Kerry King opens up about how it is with now Slayer and Tom Araya

Kerry King of Slayer was asked in a recent interview by Luiz Cesar Pimentel of Cucamonga in Brazil how his relationship with bassist/vocalist Tom Araya was impacted by the passing of the band’s original guitarist, Jeff Hanneman, in 2013.

I think Jeff’s passing weighed harder on Tom than it did me. And I don’t mean that from any kind of friendship perspective. It’s just my taking wasn’t as bad as Tom took it. Of course it was horrible, and no one ever wanted that to happen, but it really weighed on Tom. I think that’s what led to him wanting to retire earlier than me, because I think he felt the band was different. But then, out of nowhere, Tom decided he wanted to play some shows last year, and I went, ‘Well, I never wanted to stop playing shows. So, yeah, let’s try it out.’

He added then:

Just like it was in (early) Slayer, (we) don’t talk on the phone. We rarely text each other. And that’s just because when you’re together for 40 years — he became a very different person. He’s not the guy I started the band with. Not personally — just him; he’s a different person. I basically stayed very similar to who I’ve been in my twenties. And I like Tom. We’re cool. We got together. It wasn’t weird. We did those two shows. He was super happy. We got together after the second one, had a shot after the show. He’ll drink tequila and I love tequila, so that’s what we had. And I think the first idea to play this year was for the show we missed last year ’cause of the hurricane. So we rebooked that and [I] said, ‘If we never play another show, I wanna make that right with the promoter,’ because it wasn’t our fault. But he wanted us to play. So we’re playing there this year. And this year we get to play that Black Sabbath show. I can’t fucking wait.