With the exception of their early releases being on Metal Blade, Slayer have been associated closely with Rick Rubin and his label American Recordings for virtually their entire career. So, it came as a shock when the band announced they were leaving American and going to Nuclear Blast Records to form their own imprint, effectively severing ties with the man who produced their biggest albums in the last 30 years.
There was some online squabble about it at the time and in a recent interview with Metal Hammer, King elaborated on what caused the rift:
"Solidarity is far stronger than jumping ship and going somewhere else. I thought we'd still be on American — but when we got the offer from American, I was insulted. That, to me, just said, 'Good luck, you're not gonna have good luck here anymore.' So we found our new friends at Nuclear Blast."
Tom Araya added that it was not the band's choice but Rick's:
"It was more like he broke the news to us," Araya said. "When we started this record, it was on the pretext that we'd be working with Rick — but things didn't pan out. We've sort of moved on."
It's kind of a bummer that Rubin wasn't able to work with the band on their newest release, but I have the feeling that he wasn't terribly involved in the production of the last few records anyway.
Slayer's new album, Repentless comes out September 11th.
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