After the breakup of Slayer in 2019, guitarist Kerry King talked about his mysterious new band. There were various rumors, including that the new band consists of King’s Slayer bandmates – guitarist Gary Holt and drummer Paul Bostaph, as well as Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo. And so King recently confirmed to Metal Hammer that the new band really has Bostaph:
We just started rehearsing and the only person I can give away is Paul because I took him from Slayer and we work very well together. We didn’t start rehearsing until the end of March, and that was the first time since that last Slayer show at the end of 2019 that me and Paul finally got into a room together.
He previously reported that he has music written for his new band worth more than two albums.
King later added that the pandemic had forced him not to release the record in 2020 as he had intended, adding that things were getting a little clearer now and he would definitely take action. As for how the project will sound, King said that it will sound exactly the way you think – Kerry King does things like Slayer.
You know me, so you know what it’s going to sound like. I played this new song for a buddy, and I said to him, ‘If there’s anything I’ve written in the last few years that sounds like Slayer, it’s this.’ And he said, ‘That sounds like you could have pulled it off of any Slayer record.’ I actually made that riff up backstage at a Slayer show. We were walking to the stage and I got my phone out and recorded it so I wouldn’t forget it.
King went on to say that he expects his new band to start performing at “much smaller” venues than Slayer at the end of its four-decade existence.
Let me remind you that Slayer played the final show of their farewell tour in November 2019 in Los Angeles.
So we are waiting for new music from King.
