EXODUS leader Gary Holt, who spent almost nine years touring with SLAYER, discussed the possibility of a SLAYER comeback while taking part in this weekend’s Headbangers Con.

Asked by Rocking With Jam Man if SLAYER would consider returning for a special show or tour, Holt said: “That’s a question I couldn’t answer you, whether SLAYER would ever get back together. Those are questions that are above my pay scale, I guess you’d say.

“Look, if the powers that be ever — like, in a year or something — said, ‘Hey, you know what? We feel like playing some shows,’ I’m there to do it,” Holt added. “But those aren’t decisions for me to make, or even me to really speculate on. As far as my knowledge, the band is over, and the final show was November 30th, 2019. And I’m full speed ahead with EXODUS now.”

Holt began filling in for SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman at live shows in 2011, and became the band’s full-time co-guitarist as of 2013, while remaining a member of EXODUS. Holt played on SLAYER‘s final album, “Repentless”, which came out in 2015.

Last August, Ayesha King, the wife of SLAYER guitarist Kerry King, said that there will never be a SLAYER reunion. She shot down the possibility of her husband and Tom Araya sharing the stage ever again under the SLAYER banner while responding to a fan on Instagram.

After Ayesha shared three photos of Kerry holding their cat in slideshow-type Instagram post, a fan wrote: “No Tom, No SLAYER Kerry. Stop thinking SLAYER without @tomarayaofficial”. Ayesha then replied: “don’t worry, they’ll never be SLAYER again! You can rest easy”.

That same month, SLAYER drummer Paul Bostaph confimed that he is involved in a brand new project headed up by Kerry King. The duo spent much of last year working on music with the hopes of recording it properly once the coronavirus pandemic has subsided.

Bostaph told Australia’s Riff Crew that the new band will “sound like SLAYER without it being SLAYER — but not intentionally so. I mean, Kerry‘s been writing songs in SLAYER his entire career, and he has a style,” he explained. “And that style, as a songwriter, you just don’t change your style because your band is done… So, all I can say is if you like heavy music and you like SLAYER, you’ll like this.”

Just a few days earlier, Kerry told Dean Guitars that he had plenty of musical ideas for his upcoming project. “I’ve been very, very lucky with riffs in 2020,” he said. “Maybe because I can’t go anywhere — I don’t know — but riffs have certainly not been a problem. And looking forward into the future, what that means for me is I’m gonna be able to cherrypick the best stuff. And it’s good stuff. I’ve got more than two records’ worth of music, but to be able to go through that and cherrypick the best 11 or 12 songs… That first record should be smoking.”

When SLAYER first announced that it was embarking on its final tour back in January 2018, Ayesha assured fans that they would “always get music” from her husband.

King has said in previous interviews that his post-SLAYER musical efforts would not be much different from the sound fans have grown accustomed to hearing from him.

“If someone quit, I’m not going to go around with a made-up SLAYER,” he told AZCentral.com back in 2010. “But my next band would sound like SLAYER, that’s all I know.”