Return of the King: Legendary metal guitarist Kerry King brings solo project to Rio Rancho

Aug. 15—Say the name Kerry King and metalheads know you are speaking of metal royalty.

King, who was a part of the legendary thrash metal band Slayer for more than three decades, went solo after the band decided to disband in 2019. The band has since announced some reunion shows in the fall.

King was not ready to say farewell to music and released his solo debut album, "From Hell I Rise," in May of this year. He recruited a solid lineup who came from iconic metal bands in their own right. His solo project features King on guitar, Death Angel vocalist Mark Osegueda, Hellyeah bassist Kyle Sanders, Slayer drummer Paul Bostaph, and Vio-lence and former Machine Head guitarist Phil Demmel. The band opens as part of the "Ashes of the Leviathan Tour" headlined by Lamb of God and Mastodon at 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24, at the Rio Rancho Events Center, 3001 Civic Circle NE, in Rio Rancho.

"This band is super sick and it is my A-team," King said. "Luckily, everybody I went to first jumped on it. So I'm very happy and proud about that. They can all play and are definitely at the top of their game, but the most important thing for me, at this point in my career, was grabbing people that are friends. There's no drama backstage, there's no headaches, there's no unforeseen idiocy. It's going to be smooth sailing, and we're going to have fun."

King said it took some relearning to get back on the road and play live shows.

"It's just good to be back out playing," he said. "I've never been off 4 1/2 years of my life, so there's definitely some learning that had to happen because in 4 1/2 years I only really played guitar sitting down and that's not all. I had to figure out how to incorporate my (guitar) pedals and be near my pedals at the right time, not just daydreaming on stage, right? So it took a while for the normalcy to come back. And I think I'm at the normalcy point now."

King said the normalcy started to set in during the band's European tour in June.

"It was probably three weeks into the European run where I finally felt like I wasn't thinking too much," he said. "I wasn't overthinking things. The normalcy came back. I wasn't second guessing where I had to hit my wah pedal. It wasn't nearly as much like riding a bike as I thought it was (going to be)."

King said audiences have embraced the new music because his music is not a far stretch from his past work with Slayer.

"I think the familiarity is really good for some of the fans that weren't really sure if I was going to go in a different direction, which I never had any intention of doing," he explained. "But now that (the record has) been out almost (three) months, people are coming to the shows, they're singing lyrics back at Mark and pointing to Phil when he's doing leads. They're getting accustomed to the new songs. And of course, when we throw in Slayer, it gets big props because that's something they've known for decades."

Some of the songs were left over from King's work with Slayer and some were written when the pandemic first began.

"The pandemic kicked in and we literally got stuck in our house for 18 months," King said. "So rather than just do the easy route, get drunk every night, I tried to be productive and make music. I made up a ton of stuff in 2020, a ton of stuff in 2021, I think Paul and I started getting together in 2022, there's tons of material."

He added that there is already material leftover from "From Hell I Rise" and songs that he has demoed that just need lyrics inserted.

"The 'From Hell I Rise' stuff, 2020 and 2021 was super prolific, so much so that we stopped rehearsing some of them because I knew I wasn't going to use them on that record," he said.

King said opening for Lamb of God and Mastodon takes him back to when the bands opened for Slayer.

"I've got a ton of history with both those bands," he explained. "Mastodon is on the same management. So when they hit the scene, they were with us probably for the better part of 18 months. Lamb of God has been on many tours with us, including all or most of the final run. I think we started playing with them in like (2006), so (we're) old friends. Especially Mastodon, we took them out and gave them their shot, so to speak. And for both of those bands to come and say, 'Hey, here's your shot brother.' That's definitely a full circle story."