As one half of Slayer’s fearsome guitar attack, Kerry King shaped the sound of extreme metal. With a new album and a new sparring partner, he hasn’t mellowed…
Kerry King’s nononsense approach to creating razor-sharp, life-affirming heavy metal has made him one of the world’s most influential players. His work in Slayer with co-guitarist the late Jeff Hanneman set the benchmark for anew kind of murderous noise –sounding thicker and angrier than anything before it. As pioneers of thrash metal in the early ’80s alongside Metallica, Megadeth and ahost of other speed-fuelled bands, Slayer would lay the groundwork for the varying waves of metal that followed.
When Slayer announced their retirement and played their final show in 2019, Kerry was certainly vocal about not being happy with the decision. “We quit too early,” he reflected. “I hate not playing.” But now he’s back on the horse and doing what he does best, writing riffs heavy enough to knock the earth off-axis to create From Hell I Rise –the debut offering from anew band under his own name.
Before we get to the music, however, we need to address the elephant in the room. Only weeks after Kerry officially announced his comeback, Slayer were confirmed to be headlining US festivals later in the year. Few could have predicted things turning out like this, including the guitarist himself...
“It caught me off-guard, too!” he admits. “Do Iwish the timing was different? Absolutely, but that’s completely out of my hands.”
Either way, don’t get your hopes up about afull-scale Slayer reunion. Kerry leaves no room for doubt in his explanation of where the band see themselves in 2024. “Everyone thinks Slayer are getting back together but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he says. “We’ve been turning down gigs ever since we stopped. This one came and I thought, ‘If we’re ever going to do one, this could be cool because it’s the five year anniversary of our final tour’. We’re not going to record anymore. That final tour was definitely our final tour. This is just areason to have some fun the guys, play afew shows and then jump back in the coffin…”
The other big news is your new partnership with Dean. It came as asurprise, given how loyal you’ve been to B.C. Rich since Slayer’s earliest days…
With any of the companies I’m with, I’m super loyal, and I’d become friends with all my B.C. reps. But the company got sold to people who didn’t have the same agenda. It was time for me to get out.
Do you still favour aSustainiac in the neck and an EMG 81, with aPA2 Preamp Booster, in the bridge?
The boost is a carryover from the way I’ve been playing for the last 20 years or so. It’s just comfortable for me to have it there. If there’s a funny-so
