{"id":56626,"date":"2025-04-28T05:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T05:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/56626\/"},"modified":"2025-04-28T05:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T05:22:11","slug":"slayers-kerry-king-opens-up-on-relationship-with-tom-araya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/56626\/","title":{"rendered":"Slayer’s Kerry King opens up on relationship with Tom Araya"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kerry<\/p>\n

(Credits: Jonas Rogowski)<\/p>\n

Sun 27 April 2025 11:29, UK <\/p>\n

In a new video interview with Luiz Cesar Pimentel, Slayer\u2019s<\/a> Kerry King opened up about his relationship with vocalist and bassist Tom Araya after the death of the band\u2019s founding guitarist, Jeff Hanneman.<\/p>\n

He reflected on both men\u2019s grief: \u201cI think\u00a0Jeff\u2019s passing weighed harder on\u00a0Tom\u00a0than it did me \u2026 I\u00a0think that\u2019s what led to him wanting to retire earlier than me, because I think he felt the band was different.\u201d<\/p>\n

King<\/a> reflected on a natural distance that is maintained within their friendship. He likened the present to the early days of Slayer, in that \u201c[Tom and I] don\u2019t talk on the phone. We rarely text each other. And that\u2019s just because when you\u2019re together for 40 years \u2014 he became a very different person. He\u2019s not the guy I started the band with. Not personally \u2014 just him; he\u2019s a different person. I basically stayed very similar to who I\u2019ve been in my twenties. And I like Tom. We\u2019re cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slayer will return for two shows this summer in July, one in London\u2019s Finsbury Park and the other in Cardiff\u2019s Black Weir Fields. King also revealed that the original desire for this came from Araya: \u201cAnd I think the first idea to play this year was for the Louder Than Life festival show we missed last year \u2019cause of the hurricane.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cSo we rebooked that and I said, \u2018If we never play another show, I wanna make that right with the promoter,\u2019 because it wasn\u2019t our fault. But he wanted us to play. So we\u2019re playing there this year. And this year we get to play that\u00a0Black Sabbath\u00a0show<\/a> [in early July in Birmingham, United Kingdom]. I can\u2019t fucking wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked why he believed Araya had decided to retire, King said: \u201cI think just the wear and tear of the road. I think he wanted to be home. None of us are real spotlight seekers, but he\u2019s certainly not. And when Jeff was around, he was like a hermit. He did not want fame. I tolerate fame. Somebody\u2019s got to be that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, he used anecdotes to gesture at the differences between the two, which would eventually contribute to the band\u2019s demise: \u201cMe and Tom have never been on the same page,\u201d he said. \u201cLike if I want a chocolate shake, he wants a vanilla shake. \u2018Kerry, what color is the sky?\u2019 Blue. \u2018Tom, what color is the sky?\u2019 White. We\u2019re just different people. The further on in years we got, it just became more.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January 2011, Jeff Hanneman contracted necrotising fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating disease, from a spider in his garden, which led to intense periods of rehab that forced him into semi-retirement. Hanneman passed away in May 2013 from alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Jonas Rogowski) Sun 27 April 2025 11:29, UK In a new video interview with Luiz Cesar Pimentel,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,29860,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-56626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-slayer","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114413918276637127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}