In a new interview with Francisco Zamudio of KNAC.COM, SLAYER guitarist Kerry King was asked if putting out a solo album has been on his mind for a while prior to last month’s arrival of “From Hell I Rise”. He responded: “It never occurred to me until Tom (Araya, SLAYER bassist/vocalist) said he was done touring. And when he was done touring, I’m, like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it because it’s not cool to talk somebody into it when their heart’s not into it.’ So I said, ‘Well, now I’ve gotta put my band together and continue.'”

Asked if the riffs and musical ideas on “From Hell I Rise” were things that he came up with specifically for this project or if they were something that he had been playing around for a long time, Kerry said: “There’s a little bit of everything. Like the song ‘Residue’, for instance, I think I had the body of that song the last time Paul (Bostaph, SLAYER and KERRY KING drummer) was in (SLAYER). And it just never had a beginning or an end — it just never had all the parts it needed — but I knew I liked the song. So I just kept it. And then this time, during the pandemic, I made up the intro and the outro and put a little glue in it. And I’m, like, ‘That’s what I was looking for.’ So you’ve got stuff like that. You’ve got stuff left over from (SLAYER‘s final album, 2015’s) ‘Repentless’. You’ve got a lot of stuff I wrote during the pandemic. And now, for instance, record two still has stuff from ‘Repentless’, has leftover stuff from ‘From Hell I Rise’ and stuff I’ve written since then. So there’s tons of stuff I’ve gotta get to.”

King confirmed that he has already started work on his second solo album. “I’ve got demos of a lot of songs,” he explained. “I don’t have any lyrics yet. I’ve got some titles, but I’ve got a lot of music.”

Asked how the conversation with Paul went when he asked the longtime SLAYER drummer to join him in his solo project, Kerry said: “It was super easy. I knew that Tom was done probably four to six months before the other guys (Bostaph and guitarist Gary Holt) did. ‘Cause, for whatever reason, he just never told them. And we were getting ready to go do a photo session with the guys. And I said, ‘Listen…’ I told my manager, I said, ‘I’m not going unless Tom tells these poor guys what’s up, ’cause they deserve to know.’ So he did. And the next day, we do the photos and I went right to Paul and said, ‘Dude, don’t worry for a second because I’m continuing. And I assume you wanna continue with me.'”