Kerry King is a heavy metal legend, as founding guitarist of thrash icons Slayer . Nowadays, he’s keeping the fire going with his new eponymous band, while also gearing up for a few special Slayer reunion shows. Outside of music, the axeman is a decades-long fan of Raiders football.
With the 2024-2025 NFL season about to kick off, we caught up with King to discuss his Raiders fandom. The guitarist has seen the team move from Oakland to Los Angeles, then back to Oakland, and most recently to Las Vegas. Despite the various relocations, King has remained a loyal fan since first following the team back in the 1970s.
King’s eponymous band released its debut album, From Hell I Rise , earlier this year. The outfit recently wrapped up a tour supporting Lamb of God and Mastodon, but has a handful of dates coming up in Mexico and Australia in November and December.
In the meantime, King will reunite with Slayer for their first shows in five years this fall. The legendary thrash band will play Riot Fest, Louder Than Life, and Aftershock, marking their first gigs since wrapping up a farewell tour in November 2019.
Below, Kerry King discusses his Raiders fandom, the team’s Super Bowl drought, his thoughts on this year’s team, and more, while also picking his “Big 4” NFL players.
As someone who grew up in Los Angeles, did you start following the Raiders when they moved to L.A. in 1982, or were you a fan of the team before then, when they were still in Oakland?
I liked the Raiders when they were in Oakland. I’m a bad guy. I like the bad guys. The Raiders have always been bad guys. They’re the guys smoking on the sidelines. They’re the guys hung over, getting ready to go in and sack the quarterback and throw massive touchdowns. They’re the dudes hung over and smoking on the sidelines. So, I liked them from Oakland. I liked them in LA. I liked them back in Oakland, and I like them in Vegas. I’m not jaded by them leaving anywhere. I live in New York City now, but I was in Vegas when they came, and I still have my season seats there.
It’s been 40 years since the Raiders won a Super Bowl. Do you have fond memories of the team winning those championships back in ’77, ’81, and ’84?
Now, I’m a giant football fan, but I was a little bit more of a baseball fan back then. Of course, I remember [those ’80s Super Bowls]. I still see [former Raiders quarterback] Jim Plunkett at some of the games. … I was just at the Super Bowl this last February, and I saw [former Raiders linebacker Bill] Romanowski in the concourse. He’s a fuckin’ badass.
But going back to your question about Super Bowls, it was great [back then], but I think it’s funny that they still use “commitment to excellence” because they haven’t had that commitment since the ’80s.
Is it frustrating as a fan going four decades without a Super Bowl victory?
It’s pretty ridiculous. Like I just said, a team that claims to have a “commitment to excellence” better be winning. You better not be losing your own division for the last however many fucking years. There’s talent out there. Every year, free agency and the draft brings new hope for whatever the year may have. We’ll see, we got some good players. We got [defensive end] Max Crosby, who’s a fucking beast. We’ll see what this year holds for us.
And since the days of Kenny Stabler and Jim Plunkett, it seems like the Raiders have been perpetually searching for a franchise quarterback. The team recently had Derek Carr for a number of seasons, but he never got them over the top …
Carr wasn’t my favorite, but he was the closest thing we’ve had in decades to the franchise guy because he was there for a while. And the one thing that basically developed from the Josh McDaniel [head coaching] situation is we lost Carr. McDaniel didn’t stay long, but he cost us our quarterback we’d had for the better part of 10 years.
So here we are, looking for the next guy again. Thinking it was [Jimmy] Garoppolo and it wasn’t. Thinking it was [Aidan] O’Connell and it obviously wasn’t, because we signed [Gardner] Minshew. So, again, we’ll see what 2024 holds.
Minshew seems like a good fit for the Raiders. He’s got a fun vibe …
He’s got the vibe. He’s definitely a gamer. Yeah, I would trust him to win some games. Absolutely.
Speaking of that vibe, I always thought of the Raiders as the most “heavy metal” team in the NFL: the silver and black uniforms, the logo. Do you think that may have been what initially attracted you to the team as a kid?
Who knows what 1970s Kerry King was thinking? But in hindsight … I’m sure the silver and black, the eye-patched guy, all led me to want to be a fan of that franchise.
Of course, Slayer are part of the “Big 4” of thrash metal alongside Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. For you, who would be your “Big 4” NFL players?
Well, I rebelled against it since the beginning of time, but you pretty much have to start with Tom Brady. I fucking hate saying that, but he is pretty much the greatest of all time. You can’t really argue that. That being said, I was always a big Peyton Manning fan. Of course, Brady stayed around longer, but I was always a Manning fan because he was just that good and never had the surrounding cast that Tom Brady had, in my opinion. So, we got Tom Brady, we got Peyton Manning. Let’s see, gotta have Dan Marino.
Marino, to this day, is probably my favorite quarterback, and I’m sorry, I’m dwelling on quarterbacks, but that’s three so far. But Marino, if he came out in this league today, he would light up this league like no one’s ever seen, because he put up those numbers when quarterbacks were getting killed. He was the first dude that really showed anybody, in my opinion, what a quarterback could do.
So that being said, let me get off the quarterback bandwagon. It would be very easy to say Emmitt Smith, but I’m going to go with an old-school Raider. I’m going to say Marcus Allen because he was amazing, when you go back and look at his highlights. And then when Bo Jackson got signed, Marcus kind of got put in the doghouse, and then he got shipped out to Kansas City and kicked our ass for the next fuckin’ [five] years. But Marcus Allen, he’d be my number four.
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