Though Kerry King is riding high off the recent release of his thrashing From Hell I Rise, which naturally needles into the classic Slayer sound, there’s one era in particular he knew he wouldn’t be tapping into again, at least sonically: the late Nineties. In a new interview, the guitarist has referred to the back half of the Clinton years as the moment where Slayer started putting out “shitty albums.”
While speaking with Metal Blast to promote From Hell I Rise, King said if there was a moment of his career he could change, he would’ve paid more attention during the making of 1998’s Diabolus in Musica, the band’s more groove-forward, arguably nu-influenced final album of the decade.
“I don’t like the stuff we did in the Nineties,” the Slayer guitarist said, leaning into past comments. “I was very disenchanted by music because bands that were getting popular I didn’t understand. And I still don’t understand. I never liked Limp Bizkit. I never liked bands of that era. It just bummed me out and turned me off.
“And it’s really visible to me on Diabolus in Musica. I didn’t pay any attention to that album. I had a couple of songs on there, but I didn’t contribute as much as I usually do. And then I came back to my senses and I said, ‘You know what? Fuck that.’ I’m like, ‘We’re in Slayer. We need to be fucking important. I need to pay attention to this shit.’ And you can tell that I started paying attention when God Hates Us All came out, ’cause that was kind of our rebirth into, like, ‘Yeah, we got a little lost during the Nineties, but we righted the ship and here we go.”
The decade was hardly a complete write-off, of course. 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss is a classic, while 1994’s Divine Intervention ushered in a new era for Slayer, via the introduction of drummer Paul Bostaph (who continues to perform in King’s new band).
King says that by the mid-Nineties co-guitarist Jeff Hanneman was looking for ways to alter Slayer’s sound, which King wasn’t into. He was, however, stoked on their mostly punk-and-hardcore covers album, Undisputed Attitude.
“We weren’t real prolific in the Nineties,” he explained. “So, we did the Undisputed Attitude album, which I am very proud of — I love that covers record. We had a couple original songs, a couple of punk songs from Jeff. ‘Gemini’ from me.”
Even so, he views the era in a negative light: “Yeah, the late Nineties just… it’s not a good point in my history, in my mind.”
While King is clearly not a fan, Diabolus in Musica is a sleeper hit for some Slayer fans. Tombs vocalist-guitarist Mike Hill, for example, has argued that the record “doesn’t sound like Reign in Blood, but it stands as a welcome experiment for a band that has helped define extreme metal.” You can read his retrospective review of the album for Revolver over here.