July 22, 2009 – What do you do when you get five minutes with thrash metal kings Slayer? You make sure you know all of the band member's names, you dial

What do the Exodus and Slayer bands have in common? That one shared and another shares the stage with one of the most eccentric guitarists in the world, Gary Holt. In the metal world, the extreme personalities of the artists of this genre such as Gary Holt have led him to be as controversial as enjoyable, and this time would not be the exception. Gary Holt is an iconic guitar player who belonged to two well-known bands. In his early days, he was in Exodus, a band that he plays with since 1981 w

Jeff Hanneman

Watch these sick videos of Slayer’s Tom Araya performing covers of Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, Judas Priest and Dio along with his brother John Araya on guitar. Al Messi plays Bass and Jake Alvarado is on drums. Dimitri Galeos, the uploader of these clips, plays second guitar. One of the clips dates these performances at November of 1983, which would have been a month before Slayer’s Show No Mercy dropped. Slayer themselves had included covers of bands like Priest and Iron Maiden in their sets, playing small clubs and parties around Southern California. It seems a bit odd, in retrospect, to see the singer of one of the quintessential American thrash bands performing songs that would be considered more “pop metal” by today’s standards. It should be noted that in the early ‘80s metal encompassed all of metal and metalheads often tended to embrace the full spectrum, much like punks in the early ‘80s tended to embrace anything under the banner “punk rock.” Once the mid ‘80s rolled around, you begin to see more splintering in both metal and punk scenes with offshoot genres springing up and fans gravitating toward their favored pigeon-holes. These...