Dave Lombardo Regrets His Performance On Slayer’s Show No Mercy

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Slayer d compromise their sound that often.

When you listen to Reign in Blood, you’re in for some of the heaviest thrash imaginable.

The band’s ‘80s run may look perfect, but Dave Lombardo has some issues with their debut record.

When asked about the least favorite Slayer album, he singled out Show No Mercy for not measuring up saying,

“Just for the way the drums were recorded. The engineer that we had at the time had difficulties recording the drums because they were so loud and they couldn’t really get any separation in between the toms and the cymbals in the mix.”

While you work with what you have, Lombardo’s solution was to split up the drum part saying,

“There was a lot of bleed so he told me to dampen the cymbals. So I put towels around them and later I had to listen back and try to match the bass drum hits to the cymbals. I keep the same structure but I do a lot of improvisation. We recorded it and if you listen to it on headphones you can tell that I’m a little late.”

Although there are some issues, Lombardo mentions that he doesn’t hate the record saying,

“Great songs. Just my personal performance got in the way. I mean, I was 18 straight outta high school recording that album so the performance was okay.”

When it comes to favorites, Lombardo has love for his final album World Painted Blood saying,

“That was the last one with [Jeff] Hanneman and it was the last peak effort and we were all having a great time. It was really a great moment for all of us.”

If Lombardo recorded it today, he would have made sure that everything was on the grid.

When you listen to Show No Mercy today, Lombardo sounds hungry and ready to take over the world. 

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