Slayer guitarist Kerry King (who also recently released his debut solo album From Hell I Rise) is widely considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time (Rolling Stone once named him the 100th best), and, in a new interview on the Lipps Service With Scott Lipps podcast, he named his five favorite guitar players of all time. In no particular order, his list includes Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple, Rainbow), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Eddie Van Halen, Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society), and he says that “probably [his] favorite one of all time” is Judas Priest’s Glenn Tipton. “And I think he’s the most overlooked,” Kerry added, “’cause if you look at the leads he was doing and when he was doing ’em, he kind of innovated a lot of that stuff.” You can watch a clip of that portion of the interview below.
In a different recent interview, with Metal Roos, Kerry said that, although Slayer returned for some festival appearances in 2024 and will do at least one more at Louder Than Life 2025, they’re still officially done with albums and touring. “Mark my word,” he said, “we’re never gonna make a record again, we’re never gonna tour again.”
Kerry’s solo band–which has Death Angel‘s Mark Osegueda on lead vocals, Machine Head/Vio-lence‘s Phil Demmel on guitar, HELLYEAH‘s Kyle Sanders on bass, and his Slayer bandmate Paul Bostaph on drums–will hit the road for a 2025 tour with Municipal Waste and Alien Weaponry. That lands in NYC on February 7 at Irving Plaza. All dates here.