Interview with Kerry King
From Anti MTV, June 2000

You can't get a more metal bill than Slayer and Iron Maiden, can you ? Well, prior to the bands playing together at Metal 2000, Slayer did their own thing with a headline show at Nottingham Rock City. The gig is reviewed elsewhere but prior to the show Intoxicated and Death To Dead Things sat down with Kerry King and chatted about his career as a Pet Shop Assistant (amongst other things)....

INTOXICATED / DTDT - So, Maiden & Slayer.. not a bad gig for a metal fan ?
SLAYER - Yeah, I'd say!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - How did you get the gig ?
SLAYER - Somebody offered it to us. I mean, I wouldn't go looking for it that's for sure! I'd rather have toured with Maiden around Powerslave or Number Of The Beast, those were the real Maiden days for me. They don't do much that I care for any more. Sure, it's still Iron Maiden but it's nothing groundbreaking like say Killers was or Number Of The Beast was. Those were my favourites!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Despite you being around as Slayer for years, do you still get excited about playing gigs like Metal 2000 ?
SLAYER - Sure, I still get excited about playing this peice of shit tonight! Club gigs are crazy man! Very intense, that's best! We've done a couple of club shows between festivals so we don't have days off, days off suck! When you do a festival they don't want you to play a show in town so you do a club like this.. the fans dig it!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - So have you got a new album in the pipeline ?
SLAYER - Yeah, shit, ever since last years Ozzfest, that's all we've been working on. Apart from the three weeks we have had to take off to learn our old shit for this, that's all we've been doing. It's in there but we gotta shake the cobwebs off. We got this to do, then a four week tour and then within a couple of weeks we'll be in the studio.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Can you give us any details on it ? Titles...
SLAYER - It's good! Ha ha ha! We're planning on between eleven and thirteen songs depending on which songs we're tweaking at that time. The music is much better than on the last record and I think everyone'll dig it.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Do you find it harder and harder to get old stuff in, stuff that you've done for say fifteen years ?
SLAYER - You know, it's harder and harder to get stuff in from the first album when you've done so much stuff since then. Like, tonight we're gonna do something from every album so we can get a bit of everything in there. With the Maiden set we only get fifty minutes so we'll just stick to the main songs that everyone knows.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - What keeps you going after nearly 18 years ?
SLAYER - This is what I do! I couldn't do anything else! If I wasn't doing this I wouldn't wanna work at Burger King or something.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Have you ever had a proper job ? I heard you worked on a Minature Golf Course ?
SLAYER - Yeah, I did that for about a month but they told me to cut my hair so I told 'em to fuck off and quit! (At this point a couple that have been observing from an adjacent table nearly choke!) I used to work in a Pet Store as well but I used to rob them blind - I was too good a thief back then!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - The thought of being served budgie food by Kerry King is mind boggling! While we're on the subject of the early dates, a lot of non-metal fans were "frightened" by Slayer...
SLAYER - They still are! You should see the looks I get going down the street man! It's pretty amazing!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Do you still get any problems ?
SLAYER - Every once in a while we get people picketing our gigs and stuff..it's pretty funny! The way I see it is that all these Christians and preachers and shit have to go out and ram their stuff down peoples throats and nobody is interested whereas the kids are paying to come and see us..it's their choice. Religion is soo stupid, I'm playing and the kids have to pay to see me and you're there forcing your shit on them and that's why they don't like you!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - I read somewhere that you used to be called Dragon Slayer ?
SLAYER - Naah, we were never called that, it might have been a reference but it was never our name.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - You also used to wear make up when you first started. Whose idea was that and how long did it last ?
SLAYER - I don't know whose idea it was but it stopped when we got to San Fransisco and they said "you guys don't need that" and we agreed!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - What's your view on people branding / scarring the Slayer logo into their arms (again the couple we mentioned earlier sit dumbstruck!)
SLAYER - Oh...that... he cut that into his arm with a surgical knife. He's fucking nuts man ha ha ha! I don't know how they found that guy but it was a planned thing but people do that all the time and they did long before us. People are like "do you think everyone will do that now..." and it's like people did scarification a long time before Slayer came around. I wouldn't do it ha ha ha!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - On the inside cover of Hell Awaits Tom is seen snorting what looks like a line of cocaine.. was it ?
SLAYER - Naah, it was salt (said in a rather sheepish, embarrassed manner) it was a good picture though!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Back on one of your earlier promo shots, you were seen sacrificing a woman. Who was she ?
SLAYER - Jeffs wife, or girlfriend at the time.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - The intro to Hell Awaits is played backwards. What is actually said ?
SLAYER - Mostly JOIN US, but there might be some other shit in there as well! Growling and shit. I know it says Join Us, Join Us..

INTOXICATED / DTDT - When Dave Lombardo left did you ever consider getting Gene Hoglan in ?
SLAYER - I think Gene has tried out for us twice now.. or maybe even only once.... He used to take pictures of us when we played in clubs.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Like we talked about earlier, your fans are quite fanatical and give support bands a hard time. What advice do you give to support bands ?
SLAYER - You know, it's wierd but The Haunted played with us a couple of nights ago and they didn't go over to well. I think the Haunted are fuckin' blind - a good new band playing good, new music. Machine Head did better than anybody that has opened for us ever because they were a new band with a great new record.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - What advice do you give to support bands ?
SLAYER - Good luck! Some of the bands that have opened for us it's like "what the fuck ? don't you know what is going to happen to you ?" What are you thinking ? A lot of the time these are the fans they want to get but if they don't sound good or the songs aren't good they're gonna get slammed and NOT by us! That comes later!

INTOXICATED / DTDT - At what point in time did you realise you'd reached the threshold of speed ?
SLAYER - Probably Reign In Blood. On South Of Heave that was the one record where we definitely decided not to go fast. Sure we had some fast stuff on there but Reign In Blood was the threshold of speed for us. That had its slow shit on there but it was predomenantly a fast record. We tired of playing fast.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - So you'd never consider using blast beats as in death metal style ?
SLAYER - No way, that's ridiculous, people can like it that's ok but it has no place in Slayer. Slayer is more musical than that, I think.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Who made your infamous na....
SLAYER - I did! And I wore it on stage! Fuck yeah! I made that around the Hell Awaits tour and wore it for the whole set and then I'd only wear it for the first three songs, then the encore and I wore it again when I played with Rob Zombie last year, it comes and goes.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - How come there was only four dates in the UK for Diabolus ?
SLAYER - I dunno! I think that whole tour was kinda short! Maybe it was a timing thing but I really don't know. We're going back to Dublin in July and that's gonna be cool. To be honest this is the first time we've been anywhere in the UK outside London for a while.

INTOXICATED / DTDT - Just to finish off what is the story behind Live Undead ?
SLAYER - That was the one where Metal Blade were supposed to record a show and they didn't for whatever reasons so they just stuck us in a room and sent in a bunch of our friends and we just went for it, so it was, in a sense, live! It was the same for Decade, if we fuck up onstage, that's what you hear!

INTERVIEWER - GRAHAM FINNEY / IAN WEBSTER