Many wonder if Slayer will ever reunite after their last concert on November 30th, 2019 was deemed their final show. Now, guitarist Gary Holt is giving out the answers.
Only seven months have passed since Slayer graced the stage, and now guitarist Gary Holt has spoken out, answering the query of, “Will Slayer ever reunite?”
Talking to Dean Delray in the podcast Let There Be Talk, Holt noted that, to his knowledge, their November 30th show was their final concert.
“People say, ‘Oh, maybe they’ll come back in a few years.’ I don’t know. If it does, if it ever happens, it has nothing to do with me. Someone else would call and say, ‘We wanna.’ To my knowledge, it’s done. And I think it should be that way. The band went out fucking on a bang, went out on Slayer’s terms, and how many people get to say they did that?”
Holt continued by saying that everyone in the band is “happy doing their own thing” now, including him. “I’m happy as fuck. Not that SLAYER made me unhappy — I was treated like family — but I’m back with my first family,” he stated nodding to his place as the main songwriter in thrash metal outfit Exodus.
“I’m back with not my stepbrothers — I’m back with my real brothers. And that’s where my heart is, and I missed it, and I was missing it more and more all the time.”
Although Holt only entered the band in 2013 after the legendary Jeff Hanneman passed away, interviewer Delray suggested that Holt was definitely the guy for the job, stating that no one else could’ve replaced Hanneman as well as he did.
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“I think there’s other guys. I’m not that narcissistic to think that I’m the only guy. I mean, yeah, I had old-school cred. I don’t think they could go and get some young kid. Like, ‘Who’s this fucking 25-year-old dude?’ I think there would have been a huge culture shock within the band.
“I think that was it more than anything — having to be comfortable and know the guy. I was pretty well accepted in the ranks of Slayer fans.
“There’s always someone, like, ‘Ah, he fucking doesn’t even play Jeff’s solos.’ No, I don’t. And no one in the band ever asked me to. And if the band really wanted that, there’s a million guys in tribute bands who are nailing every fucking crazy note that Jeff ever played, and they would have been a better fit for that.
“When I first did it, it was supposed to be a short-term thing, and people were, like, ‘Oh, cool. We get to see Gary put his stamp on it,’ and that’s what I did.”
Check out ‘Repentless’ by Slayer:
