Slayer guitarist Kerry King was careful not to throw a stone too hard in his glass house during a recent chat with rvamag.com. During the conversation he said of his own band’s current stature:
“We’re living on our history for sure, but so is everyone else, yet we’re the ones trying to push ourselves forward. I would say [Iron] Maiden and Metallica, no offense, are living on past success. Metallica has toured forever on The Black Record which a lot of people don’t like. I actually like it. It’s heavy as can be. Is it Master Of Puppets? Course not, but it’s a great record. Iron Maiden for me is living off their first three records. Have they made good songs since then? Yeah, but they haven’t made great records. I like to think we’re still making great records and as much as people come out wanting to hear ‘Reign In Blood‘ and ‘Angel Of Death‘, they also want to hear ‘Disciple‘ or even ‘Implode.'”
Speaking later of record sales not being what they used to be, he commented:
“It’s true, but it’s just a sign of the times because people get their music differently. It’s not all about SoundScan anymore. That’s the last thing I remember because you remember what you had growing up. There’s different technologies and different ways of doing a number of things, but when I grew up, I knew SoundScan and we are way off of SoundScan now. That’s because people get music for free. One person downloads it and shares it with five people. It’s not the same as it used to be. I can’t be bitter about it because that’s just how time has changed.”
“My barometer is the live show where people show up. That means people are into the music, whether the record is selling or not. They have it, they know it, and we can play it and have them sing it right back to us. That’s pretty much how it shows me people are still into, regardless of sales.”
