Slayer @ Loud Park
Slayer was the headliner for day two (Sunday) of Loud Park.
Tom Araya, Slayer’s bassist and vocalist, didn’t speak very much, which made sense given that most of the crowd wouldn’t understand him anyway. Some others (Rob Zombie for instance) seemed completely clueless to the fact that everyone in the world can’t understand English.
The above photo was taken at the moment when Tom said oyasuminasai (お休みなさい) at the end of the show. He, and the Children of Bodom keyboardist Janne Wirman, were the only non-Japanese artists to go beyond arigato in Japanese.
I have seen Jeff Hanneman live in the 80s, 90s, and now at Loud Park in 2009. He is not aging well (unlike Megadeth members who look better now than they did twenty years ago). As someone appearing on a stage in front of thousands, more than a hundred nights a year, he should really take better care of himself. He can barely waddle from one side of the stage to the other. If I ever see Slayer again I won’t be surprised to see him come out in a muumuu next time, instead of an XXXL jersey, at the rate he is going.
My favorite part of the above photo is the guy’s foot in the air. When I was in the front row for Outrage it was fun to see the crowd surfers once they made it to the stage. They would bow to security before heading to the side and back into the crowd. Within a few minutes the same guys would be bowing once again to the security guards.
Slayer bids farewell to the Tokyo crowd in the above photo. Hanneman appears to have already made a quick exit to get first dibs on the post-show buffet.
I believe the only song Tom gave any kind of description of before playing was “Mandatory Suicide” which you can see in the video I shot below. This was not an easy video to take as the crowd was going nuts around me. Luckily I was a foot taller than most of them. 😉 If you look closely you can spot Hanneman’s Heineken logo guitar. The guitar actually says Hanneman instead of Heineken though. A light beer should sponsor a weight loss program for Jeff and then give him a guitar with their logo on it. Sorry, enough of the Hanneman being fat comments and on to the video…