Slayer Frontman Tom Araya’s Mother Dies
Tina Araya, the mother of Slayer frontman Tom Araya has died. Neither the cause of death nor her age has been disclosed.
The news was broken by Tom's wife Sandra, who posted it on her Facebook page on April 3 along with the above photo. "Today is a sad day for our family," she wrote. "Tom's mom, Tina, passed away yesterday. We appreciate all the calls, text and messages. My handsome and children have taken the news hard. She was a wonderful woman full of love and life. You will be missed deeply."
The Araya family emigrated from Chile to Southern California in 1966, when Tom was five years old. As he revealed in a 2012 interview, being close with his mother helped him keep in touch with his Latino roots. “I always speak to my mom in Spanish even though she is fluent in English and she speaks it to my kids in hopes that they pick it up," he told NBC Latino. "My wife is always telling me you need to teach them so they can communicate with her.”
And even though Slayer's lyrical themes -- particularly in their early days -- often ran afoul of the family's devout Catholicism, Araya says it didn't provide much of a conflict between them. “My parents, like my band mates’ parents, were all very supportive since the beginning, they all knew their sons; as a kid I did my first Communion. They didn’t like it but they understood it. I found out later in life after my father passed away that he did face some negativity from the church community, but he never told me, I wish he would’ve, but he didn’t and that made me very sad.”
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