High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Tom Araya (born Tomás Enrique Araya June 6, 1961 in Viña del Mar, Chile) is a 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 & 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".