Kerry King – From Hell I Rise

When Slayer called it a day in 2019 it was clear that band’s guitarist Kerry King was not ready for retirement and that wish to put the band into the grave was a decision by band’s singer/bassist Tom Araya. Relatively quickly after the last concert, rumours of a new project by King started circulating. Fairly early on it seems clear that Slayer’s drummer Paul Bostaph would be involved, but it took some time for the full line-up to come into place and nonetheless to be revealed.

The projects takes name after the man himself, because there is plenty of marketing quality to his name and while it might seem odd to have this high profile project named after an individual it also makes sense. And that logo does look good. King’s name is sort of brand in itself, and one tends to forget that the project is named after a guy called Kerry.

Joining King and Bostaph are Death Angel singer Mark Osegueda, former Machine Head and Vio-lence guitarist Phil Demmel and former Hellyeah bassist Kyle Sanders. Heaving Demmel as a part of this project makes so much sense taking into the consideration his skill, reliability and the fact that since his departure from Machine Head he has been a got-to guy for prominent bands who were in an urgent need of a guitarist to fill in vacant shoes. Among the bands he helped was also Slayer on their farewell tour, which recently proved no to be their farewell tour anyway. The band is set to play some festivals this year.

Osegueda, on the other hand, is a bit more of a surprise choice, taking his vocals style in consideration. His performance on From Hell I Rise, however, is rather different from his general vocal approach in Death Angel. It goes without saying that King would want a singer whose style generally resembles Araya’s and Osegueda delivers. Knowing his vocal abilities, one can’t help but wish he explored that side of his vocals on this album, but there is no place for that on a Kerry King record.

And that brings us to the general approach on From Hell I Rise, which in one word can be described as – Slayer. And of course, King goes all-in on making this as close to his former band as possible. He’s never been known to be one who experiments musically and knowing that he didn’t want Slayer to put a stop to their career, the approach on this album comes as no surprise. It’s also what fans of the band expect.

And by all means, it’s what they get – Slayer played by a different cast of characters. And the best thing about this album are actually some of those new elements like above motioned Osegueda and Demmel. Of course, knowing Osegueda vocal spectrum it seems like pity not to take advantage of it, but expecting it on a King would be naïve. Osegueda delivers Araya inspired performance, and he delivers with conviction. It’s however, Demmel who’s the star of the show here. His guitar leads are frantic yet with hooks and rather impressive creative choices, while at the same time staying true to guitar solos which generally characterise Slayer. Demmel is simply on fire and delivers some of the strongest and most interesting guitar solos of his career. Just check out the likes of “Residue”, “Idle Hands” and “Where I Reign”.

From start to finish it’s pedal to the metal with classic fast Thrash Metal songs which Slayer perfected and there is not much space for those more dynamic aspects of Slayer’s music such as “Seasons in The Abyss”, “South Of Heven” and “Deviance”. The band does dip into those water slightly in the middle section of “Crucifixation” and in “Tension” which serves more as an intro. There is also a bit awkward nod to King’s love of punk in the form of “Two Fists”

Otherwise, it’s business as usual and while that has its qualities it’s also weird to experience an album that is such a direct copy of Slayer, even if it comes from one of its founding members. But the biggest issue with the album lies in the fact that songs are not particularly strong and big chunk of riffs are basically recycling of existing ideas. It’s well known that King’s former bandmate, the late Jeff Hanneman, was behind lots of the most defining songs of the band’s career, but King did rise to the challenge of handling the songwriting duties on Slayer’s last album Repentless. He proved that he could write a good album on his own, but unfortunately that is not the case on From Hell I Rise.

On the other hand, it’s good to see King still eager to keep on delivering new music and let’s not undermine the fact that this is an eminently executed record with a very strong production, courtesy of Josh Wilbur.

This album has been on its way for a long time and has it not been for the pandemic, it would’ve come out a few years ago. And that makes the fact that the songwriting lacks that core quality and creativity, even harder to swallow. Expectation were high from the start, and they only got bigger once the bend members were introduced. From Hell I Rise is a fine, well executed Thrash Metal record, but its only reason for going in history books will be the fact that it was King’s first post Slayer record.

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