In a new interview on TODDCast Podcast, Dave Lombardo looked back on the band’s early days.

When asked about Jeff Hanneman, he said:

“Yeah, it was [Jeff] Hanneman. Hanneman shaved his head and brought to rehearsal all these punk records, and punk music was, I guess, the combination of everything I was searching out as a kid.”

He added:

“Whenever there was a song on the radio that had a certain aggressive feeling or a certain excitement, I would search that record out. For example, there was a song I heard on the radio as a kid from ZEPPELIN, and I never heard the song before, it was called ‘The Wanton Song’ [from 1975’s Physical Graffiti].

“I was, ‘Wow, this is heavy as f*ck,’ I couldn’t believe it. I was, ‘Man, this is heavy.’ And I remember going to a friend’s house, ‘Hey, do you know the song called ‘The Wanton Song,’ have you heard of it?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Do you have any ZEPPELIN records?’, and he said, ‘Yeah, I got a couple there.’

“So I went through and I couldn’t find it. Then later I found out that it was on Physical Graffiti; I purchased it, and loved it, and absorbed and listened to that album religiously.

He continued:

“So, punk music was all the styles that I loved, which is heavy, powerful, aggressive, angry, and so it kind of filled that need, for that style of music. So I gravitated towards that, it was something I enjoyed.

“SLAYER would’ve been a whole different band if punk music didn’t influence us. We would’ve been totally different. It was that magic moment that Hanneman brought into rehearsal that changed everything.”