Today, Slaytanic Verses, the official Slayer online museum, unveils its latest collection: “Hell On Tour.” The new archive celebrates the 40th anniversary of Hell Awaits and revisits the 1985 world tour that carried the album across seven countries and sixty shows.
Built around the band’s original handwritten tour notebook, the “Hell On Tour” archive offers fans a rare, day-by-day account of Slayer’s early rise. The blue-cover notebook, kept by the band’s tour manager, details the four relentless weeks from March 15 to April 19, 1985, when Hell Awaits began its march on the world.
The collection also features exclusive, never-before-seen interviews with Tom Araya and Kerry King, reflecting on the chaos, intensity, and significance of the Hell Awaits era in their own words.
Documenting travel routes, showing details, and daily logistics, this archive captures the groundwork of Slayer’s ascent, the moment the band began forging a global following through sheer force of sound and will.
See the collection here.
For more than four decades, Slayer‘s onslaught has proved the band to be the supreme thrash-metal band on the planet, the band that other heavy acts are still measured against and aspire to. Their membership in “The Big Four” – Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax – the four bands that defined the thrash/metal genre – secures their place in music history.
