As one of the lead guitarists of Slayer, the outspoken, opinionated King has also bred snakes off and on since the late ’80s.
Covid helped shape the foundation of King’s musical future, because the pandemic inadvertently created a luxury he’d rarely experienced before: time. Rather than feeling inconvenienced by the delays, he homed in on elements of his craft in ways he’d never done before, and the resulting album and his solo debut, From Hell I Rise, became his hammer.
“The pandemic really shaped the sound and the performance on this record,” says King. “It gave us some flat tires at first, because Paul [Bostaph, drums] and I both caught Covid, and it took a while for us to get back in the saddle.”
Bostaph had already digested so much of the material by the time they dove back into recording that it became a real game changer compared to how they’d worked together previously in Slayer. “It was the first [project working together where] he heard all the lyrics before he recorded, and he heard all the leads except one or two. It’s the most prepared he ever was, and being so familiar with it made it that much easier for me to play what I wanted to play.”
Kerry King - Idle Hands (Official Audio)
King is a cofounding member of Slayer and arguably one of the most instantly recognizable and well-respected thrash metal guitarists of his generation. Over nearly 40 years, he has pioneered some of the most brutal and revolutionary guitar riffs ever created in the genre. His singular use of the tremolo—pulling up more than pressing down—and the multiple tunings that pepper the band’s catalog, from D# to C# to B, are just two of the attributes that set King apart from his contemporaries. He also wrote or cowrote some of Slayer’s most incendiary songs, including “Mandatory Suicide,” “Repentless,” “Hell Awaits,” “Disciple,” and “Raining Blood.”
With Slayer—who have announced reunion dates for September 2024, five years after the group’s official terminus—King lays claim to six RIAA gold certifications, one multi-platinum plaque, and five Grammy nominations with two wins in the category of Best Metal Performance for the songs “Eyes of the Insane” and “Final Six,” both off of the Christ Illusion album.
“[My solos are] usually an afterthought, and the last thing to get done. This time everything was thought out [beforehand] and not just thrown in there.”
Known for his allegiance to the Las Vegas Raiders NFL football team, his love of snakes, and his taste for Jägermeister, King is outspoken, opinionated, and authentic. The self-proclaimed “metal kid” famously takes himself a little too seriously for some. But the real testament to his seriousness lies within his attention to detail, and the songcraft on From Hell I Rise, as well as the time he and Bostaph spent refining the material during the pandemic, is demonstrative of his commendable work ethic.
Kerry King's Gear
As King’s debut solo release, From Hell I Rise was born and shaped during the pandemic, which came on the tails of Slayer’s last show in 2019.
Guitars
- Dean USA Kerry King V Limited Edition
- Dean Kerry King V Black Satin
- Dean USA Kerry King Overlord Battalion Grey
- EMG KFK Set
- Kahler Tremolos
Amps
- Marshall JCM800 2203KK
- Marshall MF400B Mode Four
Effects
- Dunlop DCR-2SR Cry Baby Rack Wah
- Dunlop Wylde Audio Cry Baby Wah
- MXR Flanger M117R
- MXR Kerry King Ten Band EQ KFK1
- MXR Wylde Audio Overdrive
Strings & Picks
- Dunlop String Lab Series Kerry King Guitar Strings (.010–.052)
- Dunlop Triangle .73 mm
Every note seems intentional, every beat meticulously composed, yet all of it played with a spontaneity that belies its years-long incubation period. Having almost all of his solos worked out by the time he went into the studio was a refreshing approach. “They’re usually an afterthought,” he admits, “on the back burner, and the last thing to get done. This time everything was thought out [beforehand] and not just thrown in there.”
From Hell I Rise is a decisive musical statement from a man on a mission, out to prove himself after the then-apparent demise of one of thrash metal’s “Big Four,” and was eventually spurred on by a furious two-week recording session at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Featuring a band that also includes bassist Kyle Sanders (Hellyeah), guitarist Phil Demmel (Machine Head), and vocalist Mark Osegueda (Death Angel), the record rages with intensity—real musicians playing real metal in real time. In an era when technology can often smooth the edges off the human element on recordings, From Hell I Rise features fire-breathing performances from musicians who clearly honed their craft long before the crutch of technology was made available. And even though it has an intangible, nostalgic vibe to it, make no mistake, it is not some relic from the bygone past, but rather a bristling, modern-sounding tour de force.
“If you’ve ever liked any Slayer throughout any part of our history, then there’s something on this record that you’ll get into.”
From the opening salvo of “Diablo,” an instrumental call to arms that harkens back to early ’80s Iron Maiden, to the first single, “Idle Hands,” a fast, aggressive track that highlights King’s deft, articulate approach to rhythm guitar, to the detuned manic riffing in the title track, From Hell I Rise runs the gamut from classic punk to thrash to straight-up old-school heavy metal. Familiar topics, including religion and war, abound. Herculean speeds are achieved. King says the album is heavy, punky, doomy, and spooky. “If you’ve ever liked any Slayer throughout any part of our history, then there’s something on this record that you’ll get into.”
Part of the X factor on From Hell I Rise comes courtesy of producer Josh Wilbur (Korn, Lamb of God, Avenged Sevenfold, Bad Religion). King says Wilbur grasped his lead guitar sound better than anyone he’s worked with in the past. “It’s a hard thing to duplicate if you’re not standing in front of it in a live environment,” he attests. “Whatever Josh did in his mixing and mastering, it’s the closest to my live sound I’ve ever heard. I know it’s a weird adjective, but it’s really fat and ominous. I’m super happy with it.”
For From Hell I Rise, King took a new approach by planning out his solos in advance of the album’s recording.
Reigning Phoenix Music cofounder Gerardo Martinez was responsible for suggesting Wilbur to King. “We had a meeting down in Southern California,” he recalls. “I wanted to make sure I could respect the guy because if I don’t respect the guy, I’m not going to play it 10 times if he asks me to. I want somebody that will tell me to do that if I need to, and I’ll listen to him.” He says Wilbur is a wizard in the studio who brought intensity and energy to the recording sessions.
King doesn’t tinker much with his rhythm tone in the studio from song to song. He’s more of a set-it-and-forget-it kind of guy. “We just go for the main rhythm because there’s not a whole lot of things that need my sound to change,” he explains. “If it’s a spooky song or something that needs a different vibe, I’ll mess around with it. But I’m going for the home run. I’m going to set my tone and roll with it.”
“Whatever Josh [Wilbur] did in his mixing and mastering, it’s the closest to my live sound I’ve ever heard. I know it’s a weird adjective, but it’s really fat and ominous.”
King is a bona fide “super old-school” guitarist and runs through a very meat-and-potatoes signal chain for his rhythm tone. He goes from his Marshall JCM800 2203KK signature amp to Marshall MF400B Mode Four speaker cabinets with “a guitar right in front of it.” That’s it. No frills to the core. His self-assessed “primitive” approach also applied to the demos he sent to Bostaph in the early stages of writing the new album—he has no home studio to speak of. “I’m playing out of an amp that’s about as big as my boot and recording it on my phone,” he admits. “It’s deceptive how decent that sounds.”
King performing with Slayer at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on February 14, 1991.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
Live, King runs three of his signature amps and staggers the speaker cabinets—head one will go to cabinets one and four, head two goes to cabinets two and five, and head three goes to cabinets three and six. In this setup, the heads are not powering the cabs directly below them in a column. “I really love it because I’ve got a wash of all three heads at once,” he explains.
Due to his writing style, there’s also not a whole lot of space for effects in his guitar sound. “There’s not room for things like delay, because it’s very precise,” he says. His rhythm playing is a cornerstone of his brand, and much like James Hetfield with Metallica and Scott Ian with Anthrax, he plies his trade by executing flawless, intricate rhythms at breakneck speeds. The secret he says, is all in the wrist. “A lot of people don’t know that they don’t need to play from the elbow,” he explains. “If you want any kind of speed and you want to be articulate, you’ve got to play from the wrist. You’ve got to have as minimal movement as you can.” The elbow, he explains, is too far from the pick to be the appropriate hinge for speed. “If your action is coming from your wrist, you’ve got a lot more control over the speed and the articulation. That’s how it’s got to be if you want to play this kind of music.”
“I wanted to make sure I could respect the guy because if I don’t respect the guy, I’m not going to play it 10 times if he asks me to.”
King has historically paired himself with equally capable guitarists: first Jeff Hanneman, then Gary Holt, and now Demmel. He says that he’s never had to adjust his playing style to any of them, but does note what differentiates Holt and Demmel from Hanneman, and how that affects his live performances. “I had to learn to not listen to Gary and Phil because they’re a lot more melodic than Jeff was,” he assesses. “And I don’t mean that in a detrimental way. It’s just that Jeff had his style. Gary is super melodic, and I think Phil’s even a bit more melodic.” Shifting his focus from listening to what the other guitarist is doing so he can pay attention only to what he’s playing has become King’s superpower when playing live.
With Slayer, King has six RIAA gold certifications, one multi-platinum plaque, and five Grammy nominations.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
The addition of Sanders on bass has, however, pricked up King’s ears and facilitated an adjustment on his part, albeit in the demoing and recording phase of music making. “Early on, I sent Kyle four songs with no bass just because I didn’t want to influence him, even though I’m totally capable of playing bass on a record or on demos,” he attests. “I’m like, ‘If I’m going to let this guy play bass, let’s let him come up with something.’ Maybe it’s something I wouldn’t think of because I’m a guitar player. I’m not a bass player.” Within two days, Sanders sent back the same four tracks with bass. King was blown away. “I’ve never had anybody that into playing bass—it was very refreshing for me. So every time I sent him demos, I sent him bass-free ones.”
“I just play stuff until I find something that has a strong chorus, intro, or verse rhythm. Then I try to find some friends that make it a better song, and go from there.”
King moved to New York after Slayer called it quits in 2019. Now, when he goes back to Southern California to rehearse, he gets a rental car with SiriusXM radio, and has since gone through “a real big Ritchie Blackmore renaissance,” he shares. “Man, Deep Purple was so good. Blackmore was a madman. And that band was a supergroup. I mean, [keyboardist] Jon Lord, [drummer] Ian Paice; regardless which singer you’re talking about, there’s so much talent in that band. It took me a minute to go back and realize it and now I’m like, ‘How did I not like this more [when I was younger]?’” King, perhaps influenced by this “supergroup” concept, certainly assembled an A-list cast of musicians for From Hell I Rise.
Despite the musical pedigree Bostaph, Demmel, Osegueda, and Sanders bring to his first solo album, one can’t help but wonder if King’s criteria for bandmates has as much to do with camaraderie as it does skillset. “I put a lot of songs together in ’20 and ’21,” he attests. “I just play stuff until I find something that has a strong chorus, intro, or verse rhythm. Then I try to find some friends that make it a better song, and go from there.”
YouTube It
Ignited by Kerry King’s co-lead playing, Slayer decimates the audience in Sofia, Bulgaria back in April of 2020.
When they were Monsters: A rare, smiling Metallica band promo photo from the …And Justice for All era. From left to right: Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich, Jason Newsted, and James Hetfield.
Which brings us back to Hell. It’s 97 degrees in the Rubber Bowl and there is little refuge within its grim walls, and inadequate food and beverage service. Everyone is hot, thirsty, and covered with sweat and dust. At one point in his band’s set, Rudolf Schenker, songwriter and rhythm guitarist for Scorpions, tries one of his colorful stage moves—twirling a Flying V over his head while holding it by the headstock—and the guitar leaps from his sweat-covered paw, flies across the proscenium, and cracks in half.
I’m there because I’ve been sent on assignment by Musician magazine, where I’m associate editor at the time, and perhaps the only writer there besides the Rev. Charles M. Young who takes metal seriously. A few months before I came on, the publication did its first metal cover, depicting Rob Halford and other hard-rocking heroes as Marvel comics characters.
There is nothing cartoonish about Metallica’s performances on both days in this unforgiving fortress of rock. At this point in their career, they specialize in lurching, locomotive rhythms, head-snapping time changes, and a relentless wall of sound that, while brutal in its own delicious way, takes away the pain of the heat. It’s a sound that cannot be denied. And the crowds show their love by exploding at the end of every song, and bouncing fans onto the stage like human volleyballs, tossed back by security in return. It’s fun to watch, and transporting to hear.
Metallica and Load brought a new sound and look for the band—Lars Ulrich, Jason Newsted, James Hetfield, and Kirk Hammett.
Photo by Anton Corbijn
In fact, when I first heard Metallica, I didn’t comprehend that they were a metal band. I picked up Kill ’Em All on a whim in 1983, intrigued by the hammer with bloodstains on its cover. To my ears, and the reference points of my outlier listening habits, they were mixing hardcore with the avant-garde—creating a sound more akin to Sonic Youth or sped-up Swans than Sabbath, Zeppelin, or Priest, all bands I also loved. But when I caught them on tour, I got it. At that point, I knew nothing of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, since its sound never reached the rust belt of central Connecticut, where I grew up. What arrested me was more than Metallica’s garb, long hair, and the crowd’s headbanging. They pummeled … and artfully soared—a rare balance. James Hetfield drove the songs with his bristling, emotionally fraught howl, and used his profoundly insistent guitar style to command demon groove to do his bidding, with drummer Lars Ulrich and bassist Cliff Burton also keeping their hands on its chains. And Kirk Hammett was entirely unfettered, tossing off ferocious melodies that were so fast and compact they were sometimes hard to absorb intellectually, but nonetheless landed breath-stealing emotional punches. Hell of a rhythm player, too. This was heavy rock wrought extra heavy, then made even heavier by the band’s intersection of energy, virtuosity, power, imagination, and heart. It was evolutionary metal that would lead the genre in multiple directions: powerfully introspective songwriting, a new form of rhythmic expression, explosive nihilism, and edgier, more furious guitar virtuosity. If there was another band as literally impactful at the time, I was unaware of it.
“When I first heard Metallica, I didn’t comprehend that they were a metal band.”
My task at the Rubber Bowl is to interview all the lead guitarists, from Kingdom Come’s Danny Stag to Edward Van Halen. [See this month’s Tuning Up.] When I catch up with Hammett, it is in an especially noxious space in the corridor of the decaying arena, with the smell of truck fuel, forklifts beeping, and the other sensations of gear and worker bees in motion. Not the perfect place for an interview, but somehow the aural barrage that accompanies our conversation seems like a noisy metaphor for Metallica’s own restless, tentacular reach of sounds and emotions.
Kirk Hammett roars with one of his ESP LTD KH-602 signature models.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
We talk about Hammett’s approach, his lessons with Joe Satriani, the band’s core sonic strategy. “What we try to do is form one solid voice,” he offers. “One solid machine locking into a groove and pushing it into everyone’s faces. I mean, I can do the sweep arpeggios and hammer-ons and stuff until I’m blue in the face, but that doesn’t fit what we’re about. I prefer to use certain guitar techniques as effects, rather than an important facet of my playing. When I’m going for a wah pedal, for example, I use a little hammering for the transition.”
Metallica are about to make a transition themselves. Hammett tells me that early in the tour Hetfield and Ulrich had been flying back to L.A.’s One on One Recording between Monsters shows, putting the final touches on a new album. When that recording, …And Justice for All, debuts in August, it will live on Billboard’s albums chart for 83 weeks—sharing that space with releases by Tracy Chapman, Bruce Springsteen, and Michael Jackson—and peak at No. 6, transforming the band from outlier to mainstream force, and transforming the musical mainstream in the process. Without Metallica, modern metal titans like Korn, Testament, Avenged Sevenfold, and others would likely not exist, and if they did, they would not have been as successful. Metallica was, and still is, the game-changer.
The Monsters of Rock tour was the first of three times I was on the road with Metallica during a pivotal decade in their career, spanning their albums …And Justice for All, Metallica, and Load—a period that saw them explode in popularity, go through a musical metamorphosis, and begin to reckon with their emotional and psychological haunts as individuals and as a band, and do it in public. The 2004 documentary of their near-dissolution and ultimate rebirth, Some Kind of Monster, was messy and honest and perfectly in keeping with Metallica’s awareness that they have created a true—and gigantic—community for themselves and their fans, built around their music. Among friends, there are no secrets. To anyone who’s attended a stop on their current, two-year-long tour behind 72 Seasons, rumbling through stadiums around the world like an earthquake, it’s obvious that community cuts across all kinds of demographics to create a rare oneness in a divided world.
James Hetfield in 1988, with one of his Gibson Explorers. More beer, anyone?
Photo by Dean Messina/Frank White Photo Agency
When I next catch up with Metallica, it’s in Amsterdam, where they have a day off before playing the final show of the first leg of the …And Justice tour. Somehow—perhaps through persistence and excellence—their album about war, intolerance, suppression, alienation, and mortality (hey, that’s life!) has hit the top 10. My first day is devoted to interviews with Ulrich, Newsted, and Hammett—and a little weed smoking—and on the next morning, I ride with Hetfield to the gig, at the Leiden Groenoordhallen.
It’s a cattle market by day, and before the night’s show the accumulated cow shit is bulldozed out of the 11,000 SRO facility to make way for the fans. On the ride, we talk mostly about his songwriting and how it often draws on his own experiences, and especially his complicated relationship with his Christian Scientist family, whose rules and restrictions made him feel like an outsider. But it’s not like Hetfield watches the world go by while he limns his navel. He talks about plucking song ideas from headlines, like “Eye of the Beholder,” which was triggered by an interview with Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, talking about the obscenity trial that ensued after the DKs included an H.R. Giger artwork known as “Penis Landscape” in their 1985 album Frankenchrist. And how “To Live Is to Die” was inspired by a eulogy at the funeral of Cliff Burton, who’d been replaced by Jason Newsted on bass by the Monsters of Rock tour.
“The rhythm background is a flatted fifth with a minor pentatonic, so I had to alter every other note in the solo so it would fit.”—Kirk Hammett
With …And Justice for All, the band’s musical ambitions have risen, which demands a lot from its members. Hammett, for example, explains that “‘The Frayed Ends of Sanity’ has some off-tempo key changes that are really difficult. Usually a key change comes in a safe part of a song, like after every eight bars. But here it’s in the middle of the fifth bar. And then, to add more difficulty, the rhythm background is a b5 with a minor pentatonic, so I had to alter every other note in the solo so it would fit. I had worked out a lot of different things to do in the studio, because it’s so tough. But in the end, only about 20 percent of what I’d planned was good enough to use. For one thing, when I got in the studio to record my parts, the tracks were a lot faster than any of the demo tapes I had.”
So he just went for it, which Metallica does that night in Leiden. Despite the crushing sounds and desperate lyrics blasting from the stage—or maybe because of them—the atmosphere is ragingly celebratory. The floor is slicked with beer, and robust men keep queueing up at the concessions to order a half-dozen brews at a time—often for themselves. Backstage, before the show, Metallica are no slouches, either. The green room has its own Jägermeister chiller, and everyone partakes copiously. After all, this is in the days when they are still tagged with the nickname “Alcoholica”—although Ulrich assures me they have all slowed down compared to the “three or four years when we did have every excess known to man.”
At one point during the show—which is absolutely ripping and inspired—a bit of foreshadowing occurs. Hammett stands a little too close to a flash pot when it explodes, and he is visibly shaken. He stops playing for a moment, and looks stunned, but then digs back into his guitar. During a Montreal show four years later, Hetfield would suffer second-degree burns in a similar-but-worse pyro-gone-amuck accident. For the record, during the …And Justice tour, Hammett is playing Fernandes Vs and Strat-styles, while Hetfield is big on Gibson Explorers. They’re also both plugging into the Mesa/Boogie amps that have become, and still are, part of their sonic firmament, and Hetfield also uses a Roland JC-120. Newsted is playing a custom 5-string Wal, with Crown power amps, a Trace-Elliot preamp, and Ampeg cabs.
After the show, Metallica throws an end-of-tour party, renting out a restaurant in a nearby town and putting literally every bottle behind the bar out for self-service. Plus, we’re in the Netherlands, which means joints the size of hoagies are making the rounds. Just before I leave, to catch an hour’s shuteye before grabbing a plane back to the States, I witness something truly touching. At the end of the night, a dark-haired young stranger throws her arms around Ulrich and begins to sob, crying over how much she’ll miss experiencing Metallica live. He freezes and his eyes widen in surprise, then soften, and he spends the next 15 minutes quietly talking her out of her tears.
Later, I’m nearly driven to tears on the flight home. After a day of interviews, a devastatingly superb rock show, and a lot of drinking and smoking, a family with a crying baby takes the seats in front of my row on the plane, and the child howls all the way from Amsterdam to New York. As I shuffle into customs in my leather jacket, black jeans, engineer’s boots, and Metallica t-shirt … my eyes red, my face unshaven, my head louder than Lars’ kick drum … the agent stops me.
Kirk Hammett on the Monsters of Rock Tour at Giants Stadium, two months before the release of Metallica’s game-changing album, …And Justice for All.
Photo by Dean Messina/Frank White Photo Agency
“Where have you been, sir?”
“Amsterdam.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business.”
“I’m a journalist.”
“And what were you doing?”
“Interviewing Metallica.”
“Okay, go through.”
That is not how I thought that conversation would end.
The next time I connect with the band, their world has changed. The pivot was 1991’s Metallica, also known as The Black Album. Some of their fans consider it a sacrilegious betrayal of the raw and heavy. I think it’s a logical step. After conquering, hell, redefining what metal is, why not reach back and claim the original grail as well? Why not prove a mastery of classic-rock songwriting, of melodies with air and grace, of hooks that take you to the heights of the charts and insure permanence on radio, of the style that inspired the style—that New Wave of British Heavy Metal—that inspired you? I don’t hear that album as betrayal; I hear it as beautiful.
But it’s six more years, in 1997, before I have the opportunity to check in with Metallica in person again, and this time it’s in Italy, for concerts in Milan and Turin. They’re staying at the Hotel Principe di Savoia near Milan’s Central Station. In Akron, they stayed at a Holiday Inn. Built in 1876, the Principe di Savoia bills itself as the favorite choice of royalty and celebrities. Metallica are now both, and a crowd of fans is stationed outside the hotel 24/7 in hopes of a glimpse or encounter. The lobby glows with stained glass, and in my room I find a fluffy bathrobe draped over a heated chrome pipe in a bathroom that’s the size of my first Boston apartment. In the morning, I can’t decide whether to take a dip in the lovely art-deco-style pool or ride a rooftop stationary bike, overlooking the city. I opt for the bike and the view, as well as a croissant and freshly squeezed orange juice brought by a server. Such are the days of the record-label-paid junket.
Besides better digs, Metallica now have their own jet and a squad of protectors. In addition to a head of security and his assistant, each band member has his own bodyguard. I mention that the last time I was with the band, it was merely a two-man security detail. Now, the head of the force explains each musician is worth such a vast sum of money—not only in his own right, but to their record label and other business interests, that there’s no choice. Plus, there are routinely threats made against them, and security sends photos of people who are known stalkers to upcoming-show venues about a month in advance of the band’s appearances—common practice for superstar artists.
Despite their security cadre, it’s fashion week in Milan, and somehow groups of young models are able to slip by the elite team to get backstage post-show at the Mediolanum Forum, where I’m conducting interviews with the guys after having been elevated by a performance that mixes classics with gritty new Load songs like “Cure.” That’s about trying to let go of the held-in pain from life’s trials—nearly an avocation for Hetfield at the time. Load’s sound is closer to Metallica than Kill ’Em All, for sure, but the band is still clearly holding nothing back. There’s a stunt built into this tour’s show, where a roadie in a flame-resistant suit pretends to catch fire in a stage accident. The first time I see the flaming man running across the stage, I fall for it, as does the record company publicist who’s with me. But the crowd’s in on the joke and cheers, providing me relief. Still, it seems questionable, or at least ironic, after the band’s history with pyro.
“Every town I’m in, I have to get local dirt on my boots for good luck.”—James Hetfield
Good fortune and superstardom aside, most band members seem essentially the same people as a decade before. Lars is still gregarious and opinionated, Kirk is thoughtful and friendly, Jason is reserved and a bit standoffish—maybe because he still seems like a cousin in a band of brothers. Musically, despite the new, post-Metallica flavor of the songs, they’re mostly working the same modus operandi, too—although Hammett and Newsted have been granted more creative freedom in the studio than on earlier Metallica albums, which were essentially the James and Lars show. “The big change for me actually started on the …And Justice for All tour, where the changes with all these different time signatures became an exercise in trying not to fuck up,” Lars offers. “When I listen to tapes from the Black Album tour, even though we were playing in a new, simplified style, the tempos still sound pretty rampant to me in some places.
But things seem different with James. Despite his obvious introspection, he seems less reserved, more open, far more cheerful than one would assume from listening to his lyrics or from, later, watching Some Kind of Monster. Our conversation veers from songwriting to developing character in song lyrics to blues to cars, and even to Tom Waits, whose work he admires and whose aesthetic he’s a little jealous of. “Sometimes, it sounds like he just pushed a button and goes ‘good enough,’” he says, smiling. Trying to break character and be spontaneous himself, Hetfield had completed the lyrics for nearly 30 songs for the Load sessions, and he is feeling good about it. And everyone in Metallica has cut back on alcohol. And they are clearly—with the possible exception of Newsted, due to his station in the band and a neck injury from too much head-banging—having fun.
Lady Justice was a fixture on Metallica’s …And Justice for All tour, where the band’s penchant for complex time signature changes really came to the fore.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
The next night, I’m hanging out in the offices of the PalaStampa arena in Turin, Italy, talking with Hetfield again, and running tape, when I notice what looks like a cat box filled with dirt inside the makeshift dressing room. I’d seen it the night before in Milan, too.
“James, did someone bring their cat on tour?”
“I’m the cat, man.”
“What?”
“I’m the cat. On Lollapalooza, I got into this thing: My stage boots were too clean when I first got them. ‘Fuck,’ I figured, ‘I better dirty them up.’ So every night before I went onstage I kind of kicked them around in the dirt. It became kind of a ritual. Every town I’m in, I have to get local dirt on my boots for good luck. That was fine at Lollapalooza, ’cause you’re outdoors everywhere. But here, I have to have somebody bring me some dirt.”
I haven’t connected with Metallica personally in the decades since, partly because I dropped out of full-time journalism and did very few in-person interviews during the 18 years when I was touring with my own bands. But I still deeply connect with their music, and I will always respect any artist who relishes getting in the dirt.
James Hetfield today, on the 72 Seasons tour at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
From left to right: bassist Justin Pearson, vocalist Mike Patton, guitarist Michael Crain, and drummer Dave Lombardo.
The band’s music drips with an incomparable kind of authenticity and visceral intensity. That vitality, you can imagine, may come easily for a band with members that helped weave the very fabric of their genre with Slayer (Lombardo), have pushed the boundaries of experimental metal with the likes of Faith No More (Patton) and Mr. Bungle (Patton, Lombardo), and made grindcore dangerous again with provocateurs like the Locust (Pearson) and Retox (Pearson, Crain).
Dead Cross’ eponymous 2017 debut, produced by Ross Robinson (Slipknot, At the Drive-In, Sepultura), laid out a blueprint of chaotic and frothing metallic hardcore and outsider weirdness. It has an inimitable sound that saw its members’ distinct musical personalities coalesce into something altogether unique—all while sidestepping the classic disappointing-supergroup curse. Now, on their sophomore LP and latest release, II, the band has reunited. Joining forces once again with Robinson, they push their volatile sound to its absolute limits, dosing their hardcore punchbowl with a hearty blast of sonic psychedelics, goth-rock textures, and even more of the twisted sounds one would expect of any Patton project.
II’ssongs have a palpable feeling of urgency and tension that was shaped by a series of life-altering and traumatic experiences, which included the pandemic, but also Crain’s courageous fight with cancer. “I got diagnosed in the summer of 2019 and started treatments in October,” he shares. “This was my first experience with cancer, and while head and neck cancers are the easiest to survive, they can have the worst treatments—and that was certainly my experience.”
Crain, who’s now in remission, continues, “I thought the treatments were going to kill me. Towards the end, I was so fucking sick, but I felt like, ‘Fuck this! I want to live, and I’m not going to leave anything unfinished ever again!’ So, I got a hold of Greg [Werckman, co-owner] at Ipecac and the guys in the band and said, ‘Let’s book studio time now.’ They were like, ‘Dude, are you sure? You’re like half dead right now!’ I said, ‘I don’t give a fuck. Let’s do this. I need this to live.’”
Working on a second Dead Cross record and returning to the studio with a real mission was the very thing that kept Crain going during the painful days that followed his last treatment. “I finished my last round of radiation the day before Thanksgiving, and we had studio time set up for early December,” he elaborates. “I was still very sick and in a lot of pain. It was rough to stand up for hours writing and playing, so tracking was especially tough, but that pain worked itself into the music.”
That it did, undeniably. You can feel it in the claustrophobic atmosphere and clang of “Animal Espionage,” the fuzzy hardcore stomp and acerbic delivery of “Strong and Wrong,” and the absolutely feral-sounding, bad-trip churn of “Christian Missile Crisis.”
Much of the writing and arrangement of II’s songs happened in the studio. And while Crain’s recent experiences certainly brought a lot of emotional weight to the process, working with a famously feel- and psychology-focused producer like Robinson helped tremendously to coax all of it out and inject it back into the music.
Michael Crain’s Gear
Crain’s main guitars are a ’77 and ’78 Gibson SG, classic choices which he uses to deliver blazing riffage.
Photo by Raz Azraai
Guitars
- 1977 Gibson SG Standard (with HomeWrecker pickups)
- 1978 Gibson SG Standard (with HomeWrecker pickups)
- 1970s Gibson ES-335
Amps
- Bogner Uberschall Twin Jet
- Bogner Uberschall Twin Jet 4x12 Cab
- Peavey 5150 Head
- 1970s Marshall 4x12 Cab
Effects
- EarthQuaker Devices Organizer
- DOD Rubberneck Analog Delay
- MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- DigiTech Whammy
- Mu-Tron Octave Divider
- EHX Holy Grail Reverb
- EHX Small Stone Phase Shifter
- EHX Electric Mistress
- Boss BF-3 Flanger
- Vintage EHX Big Muff Pi
- Pro Co RAT
Strings & Picks
- Dunlop Electric Nickel (.010–.046)
- Dunlop Tortex .73 mm
Crain, who describes Robinson as the band’s fifth member, says, “He’s all about the performance and emotion.” One prime example of the producer’s uncanny ability to pull the best out of the musicians he works with is “Animal Espionage,” Crain’s favorite track on the record. Most of the song (other than the core riff and pre-chorus) was written on the spot in the studio, with Robinson coaching and pushing Crain to grasp different parts of the arrangement from places of deep emotion. “Ross is the kind of guy that asks you to think about what painful childhood memory triggered the riff for a song,” Crain shares. “He wants you to think about what emotion is actually guiding your right hand and can tell if you’re not feeling it, or if you don’t mean what you’re playing. I learned a lot about structures and arrangements, crafting parts, crescendos, and setting up moments within a song from Ross.”
That emotional attunement drives more than just their songwriting. Though Crain is Dead Cross’ sole guitarist, their music often feels like that of a band with a two-guitar assault—thanks to the interplay and synergy he has with long-term musical partner, Pearson. The two have known each other since Crain was 16, and they played together in Retox. Pearson’s performance style mirrors and dances around Crain’s in a way that’s both tight and loose at the same time, and only comes with years of mutual experience. “Justin and I have just the right combination, where we don’t share the exact same taste in music, and there’s enough difference in where we come from as musicians that it creates something unique when we work together,” Crain comments.
“I was so fucking sick, but I felt like, ‘Fuck this! I want to live, and I’m not going to leave anything unfinished ever again!’”
As for working with Lombardo, easily one of the most important heavy metal drummers of his generation, Crain has been training for the gig most of his life. “Slayer changed my fucking life, and those are totallydrum records,” he says. “Even though I’m a guitarist, I grew up around drummers; my dad plays drums, and my earliest memories were of band settings with my dad. He imparted the advice, ‘If you want to get good at an instrument, start playing with other people,’ upon me at an early age. He was 100 percent right. So, having listened to Slayer my whole adult life, when I finally started jamming with Dave, I locked in with him very quickly; I knew his playing and it felt natural.”
Lombardo’s breakneck-yet-lyrical playing certainly adds to the record’s thrash authenticity, and Crain’s love of the style is heard loud and clear on II. The dexterous riffing on “Reign of Error” is evidence of a player that’s studied the golden era of thrash deeply, and Crain confirms the influence that music has had on him in his formative years.“I really learned to play guitar when I was 16, which was during my Metallica years,” he shares. “That was when I really understood Metallica’s songcraft and their incredible abilities as players, particularly the …And Justice for All period and James Hetfield’s playing. That record was really what got me into metal playing and informed my rhythm style.”
While recovering from painful cancer treatments, Crain got himself back in the studio for the writing and tracking of II.
For the guitars and amps used to create II’sgnarly, dynamic guitar sounds, Crain kept it to a few favorites: a pair of vintage Gibson SG Standards—a ’77 and a ’78—and his ’70s Gibson ES-335. The guitars were all unmodified, aside from their custom-wound pickups, made by HomeWrecker Pickups’ Joshua Hernandez. Crain describes them as “super high-gain, but very classy and articulate.” His trusty Bogner Uberschall Twin Jet and matching 4x12 cab did the heavy lifting on the album, though Robinson’s early Peavey 5150 head and ’70s Marshall 4x12 cab rounded out the guitar sounds and provided some contrast to the Bogner.
Building on these essentials is Crain’s love of heavy guitar effects. His adventurous use of pedals twists metal and punk tropes into something less recognizable on II. Almost every guitar track on the record has some sauce on it, whether it’s a bit of percussive slapback delay in an unexpected place, spacey atmospherics as a brief respite from the violence, or warped, pitch-shifted leads that jut in and out of songs.
“The heavy flange on ‘Animal Espionage’ is one sound that inspired the riff,” the guitarist points out, and says he plugged in a Boss BF-3 for the sound. “We knew that verse was screaming for some swirl action.” He then calls out the song “Imposter Syndrome” for its “heavy [hardcore guitarist] Rikk Agnew-influenced flange setting.” Some of the album’s standout guitar moments feature Crain shifting quickly between octaves with a DigiTech Whammy, which can be heard on album opener “Love Without Love” and the solo on “Christian Missile Crisis.” Crain says he only uses the whammy pedal in the one-octave up or down position, and credits it for helping him to write many of what he considers his heaviest riffs. Also on his board for the sessions were an Ibanez Tube Screamer, an EarthQuaker Devices Organizer, a DOD Rubberneck Analog Delay, and the venerable MXR Carbon Copy, which he describes as his “Swiss-Army-knife delay.”
With countless tattoos and wearing a gas mask, Crain’s image bears a grisly, striking edge that falls perfectly in line with Dead Cross’ sound.
Photo by Becky DiGiglio
“It was rough to stand up for hours writing and playing, so tracking was especially tough, but that pain worked itself into the music.”
While Crain says he was too sick during his cancer treatments to listen to much music leading up to the writing and recording of II, his guitar influences from the goth-rock world proved to be major touchstones for his guitar sounds and compositional ideas—especially those that Agnew used on Christian Death’s records, as well as Daniel Ash of goth-rock architects Bauhaus’ sense of economy.
“Everything both these guys did was in the service of the song, and I’m a huge proponent of that,” shares Crain. “I'm not here to show off, so I always ask, ‘Is this serving the song? Is this helping the main idea? Is this supporting the thesis?’ That’s what’s important. Sure, some guitar tones or lines or players are the focal point of the song, and every song is different, but it’s about the song for me.”
Dead Cross - Church of the Motherfuckers (Live @ PBR Halftime Show)
In this live performance, Crain backs up Patton with melodic vocals and rapid-fire picking on his SG, catalyzing the furious energy that serves the Dead Cross sound.
With another Dead Cross release out in the world and cancer treatment in the rear view, Crain looks back on the process and on how the band approaches making music. While the writing and recording process was an undoubtedly painful, cathartic, and intense experience, he came away from it with more than just a new record, but an affirmation of his artistic philosophy.
“Having listened to Slayer my whole adult life, when I finally started jamming with Dave [Lombardo], I locked in with him very quickly; I knew his playing and it felt natural.”
“There should be no fucking rules. There are no rules! The one place where I don't want there to be rules or laws is fucking art,” he enthuses. “Let it be free! I love trying crazy things, and thankfully, so does Ross and my bandmates. We all love trying crazy, wild shit. Making this record is what helped me heal.”