Tom Araya (born Tomás Enrique Araya June 6, 1961 in Viña del Mar, Chile) is an Chilean-American musician, best known as the bassist and vocalist of the American thrash metal band Slayer. Araya is ranked fifty-eighth by Hit Parader on their list of the 100 Greatest Metal Vocalists of All Time.

Araya was employed as a respiratory therapist in the early 1980s and used his earnings to finance Slayer's debut album Show No Mercy. Much of Araya's lyrical content is about serial killers, a subject he finds interesting, first making his lyrical contribution to 1985's Hell Awaits with the track "At Dawn They Sleep".

Tom Araya

References

1961 births

Living people

Chilean singers

Bassists

Heavy metal singers

Heavy metal musicians

People from Viña del Mar

Chilean musicians

20th-century American guitarists

Tom Araya