On a recent episode of the “Talk Louder” podcast, Phil Demmel discussed his working relationship with Kerry King. Demmel spoke about his perception of King’s personality and why some might find him “rude, to put it politely.
“If there’s one thing that I know about Kerry, it’s exactly where he stands and what he’s feeling. He has his agenda, of course, but there’s no meandering around with the point he’s trying to get to, and there are no steps being set up.”
“Kerry gets this stigma of being a jerk or a dick. And he’s not. He’s a nice and empathetic guy. He cares about things. It’s not like he’s this hardened individual. There’s just no filter; he’ll just say, ‘No, I don’t like that,’ or ‘I can’t do this because.’ And it’s straightforward, man. I wish people would understand that about him. It’s not him being rude… well, maybe it could be considered rude, but that’s not his intent. He’s just not going to sugarcoat things.”
It seems he might have the Dutch mentality, which is direct and to the point. That’s probably the real reason why. For example, as a Dutch person myself, I never really thought about him not being nice or that he is a jerk. But people did call me rude at some point :). Phil also mentioned that during the interview.
“So, I’ve been waiting since August of 2019 to be able to announce that I was in Kerry’s new band. A couple of people knew, but Kerry wanted it to be a secret, so we didn’t share. That was four and a half years of holding onto the secret. Some would say it was the best-worst-kept secret or the worst-best-kept secret. But we’re all pretty stoked to get this started.”
