fascination with war is because my dad was in World War II, and my brother was in Vietnam.

I actually have only one Jackson! ESP makes all of my guitars now. But that Jackson was probably the last one I paid for, which is why I used it so much; I had to get my money's worth. That's why, for the longest time, it was in all of our photos.

Pro Tools rules. You get the opportunity to try more things because you don't waste so much time trying to get the perfect take.

Angel of Death' is like a history lesson, but as soon as we released it everybody was calling us Nazis. Our singer's a dark-skinned Chilean, there's no way we're fascists.

Everybody has a dark side. It's just we are very in touch with it.

Play as much as you can. That's what I had to do because of my inexperience. And don't get frustrated.

During our first year, we were playing Priest and Maiden cover tunes all the time while we figured out what we wanted to do as a band. At the time I was getting out of metal and into punk. That's how Slayer's sound came together - it's the speed of punk combined with the big riffs of metal.

I hang with my woman, and with some friends that have nothing to do with Slayer. I also like to watch sports and go to hockey and football games.

I'd rather play in front of people who wouldn't listen to Slayer. That to me, is more like, 'Hey, listen to us.'