The newly revised metal biography Slayer 66 2/3: A Metal Band Biography… Or, How Fkin’ Slayer Kicked Fkin’ @ss is now available in audiobook form. For the 2025 holiday season, this expanded audio edition is being offered exclusively through Bandcamp.
Award-winning journalist D.X. Ferris personally narrates the book, which he has updated, expanded, and reworked following Slayer’s unexpected reunion. The audiobook spans 36.5 hours and includes 12 bonus chapters not found in the paperback edition. The final three chapters focus specifically on the band’s 2025 reunion run, which concluded with a festival performance at Hersheypark in Pennsylvania. At that event, the Los Angeles thrash pioneers headlined over Exodus, Cavalera Conspiracy, Power Trip, Suicidal Tendencies, and Knocked Loose.
The book is still current, explains Ferris. Think of the bonus chapters as European B-sides.
Ferris first released the book in 2013, only months after the death of Slayer co-founder, guitarist, and primary songwriter Jeff Hanneman. At that time, the book carried the title Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years.
The third edition, released in 2023, totaled 350 pages and included 33 images, a four-page index, and roughly 450 endnotes and research citations. By contrast, the fourth edition, released in 2025, expanded significantly to 639 pages, featuring 70 images, a 10-page index, and 795 endnotes.
“I really put in the work on this version”, says Ferris, who has been named Best Reporter Of The Year by the Ohio Society Of Professional Journalists. “Some days when I was working at home, I would put on a shirt and tie. I felt like I was documenting important history, some of it for the first time. It is a serious subject that deserves professionalism and respect”.
The latest edition offers deeper profiles of the band’s members and collaborators, including Exodus guitarist Gary Holt, who stepped in after Hanneman became ill in 2011. Ferris also interviewed new witnesses, such as Valley Stream, New York record store owner Michael Schutzman of Slipped Disc, who hosted early East Coast in-store appearances. Mellow Man Ace contributes perspective on the racially charged neighborhoods that gave rise to both the pioneering thrash scene and Cypress Hill.
Additional material includes extensive archival research, updated statistics, original fan surveys, and a detailed, data-driven comparison of the careers of the so-called Big Four thrash bands: Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax, alongside Slayer. Version 4.1 of the fourth edition appeared in May 2025, incorporating sources that had emerged only weeks earlier. A recurring feature titled The Rick Rubin Watch tracks key moments involving the band’s longtime producer and label executive, whose work has touched roughly 10 percent of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame performer inductees.
The unauthorized biography is now available in five formats: a 6×9-inch Uncut edition, an oversized 8.5×11-inch coffee table version, an abridged Long Story Short… and Cheaper edition, a mostly color ebook, and two versions of the expanded audiobook.
Photographs throughout the book come from contributors including Murder In The Front Row co-author Harald Oimen, former Def Jam staffer Tom Tronckoe, and Cameron Edney.
The audiobook itself grew out of Ferris’s long-running podcast Talkin’ Slayer: A Metal Podcast And Half-@Assed Audiobook. Each episode features Ferris reading from the book, presenting exclusive essays, answering listener questions, or sharing updates.
“When the show started, the band was broken up, and it looked like it would remain in the grave”, says Ferris. “The audiobook was almost done. Then they announced the reunion. Things changed. And, as a former Metallica roadie says in The Big Lebowski, New sh*t came to light. It was the perfect opportunity to dig even deeper in Slayer’s long, controversial history”.
For the fourth edition, Ferris rewrote, revised, rearranged, and remastered the entire book. While longer, the new version is structured to be easier to read, with shorter sentences and tighter paragraphs.
“My old writing style was like jazz or ornate Yngwie Malmsteen hot licks”, explains Ferris. “Looking back, that wasn’t the most effective method of communication. Now I try to write short, simple sentences that are like S.O.D. riffs. Short sentences, short chapters… I believe books should be easy to use”.
Listeners can choose between two audiobook editions. The full Uncut version explores the broader history of American thrash metal, placing Slayer within a wider cultural context and examining the Big Four and Elite Eight scenes. The Long Story Short… and cheaper edition focuses more narrowly on Slayer’s chronological story.
As the first pages of the book demonstrate, Slayer is as relevant as ever, says Ferris. It is Slayer’s world. Still. And we’re living in it.
The post SLAYER 66 2/3: A Metal Band Biography… 4th Edition By D.X. FERRIS Available Now As Audiobook appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
