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Slayer ripped through the world on their farewell tour throughout 2018 and 2019. The tour was called The Final Campaign and by all accounts was very clearly going to be Slayer‘s last stand. Then Slayer announced a handful of reunion shows for 2024 and naturally some people were pissed off. Though if you ask Slayer guitarist Kerry King, he’ll tell you that they never said they were done playing.

In an interview with Anne Erickson of Audio Ink Radio, King said Slayer only specified that they were done touring and not that they were done playing. And I get what he’s saying – technically he’s right. But I think the understanding overall was that Slayer was done at that point… I mean come on, King even dropped the chains.

“Yeah, at the end of the day, it wasn’t bad blood. Tom was just done. And when Tom told me he was done, I went, ‘Okay, well, I’m not gonna try to talk you into it,’ because if you’re trying to talk somebody into it, their heart’s not in it. So it was over for me. And, of course, a month after we were done, offers come in because people think you’re done.

“So what we retired from was touring. We never said we were done playing. We said, ‘This is our final tour’, and I don’t think three shows constitute a tour. So if you wanna get technical, I think we’re in the ballpark of being truthful.”

King recently sat down with Metal Injection for an extensive interview where he mentioned that a Slayer reunion show in Europe might happen too. On more Slayer shows, King has been adamant that they’re largely not happening.

“It’s hard not to. I’m trying to be real and definitely say, hey, we’re not gonna tour again. And we’re certainly not gonna record again, ’cause I have a means of doing that now with my band. [We’re doing] three shows for now. And I say ‘for now’ because I know Europe’s gonna come knocking, ‘Hey, man, you guys played America. Come see us.’ So it wouldn’t surprise me if something like that happened, but it’s certainly not on my books right now.”