Slayer recently announced even more dates for their farewell tour, which will pretty much run from May to August. Then that's it – no more Slayer. Megadeth guitarist Dave Mustaine tells Metal Hammer that certainly believes that Slayer is going to call it quits after this tour, but he also doesn't think Kerry King is going to hang it up.
Mustaine also recalls hanging out with Kerry way back in the day and even having him play with Megadeth for a short period of time. For those unaware, Kerry played with Megadeth live for a period of time in 1984. Mustaine also says everything you saw live from the band during that period in terms of props was all his, Kerry's, and Kerry's dad's work.
When I first met Kerry, he and I became friends. He played with Megadeth for a short while when we were a three-piece and looking for another guitarist, and he was a different man back then… he had long hair! I remember going back to Kerry’s house, and he would be sitting on the floor with a hammer and a piece of leather and some nails, and he would be banging nails through this thing that he was making to go around his stomach while his dad, an LA Sheriff that used to call everybody an asshole, was sitting on a recliner chair behind him. You would go in Kerry’s backyard, and he would have a garage that, from the rafters down to the floor, was full of those materials. When we made our first stage for Megadeth, when we had all those wacky amps on those corners, and we had that kinda military theme with the sandbags and the barbed wire and all that shit? We built all that stuff in Kerry’s backyard, with him.
Mustaine says if there's anything Slayer will be remembered for, it's being extreme as hell. He adds that no matter how many bands try to ape their style and write similar music, nobody is ever going to come close to what Slayer did.
As far as metal is concerned, if there is a gauge, and the gauge stops at some point under ‘extreme’, that’s where Slayer lie. There’s always going to be someone faster, someone who can write songs about war and killers and the occult and stuff like that, and there are always going to be songs that have breakneck pace, killer drumming and stuff like that, but not like them. That’s what makes Slayer so great. That’s what sets those motherfuckers apart.
