Limp Bizkit’s Popularity Depressed Kerry King So Much He Almost Gave Up Music

I think sometimes younger readers feel like we’re exaggerating when we talk about the dark days nu-metal’s reign, but it’s no joke. Shit. Was. BLEAK.

Case in point: Limp Bizkit almost broke up Slayer simply by existing. In a new interview with uDiscover — yup, the same interview where Dave Mustaine makes some specious claims about Risk — Kerry King drops this bomb:

“I was really jaded for a while back in the late ’90s. I couldn’t understand why Limp Bizkit was big. It affected me – I didn’t want to play music. I thought, ‘If this is the way that music’s going, then fuck this, I hate it.’ That’s why Jeff Hanneman wrote so much of our 1998 album ‘Diabolus in Musica,’ which is too funky for me.”

Of course, that fails to explain why Jeff Hanneman wrote so much of Slayer’s entire friggin’ catalogue. It’s also the first time anyone has ever described any Slayer music as “funky,” and makes me wonder if King has ever heard any funk music.

Still, the point stands: Limp Bizkit were so fucking terrible that we almost lived in a world where Kerry King quit Slayer after Undisputed Attitude. Whether or not Hanneman would have showed King the same respect King has since showed Hanneman and kept Slayer going anyway, who knows. But I don’t think any of us would have wanted Divine Intervention to be the last album of original material to feature at least 75% of the original band. Good thing Kerry powered on through!