Q&A: Kerry King

Kerry King

Speaking about Jeff, how is he doing now?

Jeff? Jeff’s doing good. I mean if you saw Jeff hanging out, with us anywhere, you’d think there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s made a complete recovery physically [The guitarist was diagnosed with necrotising fasciitis, a flesh eating disease from a spider bite over a year ago]. It’s just the intricacies of playing Slayer music that he cannot do, and that’s what we are waiting to see if he ever can do. The idea is to get him back. We’re just gonna wait and see if he can ever physically do it.

I believe you already have a couple of tracks ready for the next album. Where is the album at now?

I think in March or April, we were in recording, and we finished two songs, and we demoed a few. There are few other songs that are finished but they don’t have vocals or leads. Then we demoed three others. We have enough for a record now. That’s all I can say. Once we are back from India and Japan, we would like to finish it before the holidays. But I can’t imagine that happening. So hopefully, mid-March is when we should have it done with.

And who’s producing the new album?

So far we’ve been working with Greg Fidelman again. That’s why we went in with a 12-day window. Metallica’s got him pretty much monopolized from now to I don’t know when. But he had 12 days when he wasn’t working with them so that’s why we rushed in, and see what we could do in that time. Now we need Greg’s time available to finish it up, which we don’t know. Or we’re gonna have to pick somebody else and we haven’t picked that person yet.

You guys have been responsible for the emergence of thrash metal. Why do you think thrash metal has survived all these years?

I really think it’s real. I think the fans are so intensely into it because they think of us as an extension of them. We have never tried to be anything we are not. We are very accommodating. I think the kids feel like they are part of what we are doing because we are so open about sharing it with them. That being said I think kids aspire to be that because it’s so real. Metal has the most dramatic fans anyway.

Watch the music video of “Eyes of The Insane,” from their album Christ’s Illusion

 

I believe you are the one who draws up the setlists in the band. And this is going to be the first Slayer concert in India. How are you gonna go about it?

Since it is the first gig in India, I do have that in mind. We’re done rehearsing and now, we don’t get back together until we board the flight for India. And I think we’re doing”¦ we originally had slotted for about two and a half hours. But since we haven’t rehearsed, I’m gonna try and get an hour-forty. I’ll try to get a good amount of the entire history, probably leaning more towards the early years because India never got to see us play those songs live. So there’s probably more stuff off the first five records and a lot of stuff from the last decade. We are trying to cover all the bases.

Is there any message you want to give your Indian fans before you land here?

My message to the fans through ROLLING STONE INDIA would be that I can’t believe it’s taken us 30 years to get there but we’re very excited to go. And if they think they’ve seen thrash before, they haven’t. It’s going to be a party for everybody and I can’t wait to be there.