Kerry King hated Limp Bizkit so much he almost quit music

Kerry King/Limp Bizkit — (Image credit: Chelsea Lauren/WireImage/Photo by Patrick Ford/Redferns)

Slayer guitarist Kerry King has never been shy of sharing opinions, offering no-holds barred verdicts on everything from Metallica's 90s output (he likes the Black album; not so much Load/Re-Load) and Anthrax's legendary collaboration with Public Enemy to emerging bands like Ghost (for the record: he said he loves the imagery, "just hates the fucking music").

But if there's one genre that he's always been fairly open about his disdain for, it's nu metal. From infamously falling out with Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn for the better part of a decade to disowning Slayer's own flirtation with the genre on 1998's poorly-received Diabolus In Musica, King has seemingly never come round to the genre.

But harsh as his assessment of the scene was, it was nothing on his hatred for scene leaders Limp Bizkit. In a 2017 interview with uDiscover, King said he actively considered quitting music altogether.

"I was really jaded for a while back in the late 90s," he explained. "I couldn’t understand why Limp Bizkit was big. It affected me – I didn’t want to play music. I thought, 'If this is the way that music’s going, then f**k this, I hate it'. That’s why Jeff Hanneman wrote so much of our 1998 album Diabolus In Musica, which is too funky for me."

Released in June 1998, Diabolus In Musica is widely regarded as one of Slayer's worst records, the band effectively shifting away from their roots in thrash to embrace the burgeoning nu metal movement. While it isn't without its fans, the record is seen as a stylistic mis-step by many - including King himself.

Featured in the nu metal episode of VH1's Metal Evolution, King admitted he had distanced himself creatively from Diabolus In Musica. "That's the one record that I really paid not enough attention to because I was really bitter about what kind of music was popular," he explains.

"I thought it was, was very frat boy stuff, and maybe that's why it was popular, I don't know. So Diabolus didn't get as much attention from me because, you know, we didn't stay in focus. Looking back we were just saying, "alright, how do we make Slayer fit into today's society?" But, that's probably my least favourite record of our history. That's our Turbo."

We won't hold our breath for any celebrations of the album's 25th anniversary this year, then.

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Staff writer for Metal Hammer, Rich has never met a feature he didn't fancy, which is just as well when it comes to covering everything rock, punk and metal for both print and online, be it legendary events like Rock In Rio or Clash Of The Titans or seeking out exciting new bands like Nine Treasures, Jinjer and Sleep Token.