In a brand new interview with Spin.com, SLAYER guitarist Kerry King spoke about how the band manages to survive at a tume when the old-fashioned way of making money in the music business — selling recorded albums — has dropped off a cliff.
“We’re still recording great albums, sure we are, but nobody’s buying ‘em,” he said. “But we’re very lucky to have a fanbase that has to have every shirt we’ve ever made. So that’s pretty much how you gauge your popularity these days. It’s people coming to shows and people of all ages wearing our stuff. When we came out and we’d play clubs, before the Internet age, we would go to high schools and stuff lockers with flyers because we knew who we wanted to come see us. Metal was new, old people didn’t get it yet. Now, you could just throw away those flyers.”
King also talked about how SLAYER is dealing with the fact that the Internet has given rise to a whole new type of hater – one that hides behind phony usernames, blank profile images, and unwarranted jabs and comments.
“I’m preparing for that gigantically on the new [SLAYER] record [‘Repentless’], because people online are ten feet tall and bulletproof,” Kerry said. “They just say what’s on their mind without having to have any ramifications. But I know people are gonna just hate this record because [fellow original SLAYER members] Jeff [Hanneman] and Dave [Lombardo] aren’t on it. And that’s fine because I know — just by people I’ve played this for in the industry — that it’s gonna be great.And there’s gonna be people that say it sucks, period. There are gonna be people that say it sucks without listening to it. That’s just part of society.”
He continued: “It’s a little bit different now than it was [a couple of decades ago]. When we first came out, magazines hated us. But by ‘Reign In Blood’, they were all on the SLAYER bandwagon. I mean, at the end of the day it’s about having thick skin and not letting one opinion get you down. It’s not like your girlfriend or wife just told you your record sucked. It’s some faceless idiot — just dipshits on the Internet.”
SLAYER’s eleventh album, “Repentless”, will be released on September 11 via Nuclear Blast. The highly anticipated follow-up to 2009’s critically acclaimed, Grammy-nominated “World Painted Blood” was produced by Terry Date, who has previously worked with PANTERA, DEFTONES and SOUNDGARDEN.
Source: Blabbermouth
