Revolver are celebrating Mastodon’s 25th anniversary with a new collector’s issue dedicated to the band. To help us salute the mighty Atlanta outfit, we reached out to a number of famous fans to get their picks for their favorite Mastodon song — including Slayer guitarist Kerry King.
Slayer’s Kerry King has had exclusive side-stage access to countless crushing Mastodon sets over the years — dating back more than 20 years, to when the Atlanta outfit started opening up for the Big 4 thrashers on various legs of their Unholy Alliance tours.
To say the least, King was mightily impressed by the sonic heft of Mastodon from the jump, and he grew to love a number of iconic bang-outs that the younger band brought to the stage. But when Revolver reached out to King to ask which Mastodon song infected his mind completely, he opted to spotlight the heavy holy grail that is Leviathan’s opening “Blood and Thunder.” At least for now, anyways.
“Any given day could yield a different answer, but today I’m going with ‘Blood and Thunder.’ It was a great live song 20 years ago, and still is,” he says. “The chorus is huge. Always exciting when that one hits live.”
A lifelong Mastodon supporter through and through, King adds of another early rager: “‘March of the Fire Ants’ is no slouch either.”
Revolver’s Mastodon collector’s issue is available to order with three limited-edition covers, and can be bundled with vinyl variants of five Mastodon albums now featuring reimagined artwork by Paul Romano. More info on the variant options and more exclusive Mastodon merch are up in our shop.