Felt Like Kerry King’s Solo Album Should Have Been Different? He Doesn’t Give a F*ck
Back when Kerry King dropped his debut solo album From Hell I Rise, I gave it a middling review score. At the time, I wrote that “one of the most disappointing things about this record is the fact that had King opted to get out of his comfort zone, we could have something truly remarkable.” I still stand by that assessment, but Kerry King’s got a response to that and anyone else that expected something else from his solo album: “No one gives a shit.”
Fair enough. In a recent interview Bruno Sutter of the “Bem Que Se Kiss” program on Brazil’s Rádio Kiss FM 92.5 (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), the Slayer guitarist spoke at length about his solo project and its debut album. During the conversation, the topic of people’s expectations, it turns out he doesn’t lose any sleep over other people’s assessment.
“The only thing I have to say to something like that, and it makes perfect sense — I want AC/DC to be AC/DC. I want Judas Preist to be Judas Priest. People want Kerry King to be Kerry King, I think. To me, it’s people that are just haters on the Internet. They have an opinion about everything, and no one gives a shit about their opinion.”
During the interview, Sutter used the term “Slayer on steroids” to describe From Hell I Rise. Again, not exactly the phrase I’d use when describing the album, but when it came to his goal with the record, King said he wasn’t trying to really trying to overshadow what he’d done previously with Slayer.
“I didn’t go out of my way to outdo Slayer. To me, it was honestly the next 12 or 13 songs, the ones we finished, the ones we felt good about. I do think that record’s got teeth. It’s fierce; it just rips out of the speakers. I never set out to do anything better than Slayer. I just wanted my next thing to be good.”
As for the band’s name being Kerry King’s name, the guitarist has gone on record multiple times saying the name wasn’t the most ideal situation for him. In this interview he once again reiterated that feeling, stating that he wished he could have come up with something else, but time ultimately ran out and he had to pick something.
“I still think of myself as a bandmember. Believe it or not, I never wanted to call [my new band] my name. I wanted to have a band name, but let me tell you something — you try to get a band name, see how far you get. I worked on it for years — years I had — and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. And then it became time to announce some of our first shows, and we had to call it something. So, everybody knew my name, the logo’s pretty cool, so we went with it.
“I still wish I could come up with a band name and maybe do like a Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, because it’s really awkward for me when five of us are on stage and they’re just shouting for me… It’s weird. It’s weird. I’m not that kind of guy. I’m not that dude that needs my ego filled. I don’t need that at all. I want everybody else to get recognition too.”
