In a new feature at Metal Hammer, Slayer guitarist, Kerry King, answers fan questions and discusses which legendary bands he'd love to tour with.
Asked by "Attitudecult.666, Instagram", If you could have been in any other band, who would you pick?
Kerry King: "I was almost in Megadeth. I think if myself and Dave Mustaine could have co-existed for four years, it would have been a very different band. I’m not saying I’d have made them better – I’d have made them different. It’s funny, I was backstage at Mercyful Fate’s show in Las Vegas and got talking to [guitarist] Hank Shermann, and said to him, ‘I thought you guys might come knocking’, and you could see his head explode. ‘It never fucking occurred to me!’ I’m a huge Mercyful Fate fan so I’d have done that in a heartbeat.
"I’d also love to play with Judas Priest – that brief second where Richie [Faulkner] got sick and they suggested going out with one player, I thought if they called me and said, ‘Can you be that one guitarist?’, I honestly don’t think I could, because they’re such a dual guitar band. Thankfully they never did it, but if they’d have asked, I think it would have been the hardest ‘no’ of my life!”
Read more at Metal Hammer.
Kerry King and his band - drummer Paul Bostaph (Slayer), bassist Kyle Sanders (Hellyeah), guitarist Phil Demmel (Machine Head), and vocalist Mark Osegueda (Death Angel) - will hit the road for the twenty-eight date "North American Headline Tour 2025." The tour is in support of King’s debut solo album, From Hell I Rise (RPM).
With Municipal Waste as Special Guest and Alien Weaponry supporting, the tour is set to launch in San Francisco on January 15, and wrap at House of Blues in Las Vegas on February 22. Tickets can be purchased here. The complete itinerary is below.
“Getting back on the road for the first time in five years wasn’t exactly like riding a bike, that’s for sure,” King acknowledged. “I’ve never had that much time off, but the first tours with my new band – in the UK and Europe, and then in America with Lamb of God and Mastodon - were all total blasts. We’ll be headlining on this next tour, so we’re playing a longer set than we did with Lamb of God and Mastodon. We've got a little bit of a learning curve, so will start rehearsing the first week of November. And we might put an extra Slayer song into the set and learn a cover song or two.”
Dates for Kerry King's “North American Headline Tour 2025" are listed below:
January
15 - The Regency Ballroom - San Francisco, CA
17 - Spokane Live Casino - Spokane, WA
18 - Showbox SoDo - Seattle, WA
19 - Roseland Theater - Portland, OR
20 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC (Canada)
22 - The Palace Theatre - Calgary, AB (Canada)
23 - Midway Music Hall - Edmonton, AB (Canada)
25 - Burton Cummings Theatre - Winnipeg, MB (Canada)
26 - The Fillmore - Minneapolis, MN
28 - The Rave - Milwaukee, WI
30 - The Majestic Theater - Detroit, MI
31 - House of Blues - Cleveland, OH
February
1 - Danforth Music Hall - Toronto, ON (Canada)
2 - L'Olympia - Montreal, QC (Canada)
4 - Royale - Boston, MA
5 - Theatre of the Living Arts - Philadelphia, PA
7 - Irving Plaza - New York, NY
8 - Baltimore Soundstage - Baltimore, MD
10 - Buckhead Theatre - Atlanta, GA
11 - Jannus Live - St. Petersburg, FL
13 - House of Blues - Houston, TX
14 - Emo's - Austin, TX
15 - The Studio at the Factory - Dallas, TX
17 - Ogden Theatre - Denver, CO
18 - Sunshine Theater - Albuquerque, NM
19 - The Nile Theater - Phoenix, AZ
21 - House of Blues - Las Vegas, NV
22 - The Fonda Theatre - Los Angeles, CA
King recently released a music video for the album track, “Where I Reign”. Shot in black and white, the “Where I Reign” video was directed by Jim Louvau who also directed King’s videos for the album cuts “Residue” and “Toxic.”
"I wanted to capture the fury and the energy of the band in a live setting,” said Louvau, "an intensity that is matched from a visual standpoint that matches the intensity of the song and the energy that the band brings each and every night on tour, and I think we were able to do that. There are some still photos in the video that also show motion and energy, and I was really just trying to bring that energy to life in a live setting that is different from the other two videos that were done in the studio and were a little more in a controlled environment. So this video was definitely the guys’ being themselves and just showcasing what the band provides in a live setting.”
(Photo - Jim Louvau)
