Kerry King

Kerry King — born in Los Angeles, California, on 3 June 1964 — is Slayer's co-founding guitarist and the only member present throughout the band's entire existence, from 1981 to its close in 2019. It was he who put the group together, inviting Jeff Hanneman on second guitar, and the pair the two formed is the foundation of Slayer's sound. While Hanneman wrote most of the best-known tracks, King defined the aggression of the execution: riffs played with weight and brutal attack, and deliberately chaotic solos — in no recognisable scale, full of bends and whammy bar, working as organised noise rather than melody. That choice is ideological. At a time when Metallica and Megadeth were taking on harmonic refinement and more elaborate structures, Slayer refused any concession, and King was chiefly responsible for holding the band in that position for nearly forty years: no ballads, no clean vocals, no attempt at radio. His image is part of the character too — shaved head, long beard, arms covered in tattoos and spiked bracelets, a figure recognisable from a distance. With Slayer over, he released material under his own name from 2024, keeping the same language. Before all that, back in 1984, he played briefly in Megadeth's early line-up at Dave Mustaine's invitation, before returning to Slayer for good.