How do you start an introduction for the legendary percussionist Dave Lombardo? Having established himself as one of the greatest drummers of his generation playing in thrash titans Slayer, Lombardo has gone on to feature in more projects than could reasonably be mentioned here.
One minute he’s playing with Mr. Bungle; the next it’s Dead Cross, or Venamoris (the band Lombardo created with wife and vocalist Paula Lombardo). It can be hard to keep up. In addition to all his various collaborations, May of this year saw Lombardo release his first-ever solo album, Rites of Percussion (on Ipecac)—an album very personal to the prolific sticksman and one that draws from his Cuban-American roots.
He spoke with New Noise about the album, his musical family, playing with Slayer, the power of Mike Patton, and more.
You’ve been making music for 40 years, more or less, now?
I played in bands before Slayer, but yeah, I was 18 years old when I recorded and released my first record (Slayer’s Show No Mercy).
So after all this time, why was now the time that you decided to release the solo record?
It had been brewing for quite a while, ever since probably mid-to-late ’90s. I presented the idea to (Mike) Patton, and he loved it. He also really pushed me as well to finally put this out. I think it was just the right time with the pandemic halting all my touring, which took a lot of my time. Also, you know, leading up to tours, there’s rehearsals, there’s learning music, and also, you know, trying to enjoy the comforts of home before you’re thrown into the touring hustle.
The pandemic really helped me focus and utilize the free time that I had. It was a horrible period for all of us because we all went through one form or another of hell. I felt that the lack of that activity alone was going to destroy the house. I mean, is this what’s gonna kill me?
What I did was make sure that I put myself on a routine. I made my studio my job. Made it a place where I got to clock in, have a couple hours, watch the news, have some breakfast, have my coffee, kiss my wife goodbye, go upstairs, and just focus.
Some days were productive; others weren’t. But that’s part of the creative process.
With all the different projects that you’ve got going on, has it always been important to plan out exactly what you’re going to be doing to fit everything together?
It’s very important. I don’t think I would have been able to do this kind of schedule or all these projects unless I had someone actually helping me out and setting up guard rails and, “No, you gotta stay focused; stay over here; you got to work with this band; you got to learn this music now.” I have everything scheduled now, and that’s helping me out a lot.
Your son David A is involved with the solo record. Is that the first time you worked with him?
No, I worked with him when he was probably 6, 7, 8 years old in his little onesie pajamas in the house that I lived in. I had another studio, and he would punch me in. I’d tell him, “OK, press these two buttons when the little clock says 1:24.” And he’d sit there, have his headphones on, he’d help me.
David engineered a couple albums with me for a band called Philm that I had at one time. He really liked that career choice and started forging his own path, which I’m really proud of. He found a really good job with a company called New Wave Entertainment. They mix trailers for motion pictures and YouTube commercials; they do it all. He’s part of that mixing team.
He helped me mix two albums that I released this year. One is Rites of Percussion, and the other is (Drown In Emotion by) Venamoris, which is sort of a duet with my wife. She’s a fantastic, beautiful singer. Sultry, almost like a Portishead style, real downtempo. I played brushes and rim shots, and I produced it, and my son mixed it.
Oh, that’s great. The whole family. It’s like Johnny Cash’s wife—the Carter family.
Yeah. I had to try to convince my wife to step into the music scene again. She worked in Vegas with Wayne Newton. He’s a Las Vegas icon. He made a bunch of promises, and she was disillusioned with the whole songwriting process and the “familiarity breeds the hits” attitude. She wanted to be herself and was never allowed to. So I convinced her, and she did it, and we put it out. I’m very proud of it.
Working with David has been amazing. He’s bright. He’s got young ears, if that makes sense, when it comes to an engineering job. You need someone that could hear those details.
You mentioned using brushes and rimshots for the Venamoris project. How did you go about choosing the instruments for Rites of Passage?
It was inspired by percussionist drummers. One was John Bonham, for his work on Bonzo’s Montreux on the Led Zeppelin album they released after his death called Coda. (That track) incorporated only drums and it was very musical. I was blown away by it when I first heard it.
I saw similarities between the concept of a drummer writing his own music and his own drum patterns and an album that was written, I believe, in the late 50s, by a Latin jazz percussionist called Tito Puente.
He created this body of work called Top Percussion. Patton introduced me to that album, which was really cool, because at the time, in 98, I didn’t know that Patton would be familiar with any kind of Latin jazz.
But, you know, Patton always impresses me. He said “Hey, have you heard this one?” I said, “No. I’m familiar with his work because my parents used to listen to this music when I was a kid.” He said, “You should check this out; it’s got a lot of really cool drum solos and drum songs.”
When I listened to it, it resembled what Bonzo did, laying one drum track and then laying another one on top and another one and another one. Eventually, there’s editing involved, there’s cutting, punching in, but I think I took it a step further.
With modern technology, you have more tools and more capabilities. Editing capabilities, sound enhancing, sound designing, you know, even some samples. I would take the samples and layer drums over those samples to create more depth.
There was a lot of experimentation, a lot of playing. The other day, I had to take the whole record song by song and put them together in one session. So you hear the song, you hear the album from beginning to end, without any cuts. So I was able to listen to it without any interruptions, and I was in a way shocked. I was like, “Where did this come from?”
That seems to be the biggest question in my mind. I know I created it, but how? (laughing). I really enjoyed it, and I would do it again.
Were there any instruments that you were using on record for the first time?
Well, batás, which is an Afro Caribbean ritual drum, (a set of three drums). That one I used on one of Mike Patton’s Fantomas records. I believe I used it on Suspended Animation. I used timbales on a Grip Inc. record, the first one in ‘95 (Power of Inner Strength), and created a song called “Toque De Muerto” (the rhythm of the dead), which was basically a prelude to this record. That’s pretty much it. Just those two instruments I’ve used in two different projects.
There seems to be some Fantômas flavor on the record.
Of course, I recorded all those Fantômas records with Patton. I learned a lot when it came to layering drums and density and richness and how robust the drums needed to be and how important choosing instruments are in a recording.
I remember digging through a large road case, cymbals, bells, rattles, shakers, all kinds of instruments, all kinds of percussive instruments, noise instruments, ratchets, just everything, trying to gather, I believe it was a cymbal, just one cymbal. We needed something kind of trashy. Nothing that sounded pristine and perfect. I remember going through that box with Patton and saying, “How about this one? How about this one?” “No, hit it, hit it again. No, that’s not it,” We finally found the right cymbal.
That taught me how important instruments are in recording these kinds of projects. Whether it’s pitch, the tonality, the sustain, there’s so many aspects that you need to take into consideration.
And you’re showing respect to the song because you don’t just want to throw whatever in there; you want to make sure that it has a place, it has a meaning, it has a certain body, a certain sound.
He taught me so much, Patton, also his work ethic, but not only Patton, (saxophonist/producer) John Zorn’s work ethic. There’s various producers as well and just their general love for music, and their ability to jump from one style to another. It’s so inspiring, because you’re always shifting gears mentally.
When did you actually leave Cuba, and how much of an impact has that background had on your style as a drummer and on the record?
I came to the U.S. when I was probably a year and a half. The influence my culture had on me and this album is massive. As a kid, I was living in a Cuban household and when I walked outside I was in America. Inside the house they always spoke Spanish. My mom cooks Cuban food all the time and my dad worked his ass off.
He was able to live the American dream. He bought his house; he retired, and I’m really proud of him because it takes a lot to be an immigrant, to be uprooted, and lose everything that you’ve worked for up until the age you leave and having to start over again.
I’m really proud of my dad and my mom for what they did and grateful for the life that they gave me. I don’t know what I would have become in Cuba, and we probably would still be there.
We would go to these Cuban clubs. When I was a kid, I never liked dancing. Cubans are very passionate about their dance. So I would at these parties; I would hang out backstage and sit there on the piano stool and just watch the interaction, watch the musicians just for the side of the stage and watch how passionately they played and how much fun they had.
I had to have been probably 4 years old, 5 years old, and I have no doubt that inspired me to be a drummer and in a rock band. I didn’t want to be in a Cuban band. No, I was in America; I wanted to be in a rock band.
I remember going to that Cuban club and watching rock bands in the afternoon. At 4 o’clock, they would have matinees for the kids. There would always be a rocker guy with long hair playing distorted guitar, and they would have the pop hits, but then they always throw in a rock song.
I always loved when that guitar player started singing and playing his guitar because it was a different energy. So I was drawn into rock music from those experiences.
I don’t think I would have known how to implement percussion into the different ways that I did on this record, if it wasn’t for that continual interest into Afro Caribbean drum patterns and rhythms and then later diving into West African drum drum rhythms, the different tribes and their different patterns that they use for their ceremonies.
(So there’s that research) and being inspired by Mickey Hart from Grateful Dead. He created those albums Planet Drum, and I believe he was the composer for Apocalypse Now. That had a lot of drums and percussion.
It’s all woven together into this combination of influence, and personal research.
How did those influences fit in during the years in Slayer? I guess you weren’t throwing a lot of Caribbean rhythms in there?
I did, I did. I believe, since I’m self taught, I was able to unknowingly throw in some of these drum rolls.
Let’s say, for example, “Angel of Death” and that drum break with the double bass. Everybody knows that piece. I think the double bass is, like, 32nd notes. And then, over that rhythm, I hit a series of syncopated tom hits. I did a very typical Tito Puente, “de, dot, dot, dot, dot,” and then it went back into the thrash beat.
That right there, as life went on, I realized, “Wow, that is inspired by Latin jazz.” Ginger Baker or Mitch Mitchell were very jazz-oriented, but those kinds of syncopated patterns are very Caribbean, or Latin jazz or Cuban based. So I later realized that I’m very influenced instinctually and unconsciously by Cuban music, or Afro Caribbean rhythms.
In extreme metal, there’s sometimes an obsession with speed. In your days with Slayer, yours was a name that would get brought up when people were talking about the fastest drummers. What did you think about that, and what do you think now about speed as an expression of extremity?
At that time, you associate speed obviously with aggression. Punk music had a whole different tempo than your typical rock music. And growing up listening to rock music, I’m hitting the age of 13, 14, 15 years old, and, of course, you have that young energy. For some reason, this punk style of music or songs that were just a little more on the cutting edge, a little faster than a typical radio song, always appealed to me.
When I first heard punk music, thanks to Jeff Hanneman, he opened that door and presented me with all these records. It was energizing. It was a shot in the arm. Instant adrenaline. It still does that to me. I’ll cook dinner with my wife, and I’ll throw on a punk album. I immediately start bobbing my head, head banging, then my hands get all sweaty. I’ll start pogoing, then jumping around. It still does that to me.
But as time went on, around South of Heaven, definitely through Seasons (of the Abyss), I felt a yearning to express myself in different ways. Slayer really didn’t help that urge that I had because at that time I was listening to all kinds of music other than metal. Deep inside I felt I needed to explore other styles.
When you first left Slayer in 91/92 did it become the norm for you to have multiple projects, or has that escalated over the years?
It escalated. After I left in ‘92, I created Grip Inc. That was my sole focus. So I pushed that along, and then I started working with Fantômas. So ‘95, I released my first record with Grip Inc., and then several years later Patton hit me up.
After my involvement with Patton, and the realization of a musician being able to be as diverse as he wants, it was on. I’d gotten information from Patton, that you can be diverse and try different styles of music and create different forms of expression.
Then I started taking on projects like DJ Spooky (Drums of Death), Vivaldi – The Meeting. I dabbled back with another metal band during that period as well, Testament. I recorded The Gathering, and then it just started snowballing.
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Photos by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
