In a recent interview with Good Company, Phil Demmel, formerly of MACHINE HEAD and VIO-LENCE and currently performing alongside Kerry King in the SLAYER guitarist’s solo project, delved into the debut single from King‘s upcoming solo album From Hell I Rise. Titled “Idle Hands”, the track was unveiled in early February.
“It was the first song I heard, and it was the first song that I wrote a solo for, Phil said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). So the solo in that song was the first one that I wrote here in the studio. So it’s kind of cool to hear that being the first one released. And I’m gonna be name-dropping here a little bit, but I was going back and forth a little bit with [METALLICA guitarist] Kirk Hammett today. ‘Cause he had told [DEATH ANGEL and KERRY KING singer] Mark Osegueda, ‘Hey, the solo is awesome. It’s the solo of the year,’ or whatever. So I thanked him. I said, ‘Hey, I heard that you dug the solo on the song.’ And he’s, like, ‘Oh my God. I thought that was Kerry. I didn’t know.’ He didn’t put it together.
“And I missed his call, but he left me this awesome f**king voicemail, dude, saying, like, ‘It’s the best solo of the year so far,’ and all these just glowing things that Kirk Hammett is telling me. [He’s] one of our heroes, and to hear him glow about the solo that’s…. It’s one of my least favorite solos on the record, actually, but to hear him say that it was really personal…”
Demmel proceeded to discuss his overall approach to playing solo within Kerry‘s project, saying: “I wanna bring that to this band. I wanna bring that sense of — I don’t know if it’s melody or… I hate the word ‘controlled chaos,’ but some sort of lineage between the music and the solo sections that kind of make ’em — those solo sections in SLAYER and in Kerry‘s music before are really frenetic. What Gary [Holt, SLAYER nd EXODUS guitarist] was doing [while playing with SLAYER], it matched all that brutality, and I think that my solos are less brutal in nature. And I had to check with him. So I had to tell Kerry, or ask him, or broach it with him that, ‘This is what I’m doing.’ I tracked my leads here first and played them 50 times to where I’m just playing them single pass and playing them best as I can and sent them away, and was, like, ‘Hey, this is me and this is what I am going to do here,’ of course, if it’s okay with him, ’cause it’s his trip. And ‘Is that okay?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I love it.’ He’s all, in true Kerry fashion. ‘I don’t hate it.’ So that was a compliment to me getting that out of Kerry King.”
Kerry King will release his debut solo album, From Hell I Rise, on May 17. In addition to King, the album features DEATH ANGEL vocalist Mark Osegueda, longtime SLAYER drummer Paul Bostaph, former HELLYEAH bassist Kyle Sanders, and ex–MACHINE HEAD and ex-VIO-LENCE guitarist Phil Demmel.
