Among metal drummers, Dave Lombardo will always stand atop an especially high pedestal. While Slayer‘s guitars and vocals are immediately identifiable, it was Dave’s explosive, Latin-inspired playing that wowed a lot of the technical musicians listening to classic records like Reign In Blood and South of Heaven. One thinks that the kits Dave played during his tenure in thrash’s most pissed-off band would be in a museum somewhere, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame vault…but in a new interview, Dave reveals that some dickhead or dickheads actually stole them.
In an interview with Hangin’ & Bangin’, as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar, Lombardo was asked how many drums he actually has. His response might surprise some fans: “Unfortunately… I don’t have many. Two storage units, at two different times in periods of my life, were broken into.
“So, I think, probably five-six drum kits out of the first storage unit were stolen. It was cleaned out – everything, road cases…
“And Slayer’s rehearsal room that we were at in Riverside was broken into; everything was stolen, all my classic drum sets. So I’m slowly building everything up again and trying to piece together some of my old classic kits, from kits that I see online that are similar.”
Watch the full video below and curse the bastard who stole Dave’s drum kits:
While this is a tragedy, it’s a reminder that any kit is a legendary kit if Dave Lombardo’s behind it. Speaking to The Pit in November, Mr. Bungle’s Trey Spruance talked about watching Dave play on the band’s most recent record with the awe of a teenage thrash fan.
“Of course, all of us had over-analyzed his playing on Slayer records to the point where we had everything memorized, every meticulous detail of his drumming,” laughed Trey. “And then to find out that most of this is stuff that he’s just pulling out of his ass in the moment — which is why it’s so fucking good! — was a big lesson in the metal thing for me. As I touch down in metal periodically, I tend the shift gears, because most of the other music I do is more…I don ‘t know if I’d say loose, but it’s interpretive, and when I do metal I tighten up and do this super-precision thing. But I find that no, with Lombardo standing there, you have this uncaged beast! Let him fucking go crazy!”
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Words by Chris Krovatin
