Kerry King , iconic guitarist of Slayer and currently pursuing a solo project , revealed in a recent interview with Revolver Magazine how he learned of Slayer's premature retirement.
King said, “I intended to make a new record.” The guitarist continued, “That is, until Tom ( Araya ) was giving an interview and they asked him about the next Slayer album: ‘I need to talk to Kerry before we start working on the next record.’ However, Tom didn’t want to make another record with Slayer. He wanted to retire.”
“And when I found that out, of course I was hurt initially,” King continued. “Then I thought, ‘I have a lot of work to do. I just need to do my best show every night and prepare to move on.’ Finally, I thought, ‘Okay, all those songs I was writing for Slayer are now just mine.’”
Kerry King said he felt he had more creative freedom. The guitarist commented that his compositions for the album From Hell I Rise might have sounded a little different if they had been done with Slayer .
Kerry King and the recruitment for her new project.
Kerry King talked about the process of moving forward in her career, and how she chose her backing band.
“There was no way to do this without Paul Bostaph ,” the guitarist begins. “He’s truly fantastic and I think he’s a forgotten thrash drummer. Dave Lombardo (former Slayer drummer) is a great musician. I can never take that away from Dave. But Paul works hard every second to be the best drummer he can be. He’s very open-minded. He thinks about how to play a song 10 times before he plays it.”
For bass, King considered Kyle Sanders (brother of Troy Sanders from Mastodon ). The bassist is a former member of Hellyeah and Bloodsimple . “I met Kyle at the Mayhem Festival we did together, and we got along really well, and I knew I wanted him to be my guy,” King recalls. “But I had to play with him much sooner than I wanted. Vince ( Vinnie Paul) dropped out of us in 2018, and I didn’t want to offer him the spot near Vince’s death, because that’s inappropriate. But I was on the phone with Kyle before Hellyeah did their final tour, just checking in on him, and I said, ‘I don’t want to interfere with what you’re doing, but when 2020 comes around, I have something you’ll probably be interested in.’ And he replied, ‘I hear you loud and clear.’”
Kitchen set up, time to choose the perfect guitar buddy.
To accompany him on guitars, Kerry King sought out Phil Demmel (former member of Machine Head and Vio-Lence ). Demmel had replaced Gary Holt in Slayer's last European performances. "When Phil showed up for those European shows, all he could say was that he knew I would continue after that. And he told me, 'I want to be part of your future.'"
King even considered his old friend Gary Holt: “But I started to realize that the more pieces I take away from Slayer, the more it will be called 'Slayer Lite'. I mean, of course it will sound like Slayer. I wrote 90 percent of the last album, but if I take less of Slayer with me, there will be less for people to base it on, as far as making lazy comparisons. I had to redo Slayer again after Jeff Hanneman (who passed away in 2013). 110 times out of 100, I would choose Gary Holt. He was the right guy, but people's perception weighs on me, and I don't want to deal with that.”
The choice of vocalist
Finally, Mark Osegueda ( Death Angel ) was chosen as the vocalist for the new album. When news broke that King was putting together a band for his solo album, few vocalists applied. “Maybe they thought I already had someone,” King reflects, “or maybe they didn’t think they could handle the fast vocals. I definitely have some tongue-twisters in my lyrics, but I knew Mark could do it. I’ve known him forever, but we became closer in mid-2010 when Death Angel opened for us at Repentless . He’s a fun guy and a great singer. But I didn’t tell him until about a year ago that he had a chance. I wanted to test his training capacity, to make sure he wasn’t a nightmare to work with, which he wasn’t. And I discovered he had another level of voice that none of us knew about.”
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