SLAYER's KING Says He Doesn't Like Playing GRAMMY-Winning Song 'Eyes Of The Insane'

antiMusic/Thrashpit's Billy Gamble caught up with SLAYER's Kerry King as the band roared through Rhode Island last month, fresh off their Grammy win. Part two of the interview follows:

antiMusic: If you could tour with any band past or present, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Kerry King: I'd go with PANTERA again, that was one of the most fun tours I've heard been on. We did the last PANTERA tours in the States and we toured with DAMAGEPLAN here and there. We did a sort of Canadian tour with them. It was one of the last things they did. Dime was one of my best friends in the business. So I think it'd probably be SLAYER, PANTERA, and BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, so you'd get me and my two best friend guitar players out on tour! [Laughs]

antiMusic: Do you think PANTERA would've gotten back together?

Kerry King: I don't think so. There was some bad blood there!!

antiMusic: What is one of your most favorite moments touring?

Kerry King: Something that I think was pretty historic, the [20]04 Ozzfest. I said I'd never play Ozzfest before that. It was the second coming of SABBATH, the reunion of JUDAS PRIEST with Rob Halford who is my favorite metal singer of all time. If you're into that kind of thing, I mean I wouldn't want a singer like that in my band. SABBATH, PRIEST, SLAYER that was fucking heavy man. Someone actually showed me a picture from that year's news conference. I was sitting next to [Rob] Halford, Glenn [Tipton, and K.K. [Downing] and fucking Phil [Anselmo] is sitting next to me and it's just like cool! [Laughs] I mean we were playing Ozzfest!!

antiMusic: Tell me about your thoughts on "Christ Illusion", the thought process that went into it, and also tell me your favorite song on the album.

Kerry King: I like it a lot. My favorite song on the album is "Supremacy" because of the thought process that went into it. I mean it's unlike anything that we've done in years. Here we're playing at the fastest speed on the album to lead up to the vocal break and get reduced to the slowest speed on the album. It's almost like a gigantic rollercoaster ride. It's great to play onstage. I like playing "Jihad" because I'm back changing my guitars, and Jeff starts it and he starts it quietly so you can hear the fan go crazy about it and you can't always here that at the beginning of a song. "Cult" is fun. I don't like playing "Eyes of the Insane" — it's just dull to play, good song just dull to play on guitar. If we do another "Unholy [Alliance Tour]" this fall I think we'll add "Flesh Storm" to the set.

antiMusic: What do you mean by another "Unholy"?

Kerry King: What we want to do in the fall is have a second "Unholy Alliance Tour".

antiMusic: Who do you think is going to be on that with SLAYER?

Kerry King: I have no idea. I haven't heard any strong enough second bands to inspire me to want to it. I don't want to have SLAYER and three that are CHIMAIRA-sized — even though I love CHIMAIRA, I need a second on the bill. I need to make it an event. SLAYER with a club show is an event. We need somebody at the intermediate level. Like last year LAMB OF GOD was perfect.

antiMusic: How do respond to fans that say you haven't recorded a truly great album since 1990's "Seasons of the Abyss"?

Kerry King: I disagree. I think that "God Hates Us All" was the best record we'd ever done since "Seasons of the Abyss" and I think that "Christ Illusion" was the best thing we've done since "Reign in Blood". People are always going to look back at "Reign in Blood" and look at how groundbreaking in thrash it is but twenty years from now people are going to look at "Christ Illusion" and say "That was a great fucking record!" Anything we've done since 2000 I think should rank up there with it too.

The original article can be found at www.rocknworld.com.