GARY HOLT On SLAYER's Upcoming Reunion Shows: 'It's Gonna Be Awesome'

In a new interview with the "Scandalous" podcast, Gary Holt spoke about the upcoming festival shows from a reactivated SLAYER. The EXODUS leader, who spent almost nine years touring with SLAYER, initially as a fill-in for founding SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman, said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, fortunately, I was free on those days. [Laughs] No, it's gonna be fun. I've had to relearn a lot of this stuff. It's been five years. And I just am approaching it like trying to be ready for whatever song Kerry [King, SLAYER guitarist] and Tom [Araya, SLAYER bassist/vocalist] decide they wanna do, so I have to relearn all of them, even if we're gonna only play a small amount of the whole catalog that I know; I don't know the whole catalog. But, obviously, I learned the hits, the ones that are gonna be there. Of course, we're gonna play 'Angel Of Death'.

"But it's gonna be fun," he repeated. "It's gonna be awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing those guys again, 'cause the pandemic happened and I haven't seen anybody since then. We talked, but I haven't been in the same room with a single one of them since I left for the airport after the last show. So it'll be a good time.

"I was back on tour two months after the last SLAYER show with EXODUS," Holt added. "So, I went right back to work, and then the pandemic happened and I made a record. I stayed more active than they did; it was right back to work. So maybe the time went by a little faster for me."

Asked what he loves most about the SLAYER catalog, Gary said: "It's awesome. The thing I always liked most about playing in SLAYER was it allowed me just to be a guitar player. I didn't have to make decisions. I didn't have to do anything but just be prepared and go out and shred. I try to play the role of almost like guitar hero. There's a lot of solos in the SLAYER stuff, a lot of Jeff's solos. I do a song, and sometimes there's two or three solos in one song. [I] just go out and have fun. They always just accepted me to play like me, and I tried to pay homage to Jeff best I could but at the same time being true to my own self as a guitar player. And it always worked. And we're old friends. For one, we've known each other since we were kids, musically speaking, so that made it simple. It made it a seamless integration, filling in for Jeff while he was sick and then after tragedy struck. I always wanted him back. I never wanted it to be a 10-year gig; I always thought it was going to be like a two-tour gig. And then a year became two, became three, and then his tragic passing. I wanted to see Jeff back."

Holt began filling in for Hanneman at SLAYER's live shows in 2011, and became the band's full-time co-guitarist as of 2013, while remaining a member of EXODUS. Holt played on SLAYER's final album, "Repentless", which came out in 2015.

Back in March 2022, Gary told Headbangers Con that he would be open to playing with SLAYER again if the band ever decided to come back. "Look, if the powers that be ever — like, in a year or something — said, 'Hey, you know what? We feel like playing some shows,' I'm there to do it," Holt said. "But those aren't decisions for me to make, or even me to really speculate on. As far as my knowledge, the band is over, and the final show was November 30th, 2019. And I'm full speed ahead with EXODUS now."

Five years after SLAYER played the last concert of what was being billed as the band's farewell tour and just weeks after King unveiled the details of his solo project, SLAYER announced that it will play at the Aftershock, Riot Fest and Louder Than Life festivals in September and October.

The lineup for SLAYER's comeback will be the same as the one which last toured in 2019: Araya and King, along with Holt and longtime drummer Paul Bostaph.

In a recent interview with Detroit's WRIF radio, station, King said that he originally had Holt in mind for his solo project but that he eventually decided against it because he wanted to keep some of the SLAYER pieces out of his new band. He explained: "The more pieces I took, the more ammunition [there would be] for people that are gonna hate it anyway. So I said, 'Gary, I'm gonna have to go a different way.' I originally thought about using [producer] Terry Date, who produced [SLAYER's] last record, but, again, it was another SLAYER piece, and I just wanted to stay away from that. So, luckily I got turned on to Josh Wilbur, and we hit it off great. And he made a monster of a record. I'm very proud of what he did."

King spoke in more detail about why he chose to enlist Phil Demmel on second guitar over Holt during an interview with Revolver magazine. He said: "I started to realize that the more pieces I take from SLAYER, the more it's gonna be called 'SLAYER Lite.' I mean, of course it's gonna sound like SLAYER; I wrote 90 percent of the last record. But if I take less with me from SLAYER, there'll be less for people to stand on, as far as making lazy comparisons. If I had to do SLAYER over again after Hanneman [who died in 2013], 110 times out of a 100, I would pick Gary Holt. He was the right guy. But the perception of people, it weighs on me, and I don't want to deal with that.

"I love Gary. He's a great player," Kerry clarified. "But I already had my one dude from SLAYER I was definitely keeping. And Phil had only played four gigs with SLAYER, so that comparison wasn't going to be there."