After literal years of waiting, Kerry King has finally unveiled his new solo band! King's new band features Death Angel vocalist Mark Osegueda, former Slayer drummer Paul Bostaph, former Vio-Lence and Machine Head guitarist Phil Demmel, and former Hellyeah bassist Kyle Sanders. King will release the Josh Wilbur-produced album From Hell I Rise on May 17 via Reigning Phoenix Music, and you can check out the first single "Idle Hands" below.
"Idle Hands" was actually a track Slayer wrote during their Repentless sessions. "It was finished, we recorded it," said King to Rolling Stone. "I wasn't happy with the performance part of it, so I was like, 'All right, I'll put this in my back pocket until the next Slayer record.' And that didn't happen, so it's now on my record."
As for titling his new band after himself, King noted that wasn't always the plan either. "It was going to be King's Reign for a long time, which is really cool. But even with that one, I went to the guys, like, 'I'm not a vain dude. I don't want my name to be a part of it.' We talked about Blood Reign for a while, but it didn't work. Every time I came up with anything remotely cool, it was taken by some obscure band in Eastern Europe. It became Kerry King because I love that logo."
The rumors about Phil Anselmo fronting King's new band weren't totally baseless, either. "My management, my promoter, my record label all wanted Phil. Phil's a good friend of mine, but I always thought he's not the right guy. That has nothing to do with his ability; I just knew he wasn't the right guy. When you hear Mark on this record, you know that's the guy.
"I had to do due diligence, because at the end of the day, had Philip been the guy, we'd be in arenas immediately because we could play new stuff, we could play Pantera, we could play Slayer, and fans would've been happy. It ended when the Pantera thing came up.
"I saw Mark a few years back singing covers of Minor Threat and cameo in The Wedding Band with members of Metallica. It was different from what he does in Death Angel, and he sounded great. He's super versatile. He took steps to make this different than Death Angel. I don't touch on probably 50 percent of what he can do on the album.
"Mark knew how I expected the songs to be performed. On my demos, I sing with very good conviction, but I don't have pipes; that's why I don't sing. With 'Residue', he sounded so good I had to ask him, 'Is this sustainable? I don't want you to blow your load on this record and then blow your voice out every third show.' And he swore up and down he could do it. He went on to some of the harder ones and did the same thing on those, so I went, 'Okay.'"
Osegueda has since taken to his social media to clarify that he's still very much in Death Angel: "Well… The secret is out! I AM the lead vocalist for Kerry King's new band! I worked so hard on getting this gig! I worked so hard in the studio recording this record! And.. I'm so proud with what we all achieved! I can't wait to hit the road with this! And there will be plenty of that! Thank you all for your years of your support and inspiration! And… Yes!! I am still very much the lead vocalist of Death Angel".
