Creativity Quote by Kerry King

There is a bracing honesty in Kerry King admitting the obvious part out loud: the engine of a band like Slayer isn’t market research, it’s appetite. “Primarily for ourselves” frames creativity as self-fueling, even selfish, which in metal reads less like narcissism and more like integrity. The genre has always prized the idea that you don’t sand down your edges for radio; you sharpen them until they cut.

The sly turn is the second clause: “but I know our fans dig most of it, too.” That “most” matters. It’s a wink at the fact that a band’s obsessions won’t perfectly overlap with the crowd’s, and that’s fine. King’s not promising universal approval; he’s acknowledging friction as part of the deal. Fans aren’t customers to be endlessly satisfied, they’re fellow conspirators who show up because they want to be challenged, provoked, sometimes even alienated in small doses. That’s a surprisingly mature view of fandom, one that refuses the modern pressure to treat every reaction as feedback to be optimized.

Contextually, it echoes the long-running tension in heavy music between authenticity and commodification. As metal became a touring and merch machine, the fear wasn’t just “selling out,” it was losing the internal compass that made the work feel dangerous in the first place. King’s line draws a boundary: we lead with what excites us; if you’re here, you’ll probably ride along. Not because we catered to you, but because your taste was formed in the blast radius of ours.