Musician recounts how he was invited to play with the band.

After playing his last show with Machine Head , Phil Demmel was invited by Slayer to join them on their farewell tour while guitarist Gary Holt returned home .

In a recent interview with Metal Casino, Demmel revealed that he had to learn 19 Slayer songs in just two days: “I left Machine Head and the next day I got a message from Kerry King saying, 'Do you think you can learn 19 Slayer songs and be here in two days?'”

“I showed the message to my wife and she was very happy. I started studying [the songs] on the plane,” he confessed. Demmel says he knew parts of some of the songs, but needed to “concentrate a lot during the shows.”

Watch the full interview below.

Categories: News

A music journalist since 2016, she was an editor at Wikimetal, where she combined her two great passions: music and writing. She believes that heavy music deserves to be everywhere and strives to make that a reality. Slipknot, Evanescence, and Bring Me The Horizon are essential to her playlist.