SLAYER's KING On Recording HANNEMAN-Penned Material: 'If It Ain't Awesome, You're Not Gonna Hear It'

Revolver magazine recently conducted an interview with SLAYER guitarist Kerry King and drummer Paul Bostaph. You can now watch the chat at RevolverMag.com. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the progress of the songwriting sessions for SLAYER's long-awaited follow-up to 2009's "World Painted Blood":

King: "I've been working on stuff for the better part of three years, probably. I did a demo with [now-former SLAYER drummer] Dave [Lombardo] a year ago, [in] March [2012]. We finished two songs that we thought were gonna be out for [the Rockstar Energy Drink] Mayhem [Festival] in 2012, and to this day, they're not mixed. Now [drummer] Paul's [Bostaph] with us, so we're gonna re-record those with Paul. But [Paul] and I have done, like, 11 demos since Paul's been with us. I think there's two or three more that are finished that we've just gotta work on, and there's, like, halves of three others. So we have an abundance of material. We've just gotta sign a deal with whoever is gonna put it out and record it, which I'm really hoping to do in January. And we should be so prepared that it should be a pretty short recording time frame. So my idea [for a possible release date] is May of 2014]. But I'm always wrong."

On the possiliby of using material that was originally written by guitarist Jeff Hanneman prior to this death:

King: "Jeff had… We both had a song that was left off the last album ['World Painted Blood']. And mine, 'Atrocity Vendor', came out on some obscure single. But I'd like to re-record that with Paul, change the lyrics up a bit, change the leads and have that as a bonus track on the new record. Jeff's song he finished right at the end, so it was kind of like an afterthought. There's some good stuff on it, but good as a whole, it's gotta be reworked, and I plan on reworking it. I know Jeff wanted to rework it, so it's not like he's not here, so I'm gonna change his song. [laughs] I know he talked about rewriting lyrics for it.

"It's hard, because once a song is finished, it's hard to hear it any other way. You basically have to deconstruct it and start fresh. The verse will be the verse and the chorus will be the chorus, but all the glue in the middle, you've gotta deconstruct it and see what you can do to make it better. And I planned on working on that one; it's just that I've got a couple I'm working on I wanna finish first. And he's got, I think, two other strong ideas that I don't even think were done, so they're gonna need to be helped as well.

"My big thing is, if we're gonna put out something that Jeff wrote, I've seen other musicians and bands [release] music [that was originally written] in the past, and it's generally not good. I don't want it to be perceived like that. If we're gonna put out Jeff's last contribution in SLAYER, if it ain't awesome, you're not gonna hear it. So I wanna make it awesome, so you can hear it."

On SLAYER's current North American tour featuring an "old-school" setlist:

King: "Well, we had a really good set made up, and since we were playing two shows in L.A., they wanted something for the night that was added, so I came up with a setlist that's 'Seasons In The Abyss' and prior, and once we did it, everybody wanted it. And it's a good time to do it, because we don't have any [new] product, so… I'm, like, well, shit. It's fun to play, it goes by in a minute, it seems like. We just did it last night and played an hour and 25 [minutes], and it seemed like it was, like, 10 minutes. It was just [snaps fingers], bam, done."