SLAYER Guitarist KERRY KING: 'I'm Still 17'

Alan Sculley of Cincinnati CityBeat recently conducted an interview with SLAYER guitarist Kerry King. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

On people's musical tastes mellowing with age:

"There's like an unwritten rule, especially in America, to where you reach a certain age and you can't like metal anymore. You're supposed to grow up. You're supposed to wear your fucking khakis and a shirt with a collar. But you can't listen to metal. You've got to listen to fucking Barry Manilow or whatever the hell it is.

"I'm still 17. That's probably why our music kicks so much ass, because we're still kids. You don't have to grow up."

Comparing the new material to the band's 2001 release, "God Hates Us All":

"I think they're similar records. After we did that, for a long time I ... was really questioning myself. Not that I couldn't out-do it, just, what was I going to do? What was I going to talk about? Things just worked their way out and we've got another 10 or 11 songs of debauchery to unleash on the world."

On the new song "Cult":

"It's about America, and my perspective is it's the biggest cult in the world. 'Cult' is just basically pointing out flaws in religion, the typical SLAYER song."

On the new song "Jihad", which provides a view of war through the perspective of an enemy of the United States:

"People make an assumption before they (read) the lyrics. I think that's going to happen with ('Jihad'). It's definitely not only human nature, it's very American-natured."

On being SLAYER's primary songwriter on the two most recent albums:

"If it's predominantly something I've done, chances are it's going to be faster and less melody, more punch-in-the-face kind of music. Jeff [Hanneman], even though he plays the fast stuff too, he's definitely the moodier of the two of us. If Tom's [Araya] involved, there's more melody involved, where mine's just borderline punk, but in a thrashy kind of way."

On the "Unholy Alliance" tour:

"We're in a great position to where people want to play with us and we've got a big buzz. So in a sense we could cherry-pick bands that want to play with us. It's really cool because some of these guys you can't get, like, say, MASTODON and CHILDREN OF BODOM, at the same time. But this tour's so big we have LAMB OF GOD and both of those (bands). It's got a good buzz, so we'll see how things pan out."

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