Q&A: Slayer

Slayer are (left to right): Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman, Tom Araya and Dave Lombardo (Credit: Mark Seliger)

Slayer, 'World Painted Blood'

Metal masters still crazy after all these years

Slayer guitarist Kerry King has often bemoaned the rigors of life on the road. But he hasn’t added every touring musician’s favorite new gadget to his luggage yet. “My wife wants an iPad,” he admits. “I probably wouldn’t use it that much, except for some of the apps.” (King prefers his laptop and cell phone for on-the-road distraction.) “But ‘Angry Birds’ and ‘Zombieville’ would be killer on the iPad—so would ‘Slayer Pinball!’”

Oh, did we forget to mention that Slayer have their own (paid!) pinball app? Well, when you’re talking about the thrash metal innovators who helped shape the genre almost 30 years ago, a few of those “minor” details can slip through the cracks. Still, no metal fans have been able to overlook King and fellow bandmates Tom Araya (bass, vocals), Jeff Hanneman (guitar) and Dave Lombardo’s (drums) summer spent playing festival dates in Europe with the so-called Big Four: early metal compatriots Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax. A DVD of one of those performances is in the pipeline (also coming soon: three newly rereleased DVDs of vintage Slayer concert material). For this Slayer tour, Megadeth and Anthrax are back on board (sorry, no Metallica), and King and co. will be running through their epic 1990 LP, "Seasons in the Abyss."

In a rare moment spent not watching horror movies or punishing six-strings, King talked with Metromix about warm-up riffs, the relative meaninglessness of Grammy Awards, and life after Slayer.

The guitarist in me wants to know: Kerry King sits down to try out a new guitar or rig, what’s the go-to riff?
I’ve got a lot of them! When I start to warm up, I don’t play as fast as I intend to play for the evening. So, a lot of times I’ll do “Propaganda,” because I used to play that with Sepultura when we were on tour. I do “I’m Broken” from Pantera because I used to like that riff. Then I’ll move on to “Hostile,” because I used to do that with Pantera all the time, and it’s kind of an intermediate speed, on its way to a “Reborn”-type of speed.

It’s somewhat unusual how much you dislike recording.
Yeah, I’d rather tour. It’s weird, because in the beginning, I’d rather record, because I hated to tour. But as you progress through your career, it gets easier to tour because you’re in nicer hotels, better buses, and just better situations. But recording, I think, is a necessary thing because fans always want to hear new music, and you’ve got to incorporate it into the set—but the perfection of it, it’s not fun. For me, anyway.

Do you think it’s particularly hard to age in metal?
Nah, I think metal keeps me young, man! [Laughs] If you saw my iPod, it’s 95 percent metal, just as it would have been if we’d had iPods when I was 20. The funny thing is, there’s comedy in there, there’s “South Park” in there, there’s stupid shit—but there’s tons of metal.

Someone asked you not too long ago if you had any musical goals left and you—unusually for this business—said no.
I’m fucking content, man. If my career ended tomorrow, I’d be like, “I did some good shit.”

Let’s say you had to make a resume—what stands out to you? What are you proud of having accomplished?
Well, all the things we’ve done musically. I mean, there’d be a lot of bands that would never exist if bands like us and Metallica didn’t exist—just like we wouldn’t exist if [Judas] Priest and [Black] Sabbath didn’t exist. So, we’re part of a pretty killer legacy. All the awards—me and Jeff have gotten awards from Metal Hammer and Kerrang; this year I think the German Metal Hammer awarded me God of Riffs—that kind of shit’s fun, I like it. I’m proud of that, because it’s directly from fans, and magazines are directly involved with the fans, so I definitely value that more. The Grammy looks nice; it’s shiny, but these other awards mean more to me.

Does any part of you think it would have been interesting to have had Metallica’s career instead of yours?
Not really, because I wouldn’t have wanted to make up those records in the ‘90s. But, you know, Metallica still plays some of that stuff. They played “Fuel” when we played with them like a month ago, and it fits right into the set, but that’s just not stuff I would have liked to have written.

When people ask you about controversial stuff in Slayer’s work, you pretty much always respond that whatever it was, you were just “interested” in it at that time. So, what’s getting your interest now?
Well, I’m not writing, so it’s hard to answer. I can tell you the last horror movie I really dug was “Legion.” I thought that was really interesting, that God’s angels, supposedly, were acting as we think demons are. It’s really weird how they made that work; it’s pretty cool, too.

We just did a feature on bands—such as the current touring version of Foreigner—where it’s, like, only one guy left from the original lineup. Is there any chance Slayer would go on even one man down?
No, I’ve discussed that a lot, and I think it’s pretty much an unspoken thing amongst us that if any of us left, Slayer’s done, because we’ve all been a part of it for so long (except that we had a musical drummer-chair for a while). I think it would dilute what fans have come to expect. I don’t fear that day because I’ve got so many friends in the business that I could do all kinds of projects with. So, when it’s done, it’s done. The next day, I move on and find the next band that’s going to sound, musically, a lot like Slayer. [Laughs]