Slayer's future might seemĀ a little uncertain to bassist and vocalist Tom Araya, butĀ to guitarist Kerry King things don't seem quite as muddy. According to King in an interview withĀ JƤgermeister (video below), there's plenty of leftover material from Repentless alongside some new riffs King is already working on.
King also mentions that while there's definitely an abundance of material from the album's writing sessions, he doesn't plan on recording any of it until at least 2018.
āWeāve got lots of leftover material from the last album, ācause we wrote so much stuff, and we recorded a bunch of it too. If the lyrics donāt change the song musically, those songs are done. So we are way ahead of the ballgame without even doing anything for the next record. And Iāve been working on stuff on my downtime. Like, Iāll warm up and a riff will come to mind and Iāll record it. Iāve gotten a handful of those on this run. So wheels are still turning. I havenāt worked on anything lyrically yet except for what was done on the last record, so thatās something Iāve gotta get on. But, yeah, āRepentlessā isnāt quite a year old yet.ā
āMe and Jeff [Hanneman] would usually write ātill we got around the ballpark of a record, and there might be two or three left over, but this time thereās, like, eight left over. Plus a lot of ideas, like half-songs. Like, the first half a song will go with another half a song. So we might be inching up on ten songs already, when I get down and think about it, and thatās very unique for Slayer, and very cool, because can do a one-two punch on this record.ā
āWe could probably start doing something at the end of next year, but, man, weāve still got a lot of touring going on next year. So Iām guessingā¦ Whatās thisā¦ ā16, ā17ā¦ Iām guessing it wonāt be ā18 before we record anything.ā
It'll be interesting to see if the band makes it to 2018 as the band it is currently. Araya has made it extremely well-known that he's pretty much over touring at this point, at which point the band would be down to its final original member ā King. That is, assuming Araya doesn't just retire to being a studio-only presence.
All of that hypothetically occurring, will 2018 be the year Slayer puts out an Araya-less record?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHVPF779MmI[/youtube]