SLAYER's KERRY KING Wants To 'Earn That Respect' With New Band Bearing His Name

By David E. Gehlke

SLAYER's stunning unretirement in February came days after guitarist Kerry King announced his eponymous band, an A-list crew featuring Mark Osegueda (vocals, DEATH ANGEL),Phil Demmel (guitar, ex-MACHINE HEAD),Kyle Sanders (bass, ex-HELLYEAH) and Paul Bostaph (drums, SLAYER). While King and everyone involved in the launch of the Kerry King band nailed the run-up and stuck the landing, the SLAYER announcement was like a ten-ton hammer. He's now had to answer for SLAYER during his lengthy press gamut in support of his new band's "From Hell I Rise" debut but credit the bald-plated guitarist with this: He's left no ambiguity on the matter. SLAYER may come and go and play gigantoid festival dates, but the Kerry King band, for all intents and purposes, is here to stay and do the work.

King and his band have spent the last several months playing Stateside and European festival gigs. His band isn't getting top billing and isn't demanding it, preferring instead to build a fanbase the organic way through relentless touring. Early response has been positive, something King hopes to ride throughout the remainder of the year and into 2025, which, as he tells BLABBERMOUTH.NET, may already involve a sophomore studio album.

Blabbermouth: This was the longest stretch of your career without playing shows. What was it like? What did you do?

Kerry: "I stayed busy. The pandemic happened, which threw everybody off. I made a point not to sit around and spend too much time with a glass of liquor in my hand like a lot of people did. We [SLAYER] got done at the end of November of '19. By February, I was pretty deep into working on new material. I was not looking for the be-all, end-all songs, but when we finally got together, we'd have something to start working on. And we didn't get together until, I don't know, three months into '21, I think."

Blabbermouth: Did that give you almost too much time to think about the songs?

Kerry: "I didn't think so. I didn't waste time dwelling on them. I get something I'm happy with in the beginning and something I'm happy with as an ending. I'd leave it like that until Paul started playing. If a different idea would come up, I'd address it. That way, I kept working on new ideas. There are still ideas that I have, songs that I haven't even played for Paul yet because we have so much stuff. [Laughs]"

Blabbermouth: Was Paul your sounding board throughout all this?

Kerry: "He would get it first. Then, as different pieces started to fall into place, I would send demos that Paul and I did to Phil and tell him a time signature on where his lead begins and ends so he could work on that. I would send bass-less demos to Kyle so he could just vibe it in his own way. He wanted to play on it from day one. I went, 'That's kind of cool. Let's see how this pans out.' Then I'd send them to Mark with scratch vocals so he knew where his vocals went, and when he came down, he could do them better than I did. Everybody got to contribute in that manner."

Blabbermouth: I think it's still very impressive that everyone was able to keep a lid on your band for so long. You had insinuated that something was coming and Paul was going to be involved, but beyond that, everyone was able to keep it a secret.

Kerry: "[Laughs] Every month or so, there was a new rumor mill and the Internet would light up for a few days. [Laughs] I waited until the announcement so the other guys could talk about it like Paul and I could. I could talk about the entity of the band, but I couldn't really talk about who was in it. That's kind of the old-school thing, the old-school part of me. I remember when we were younger and my favorite bands, be it VAN HALEN or BLACK SABBATH, you had to wait a month until the magazine came out and you're going to pick it up and see what was going on in the music world. That was my alluding to the old days of secrecy. You don't need to know right away when anything is happening. If you don't have anything to talk about, why drop the bombshell of who's in the band? When you do, it's all old news."

Blabbermouth: In this age, there's so much preparation for an album's release. There are always studio pictures and updates, which kills the anticipation.

Kerry: "For sure. I miss that."

Blabbermouth: You've done some headline and festival dates here, and then you went over to Europe for more festivals. Just as a general question, Kerry, what have you learned about the band? Or yourself?

Kerry: "The funniest thing and I even tell the guys in the band this, it's not as much just like riding a bike as I thought it was. There's a lot more to it. The whole time, the four and a half years that I was off, I never really stood up and played guitar. I wasn't incorporating pedals. Then when you get out onstage, for me, with three new guys and I'm over on stage right, daydreaming, going, 'Motherfucker. I have to hit this pedal that I'm not even thinking about.' It's the logistics of being onstage, standing up and hitting my pedals—not daydreaming like I do during rehearsals. These are gigs. [Laughs] It's cool now, but during the first couple of weeks, I was trying to remember all of it and wrap my head around it."

Blabbermouth: Did your neck get sore after the initial shows? A "bang-over"?

Kerry: "I'm not going balls-out like I did in SLAYER. I'm still putting on a show. You know what? I've earned my right to do whatever I want onstage. I still put on a show. I'm headbanging and still stretching before, of course. All I can say is so far, so good."

Blabbermouth: I don't know if you saw the recent quote from LAMB OF GOD's Mark Morton, who said he had the "utmost respect" for you because you aren't doing this for the money. Did you catch that? And does it capture what you're doing here?

Kerry: "Yeah. Number one, I wasn't done. I wasn't ready to retire. That wasn't my choice. That choice was made for me. My thing from day one was okay, 'I got to find the next guys.' I knew I wanted Paul to be a part of it because he and I work super well together. Then my 'A-team' came together. I never had to go to the 'B-squad'; this is exactly how I wanted it to play out. Lucky for me, it did."

Blabbermouth: Speaking of Paul, can you discuss how the two of you work together, especially the level of detail you give him before he starts assembling his parts?

Kerry: "What I'll do because now that I'm on the East Coast, we don't get together at the drop of a hat like we used to. I try to get him as mentally prepared as I can without ever seeing him. Yeah, I'll write down time signatures from intro to verse 1, to chorus 1, to lead, lead 2, bridge, and outro riff/ending and I'll have where that is in the song. I'll write 'fast double bass snare on one,' or 'fast double bass snare on 2,' or 'rock and roll beat' or 'thrash beat,' so when he comes to rehearsal with me, within the first four minutes, we can record a song like we already played it."

Blabbermouth: Do you and Paul have your own language?

Kerry: I'm sure there are things I write down and say to him and things that I say to him that are completely senseless, but he knows what I mean. [Laughs]"

Blabbermouth: What made Kyle the right choice for bass?

Kerry: "He's a beast. I remember early on, when we knew he was going to be the dude, I sent him the first four demos we had at the time. In like 48 hours, he sent them back to me with bass. I went, 'Holy shit. Maybe I should let this guy play bass.' I can play bass and assumed I was going to play it anyway. He was so gung ho and into it, I was like, 'Fuck this. Let him go at it and see what he comes up with.' When I sent him the latter demos, I left the bass off. In the demos I sent to Paul, Mark and Phil, I would have bass and two guitars, so everyone really knew what it was going to sound like. I would leave that off for Kyle so he could roll the way he wanted to."

Blabbermouth: Was it nice to not have to record the bass on the record?

Kerry: "Yeah, it was cool. I'd been cool with it either way. But to have a dude that's so driven to want to do it, maybe I thought to myself, 'Maybe he's going to come up with a 'Smoke On The Water' bass run in the intro of a song.' It didn't pan out that way, but he definitely did things differently than I would have done in some things. I think that's cool because a bass player plays bass, not like a guitar player who plays bass and mimics what he is doing on the six-string."

Blabbermouth: Do you envision Mark ever writing lyrics for this?

Kerry: "If it needs to be. I never told him he can't. I don't have anything written for any of the new music lyrically. I have some titles. I've got a verse that I haven't really inserted in a particular song yet. There's some room for that to happen if he wants to take a stab at it, for sure."

Blabbermouth: How would you rate your recent European festival run?

Kerry: "It was killer. The most humbling thing for me was as we were getting those gigs and no one knew who was in my band. No one had heard a note of music from my band. I got, I think, the biggest spots was where we were three on one bill, number four on a few bills. Sight unseen, no idea whose band it was, that was very startling and humbling. I know my name carries weight, but I also think I need to earn that respect because it's a new band. Nobody knew exactly what it was going to sound like. The promoters had faith in what I'd done historically and I appreciate that."

Blabbermouth: That's a great line. You have to earn that respect.

Kerry: "Yeah, absolutely. When you see us, the reaction is like, 'That's what I wanted!' [Laughs] It's killer. The band is really gelling. It really works live. It's fun."

Blabbermouth: Now having done shows with your band, has it become more clear that choosing guys who you can get along with was pretty important?

Kerry: "Of course, I'm going to get people who can play their instrument and who are very good at it. My pre-requisite at this point in my career is that I want cool dudes, friends, who have fun, are talented and have no drama. Dudes that when the gig is over, you can crack open a beer. Pour a Jäger and do whatever they're going to do, hang out and chill and talk about how much fun the show was."

Blabbermouth: What are the next 18 months looking like?

Kerry: "I think and I don't know this for sure, but things we're talking about is that there's going to be a headline run in the U.S. next year, followed by a headline run in Europe. We have a couple of shows in Mexico in November. We have a week and a half in Australia in December. It wouldn't surprise me if we went back to Europe for the later festivals next year. If it catches fire, we go back and do it again. If not, we go back into the studio and finish the songs and get the record out so we can assault everybody again."