After this past summer’s tour supporting Mastodon and Lamb of God, as well as the odd Slayer reunion, former Slayer guitarist Kerry King and his solo band will launch their first headlining tour of North America next year. Municipal Waste and Alien Weaponry will serve as support for the run, which kicks off Jan. 15 in San Francisco and run through the end of February when it will wrap in King’s hometown of Los Angeles. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time.
King is marking the announcement with a new video for “Where I Reign,” a song off his solo debut, From Hell I Rise, which came out earlier this year. The black-and-white clip shows King and his bandmates — a metal supergroup that includes drummer Paul Bostaph (Slayer), bassist Kyle Sanders (Hellyeah), guitarist Phil Demmel (Machine Head), and vocalist Mark Osegueda (Death Angel) — doing what they do best: performing in front of audiences.
“Getting back on the road for the first time in five years wasn’t exactly like riding a bike, that’s for sure,” King said in a statement. “I’ve never had that much time off, but the first tours with my new band — in the U.K. and Europe, and then in America with Lamb of God and Mastodon — were all total blasts. We’ll be headlining on this next tour, so we’re playing a longer set than we did with Lamb of God and Mastodon. We’ve got a little bit of a learning curve, so will start rehearsing the first week of November. And we might put an extra Slayer song into the set and learn a cover song or two.”
Earlier this year, King told Rolling Stone that after Slayer broke up (before they announced the reunion shows this year) he was ready to move on immediately with his solo project. “I’m like, ‘Well, I’m not done,’” he said. “The only regret I have is that we finished when we finished. But it’s also like, ‘Hey man, we’re Peyton Manning: We won the Super Bowl and we left.’ And unfortunately the world went to shit right after. … Kind of strange.”
Kerry King North American Tour Dates
Jan. 15 – San Francisco, CA @ The Regency Ballroom
Jan. 17 – Spokane, WA @ Spokane Live Casino
Jan. 18 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
Jan. 19 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
Jan. 20 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
Jan. 22 – Calgary, AB @ The Palace Theatre
Jan. 23 – Edmonton, AB @ Midway Music Hall
Jan. 25 – Winnipeg, MB @ Burton Cummings Theatre
Jan. 26 – Minneapolis, MN @ The Fillmore
Jan. 28 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave
Jan. 30 – Detroit, MI @ The Majestic Theater
Jan. 31 – Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
Feb. 1 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
Feb. 2 – Montreal, QC @ L’Olympia
Feb. 4 – Boston, MA @ Royale
Feb. 5 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of the Living Arts
Feb. 7 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
Feb. 8 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
Feb. 10 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre
Feb. 11 – St. Petersburg, FL @ Jannus Live
Feb. 13 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues
Feb. 14 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s
Feb. 15 – Dallas, TX @ The Studio at the Factory
Feb. 17 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
Feb. 18 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater
Feb. 19 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Nile Theater
Feb. 21- Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues
Feb. 22 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre