Kerry King says Slayer’s Grammy Awards were only good for one thing – showing them to his parents.
The band have won two of the coveted awards, both for tracks from 2006 album Christ Illusion. Eyes Of The Insane brought them a gong in 2007 and Final Six secured a second the following year.
King tells Unrated: “No one involved with the Grammys has any idea about metal, let alone hard rock.
“The first time a Grammy was awarded to a metal band was Jethro Tull. Are you serious? Last year, Tenacious D – they’re a fucking joke band.”He continues: “When we won ours I think it was probably cool for my parents, because they understand what a Grammy is. They don’t understand the bullshit involved with it, but to be able to come home with that big-ass heavy award and show it to my parents, that was important to me.”
Slayer will release 11th album Repentless in September via Nuclear Blast – their first without late guitarist Jeff Hanneman. But King argues that, on the whole, it’s business as usual for the thrash icons.
He says: “We’re the same band that put out Show No Mercy in 1983. Older and wiser, and hopefully my lyrics are more intellectually sound than when I was 19.
“It had a big wave up until the early 90s, then grunge came and killed every kind of music on the planet. You had to wait around the next surge of people wanting metal, which for me started around 2000.
“God Hates Us All came out and Slayer was re-energised, and it took off again. But for us it was the same all the way through.”
King has been slated for making negative comments about the US Mayhem touring festival, which his band is currently headlining, and questioning the quality of other acts on the bill. Slayer return to the UK in November.
