Reactions To SLAYER’s Reunion Are Mixed

Five years after their final tour, Slayer is back for (so far) two festival appearances at Riot Fest and Louder Than Life this September. Slayer 2024 is the same as Slayer 2019 – Tom Araya on bass and vocals, guitarists Kerry King and Gary Holt, and Paul Bostaph on drums.

Of course reactions across the Internet were mixed when Slayer first announced the two reunion shows. So we kicked up a poll asking what our readers thought, and yeah… reactions were exactly as mixed as we thought they might be. A significant portion of readers voted on either the most positive or most negative response among the choices, with a handful in the middle. The results are:

• I AM STOKED BEYOND WORDS! SLAAYYEERR! (2,269 votes/36.8%)
• Why is this happening (1,756 votes/28.5%)
• I’m into it! (727 votes/11.8%)
• I’ll check out the reunion shows if I can (710 votes/11.5%)
• I don’t think I’ll check it out (355 votes/5.8%)
• I’m not that into it (354 votes/5.7%)

Honestly, I can see why everyone feels the way they do. For the positive folks, they’re just stoked they get to see Slayer back out there ripping through all their classic thrash tunes. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, and I’m sure everyone thrilled about it is gonna have a blast at the two shows.

For the negative folks, yeah. It seemed like Tom Araya was done with the band in 2019 and that the farewell might’ve been a genuine farewell. That, and Kerry King just announced his solo band… so who the hell saw a Slayer reunion coming right afterward?