Interview: Slayer bringing metal to the masses

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As if winning one of those last February was going to swell the shaved and tattooed head of the longtime Slayer guitarist at all. His and his band mates’ attitude toward the pop-music establishment has remained the same since the thrash-metal act’s genesis in 1981.

“It never really blew my mind,” Mr. King said recently from a tour stop in Minneapolis. “It’s odd, especially considering what I think of the music industry in general. It doesn’t mean nearly as much as if some metal mag had given us a major award. It’s cool and all, but not all that important.”

But Slayer continues to receive props from the mainstream, despite its role as one of music’s most brazen mainstream antagonists. Last year’s successful Unholy Alliance Tour featured three of the five acts nominated for the Best Metal Performance Grammy that Slayer won (Lamb of God and Mastodon were the others).

The group’s longtime producer, Rick Rubin, now heads Columbia Records and won his own Producer of the Year Grammy, partially for his involvement on Slayer’s 2006 disc, Christ Illusion. When released, the CD debuted at No. 5 on Billboard’s album chart; by far Slayer’s highest-ever position. A month ago, Mr. Rubin allowed American Recordings, a division of Columbia, to reissue it with DVD content and an extra track, “The Final Six,” which is about the destruction of the world.

But Mr. King is convinced that nothing trendy, calculated or resurgent triggered the triumph. Not Mr. Rubin’s ascendance. Not Slayer’s spike in popularity or respect as one of hardcore metal’s definitive acts. Not the politically and socially electric content – a trait that Grammy voters love, especially these days – of many of Christ Illusion ’s scathing cuts, particularly the winning song, “Eyes of the Insane,” which chronicles the last moments of a soldier about to die at war.

“My take on it would be that 60 percent of the voters don’t even know what the song’s about,” Mr. King says, “and that’s probably being generous. I think the majority of voters just look at the ballot, check off a name they recognize in the categories that they don’t know anything about, and turn it in.

“Winning the Grammy gives you voting rights for it. I know that when the time comes to vote, I’ll just check off something or other in the hip-hop categories since I don’t know anything about it. I’m sure that someone like Jay-Z probably did the same thing with the metal categories.”

Slayer hasn’t compromised much in its history, but it has on its current tour with more newfangled shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, which stops at Nokia Theatre at Grand Prairie tonight. Mr. King says that Mr. Manson vetoed the “Unholy Alliance” tour moniker because he’s trying to steer his music and image away from the gratuitous blatancy he has been known for.

Nevertheless, the Manson-Slayer combination makes for one of the year’s most unholy concert crowds. Slayer’s typically virulent and demonstrative supporters don’t tend to appreciate Mr. Manson’s spooky techno-gothic androgyny, and Mr. Manson’s fans aren’t usually down with Slayer’s blistering pace, volume and fury. Mr. King, for one, is reveling in the conflict.

“I haven’t seen any fistfights or anything yet,” he said. “But there’s a lot of gray area between our fans and Marilyn’s. We both mine the same depths. But you can always pick out his fans – they’re the freaky-dressed ones – and you can always tell who our fans are; they’re the simply dressed ones.

“There was this girl in the middle of the last show that had her fingers in her ears the whole time we were on. I [expletive] loved it!”

 

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-kerryking_0830gl.State.Edition1.25c755e.html

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