SLAYER guitarist Kerry King spoke with Steve Appleford from LA Weekly about a number of topics including tomorrow's (April 23rd) Big Four show at at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA and the status of guitarist Jeff Hanneman. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

LA Weekly: That's a gigantic venue to fill in Indio. How are these four metal bands (METALLICA, Slayer, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX) able to fill it?

King: "Metallica is pretty huge on their own. The historic-ness of it - four of the biggest metal bands to come out of the US getting together. The media named us the Big 4 so long ago, it's been every fan's pipe dream."

LA Weekly: What is the latest news with [guitarist] Jeff Hanneman?

King: "He's trying his ass off. He's been talking about playing that show, but I just don't see how physically he'd be able to do that. I'm just being realistic. He came to the last rehearsal and surprised everybody. I was blown away that he was even out of the house. That was after his first or second skin graft to fix the huge opening he had. He was totally out of gas because he hadn't left the house much. He was cold because his immune system was all fucked up. We haven't talked since then. I get updates through management. He's doing whatever the doctors tell him to do."

LA Weekly: Outside the Long Beach last time, there were a couple Christian protesters. Do you still get a lot of that?

King: "I think it was bigger before. Now I think people are more tolerant of different people's views and opinions. The funny thing about protesters is, you never see atheists or Satanists protest anything. They're comfortable in their beliefs. It's only Christians that are so uncomfortable with how they feel, they're not happy unless everyone believes what they believe."

Read the entire interview here.