According to Loudwire, during a recent interview, Slayer drummer and co founder Dave Lombardo reflected on his accomplishments by answering several questions about the early days of Slayer. One of the questions Lombardo was asked about was Slayer being accused of being alleged Nazis due to the lyrical themes of the band’s song “Angel of Death.” Written by late Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman, “Angel of Death” opens the band’s 1986 album with a pioneering thrash metal sound and lyrics that detail the Auschwitz concentration camp’s human experimentation by Nazi physician Josef Mengele. Although some may have looked at the lyrics as alleged Nazi sympathy, according to an interview with Metal Hammer this week, Lombardo mentioned that the song was not a condoning of fascism.

Lombardo could not explain why some people thought Slayer were alleged Nazis: “I couldn’t understand at all. People just seemed to be getting it all wrong, and it didn’t make sense to me. It’s a song, and nowhere did it give off this idea that fascism was cool.”

Lombardo went on to say, “Tom [Araya] was talking about this guy who performed these horrible surgeries on innocent people, really stupid, horrific things. You shouldn’t need to read the lyrics to understand we weren’t condoning those things.”

The accusations did not hurt Slayer’s meteoric rise in 80s thrash metal circles, fans even now look at Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica as thrash’s “Big Four.” When asked if there was any rivalry between bands, Lombardo made clear that the competition was only good natured.

It was a “friendly rivalry,” said Lombardo. “We were competing, but not in a negative way. We wanted to be the best. We wanted to be the heaviest. … So our rivals were any band that’d open up for us. We’d be like, ‘Let’s blow ’em out the water!’ I can’t think of a single band we had a real negative relationship with.”

Photo Credit: Marv Watson