2.

Dead Kennedys – In God We Trust

This goes way back, we’re talking 1983/84 here. Jeff Hanneman from Slayer brought a tape of it to rehearsal once and I was just blown away by the energy that that album had – the fire and the anger; the angst was just unreal. The Dead Kennedys were a big inspiration, maybe not musically, but as far as energy was concerned and how to execute the music; the drive, the relentlessness of the record and the sound, it just has bite, it has this aggression that’s just like a damn race car, y’know? A ripped raw, aggressive sound. They inspired Slayer in a lot of ways because we fed off it and we wanted to mimic that energy – not the songs, it wasn’t about copying them as a band, it was about delivering that same intense energy.