New Slayer Could Be Out This Year

New Slayer Could Be Out This Year

Slayer is on tour, with lineup issues involving Jeff Hanneman out due to illness and Dave Lombardo out due to, well, let’s not get into that. Despite the struggles, Kerry King has recently reported that Slayer should have a new album out by the end of the year. As he told Metal Obsession,

“Well, two songs are done; they just need to be mixed. Another one is done without leads and vocals on it, and I’ve got nine others to record, so we’re in really good shape.”

King also expressed his pleasure with Gary Holt filling in for Hanneman, but was also explicit that its Hanneman’s spot whenever he’s willing and able to come back. However, King made it clear that Holt would be compensated generously for his time.

As for finding a replacement for Lombardo so close to the Australian tour, King said,

“First off, I thought there’s probably no way to get a visa for somebody this quick, and I knew Jon [Dette] was with Anthrax. And in a perfect world, I was thinking maybe he could do both, so I had to call him up and say, ‘Hey, man, I hate to drop this on you…’ [laughs] And he was stoked. And I did the right thing — I called up Scott [Ian, Anthrax guitarist], asked him if he minded. I rehearsed with Jon for three days and it came out good.”

From the outside looking in, I’d say that “the right thing” would have been to resolve the issues with Lombardo. However, while we know some things, we don’t know everything that went down. I know that there are a lot of Slayer fans out there bitching about Lombardo being out and Dette not being able to play up to Lombardo’s expertise, but do you really think Slayer would hire someone who couldn’t keep up?

Rock Hard \m/