KERRY KING Talks About Upcoming SLAYER CD, KFK Clothing Line

SLAYER guitarist Kerry King spoke to Metal-Rules.com prior to the band's recent show in Helsinki, Finland about singer Tom Araya's voice troubles and the group's upcoming studio album, among other topics. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Metal-Rules.com: I think I should ask a very important question as for starters: Is Tom able to sing tonight as he has had some troubles with his voice lately?

Kerry King: "Yeah. It was the strangest thing because his voice was gone before and when it goes, he cannot talk, but he can still sing. That's strange, I think. But in Munich, he couldn't either talk or sing. And it was the biggest show in Germany on this tour and poor bastard's voice went down, but we made work. It was chaos and Tom saw a doctor next day and it was a day off, luckily. And then we changed a set a little bit, so it was easier on his voice and we started playing older songs and German fans liked that anyway. But eventually that worked out good, so... and you [wouldn't have] even noticed, when we played night you wouldn't even have noticed."

Metal-Rules.com: Now when Dave [Lombardo] has come back to the line-up of SLAYER again, how do you feel about working with him with the new stuff for your next album, for the first time for many years?

Kerry King: "Me and him have been working together more than anybody else in the band. We did a 10-song demo in his garage and since then we have been playing a couple of more, so before we came on tour we had twelve songs and I think when we go home, we put the instruments away for two-three weeks and then get back into it. I'm assuming we are gonna have like 14 songs to record for our next album — hopefully starting recordings for it by the end of January/beginning of February 2005 to get it out by the beginning of the summer."

Metal-Rules.com: As you already mentioned there, you guys have already written lots of stuff for the up-coming SLAYER album. Can you, Kerry, already tell how does it compare to the stuff on your previous album "God Hates Us All"? Is it going to be much different from that stuff music-wise?

Kerry King: "We have got a bunch of stuff. It´s all music, no titles, no words, but everybody to whom I have played some of that stuff — like I have played it for Jamey from HATEBREED and some of his crew and they headbanged to it, [they were] doing their [whole] thing, so it must be the right vibe."

Metal-Rules.com: I was just recently diving into your own website www.kfkindustries.com and read from there that you have been making special SLAYER wristbands by your own hands and have now like 12 wristbands done altogether. Do you have any plans to put some of them for sale through your website with your forthcoming DVD called "Still Reigning", meaning only a small bunch of these DVDs would become highly collectible; signed and hand-numbered by you exclusively?

Kerry King: "Well, no, it's not gonna be a cross-promotion like that. The reason why I haven't put them up yet is because I wanna have at least 20 because I think these so-called 'die-hard' people with money, they are just get right in and buy them all, y'know. Therefore, I think I'm gonna make 100-200 just because it takes me a while to make them. And when I decide how many I'm gonna, y'know, do then I'll put them up. And I wanna have at least 20 available, so they won't sell out for the first day. So I'm probably gonna make some on this Jägermeister tour. When I'm back home, I'm gonna dice some leather up and get them as ready as I can and just do the nails for them, put the nails through them on tour, as I can do that anywhere. So hopefully, probably in the middle of the tour, they might go up."

Metal-Rules.com: And they will be all hand-numbered by you as well...?

Kerry King: "They will be numbered like that. I'm gonna take the pants I wore for the 'Still Reigning' DVD, come up in the pieces like that, sign a number of them to match the wristbands, so it's gonna be a small memorabilia item, y'know. I mean, the wristbands I never wore, but the pants I did in that video, so I think people will get a piece of history from that show."

Read Kerry King's entire interview with Metal-Rules.com at this location.