KERRY KING: 'If We Did Anything Different, It Wouldn't Be SLAYER'
June 9, 2006Wes Orshoski of The Star-Ledger recently conducted an interview with SLAYER guitarist Kerry King. A few excerpts from the chat follow:
On never forgetting what it's like to be a fan.
"I was a fan to start with. And when bands that I admired did something I didn't like, it pissed me off. And I tried to keep that knowledge, to keep SLAYER from making those mistakes.
"For example, I was a huge (JUDAS) PRIEST fan — and still am — and after (the classic 1980) 'British Steel', they put out 'Point of Entry', and I hated that record. To me, it wasn't metal at all. It was experimental, and it's like, 'Good for you guys, but that's not why I like you.' I think they figured it out, because the next record was (the smash) 'Screaming for Vengeance'. I was like, 'Okay, water under the bridge.'"
On playing only one new song, "Cult", on the upcoming tour:
"I'm a believer that if you play new songs that they haven't heard, kids won't remember them. Because nine-tenths of our stuff is so fast, I can just hear them saying, 'It was fast, it was bad---.' 'What did it sound like?' 'SLAYER!'"
On what the new record will sound like:
"Ya know, fans come up to me and say, 'Thanks for sticking to your guns.' But we don't think of it as sticking to our guns. This is what we do, and if we did anything different, it wouldn't be SLAYER."
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