Slayer have just announced their new permanent drummer, and it's actually their old permanent drummer, Paul Bostaph.
The band just released this statement:
Slayer's Tom Araya and Kerry King are very pleased to announce that Paul Bostaph has rejoined the band on a full-time basis. Bostaph will be behind the drum kit beginning June 4 when Slayer kicks off the first leg of its 2013 international tour in Warsaw, Poland. Gary Holt will continue to fill in for fallen guitarist Jeff Hanneman.
Slayer's 2013 itinerary will have them playing 35 dates that will include headline shows as well as a number of major summer festivals in Europe, Eastern Europe and South America between June and October. The complete itinerary is below.
"Paul's a great drummer and a good friend, and we're very happy that he's decided to rejoin the band," said Tom Araya. "We're still pretty numb from the loss of Jeff, but we don't want to disappoint our European fans, and we need to begin moving forward…having Paul back in the band makes that a whole lot easier."
"I'm very excited to be rejoining Slayer," added Bostaph. "We spent a very intense ten years of our lives together, had a lot of fun, made a lot of great music, so for me, this feels like coming home."
Bostaph was Slayer's drummer from 1992 until 2001 and recorded four albums with the band – the Gold certified Divine Intervention (1994), the 1996 punk covers album Undisputed Attitude, Diabolus in Musica, (1998), God Hates us All (2001) that received a Grammy nomination for "Best Metal Performance," as well as the DVD War at the Warfield (2001), also certified Gold. In addition to Slayer, Bostaph has been a member of Forbidden, Exodus, Systematic and Testament.
This is certainly bummer news for anybody who were hoping the band would reconcile with Dave Lombardo after their split this past February but all things considered, Bostaph is the only possible option that doesn't seem terribly lame. Bostaph is more than equipped and he played on one of my all time favorite Slayer records, God Hates Us All. It also seems like Gary Holt isn't going anywhere for the time being either.
This news comes one week after Slayer paid tribute to Jeff Hanneman at a memorial last week where both Bostaph and Lombardo were present. Watch our video report from the memorial as well as a full recap here.
How do you feel about this Slayer announcement?
