Metal icons Slayer have been in the studio finishing their long-awaited new album, which is expected to be released later this year, and will be their first since 2009’s World Painted Blood and their first one with Exodus guitarist Gary Holt as the replacement of the late Jeff Hanneman. About the progress of the album, frontman Tom Araya told Revolver magazine:
“We’re in kind of the beginning stages of the finishing stages, if that makes any sense. We’re doing the mixing and mastering now, but we still need to sit down and figure out the album title, the album cover, the song titles, and the song list. We’ve recorded 13 songs for it; we’ll probably put ten on there, but who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky and we’ll put all 13 on there!”
Araya also revealed that the new album will include one track featuring Hanneman. He explains, “The whole process of this album started three years ago, when Jeff was still a part of it. There is one track on there that we recorded with him, that he did play on, which was completely done except we hadn’t finalized the vocals for it. So we were fortunate to have something that he had participated in.”