Slayer's Kerry King has been critical of the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival, which his band is currently headlining. In particular, the always frank rocker has voiced his criticism on the booking of the festival and the cutting back of the side stages to just include the Victory Records stage.

He recently told Metal Insider, "I know this tour wasn't booked correctly. Gary Holt made the comment that usually there's the main stage, a second stage, a third stage and then that piece of s--t record stage … now what they're calling a second stage is at best a fourth stage and they're wondering why people aren't showing up."

As expected, those comments raised a few eyebrows, especially from the acts playing that Victory Records stage that King criticized. A number of rockers address the comments via interviews with Live-Metal.net.

Jungle Rot vocalist Dave Matrise stated, "I'm gonna be truthful -- I take it very personal. I'm a longtime Slayer fan, and I hate to say it, but now I'm gonna change my thoughts about Slayer over this. It's because of the simple fact that there's a lot of people, including myself, and a lot of bands here that have a lot of money invested in this tour and we're trying to make our money back, and we're trying to keep this thing rolling. And here's this guy, and he opens his mouth and sabotages the tour, in my opinion. And then he talks s--t about Victory and that's our label as well, and calls it a 's--t stage.' Well, if it wasn't for Victory probably getting this stage, this tour would've never happened."

Matrise says he's tired of King running his mouth, and that despite the comments, all the bands are sticking together and working hard to make the tour the best it can possibly be. "It just don't make sense to me," says the vocalist. "He could've waited until he was done after the tour to open his mouth. It would've been much better. No one would've cared then."

Kissing Candice guitarist Tommy Sciro added. "I definitely think it's bad for the metal genre, in general. Everybody should be sticking together and supporting it. If you wanna keep carrying the torch, you can't keep talking down to some of the up-and-coming bands. I understand he's kind of cemented himself in history, but that doesn't help anything for anybody, not even his own band. That just gives his own band a bad name. No one on the Victory Stage is too thrilled with this."

Kissing Candice vocalist Joey Simpson added, "Who's he to call us that? He started out one day too, driving around in a van. And there are some buses on the second stage, but most of us are in vans, man. We're eating s--t, literally. Just because we're in a band, it doesn't mean we're getting rich. We're just trying to make a name and he's just slandering it and the Victory Records name." Bassist Mike Grippo added, "If he didn't like the lineup, then he didn't have to play Mayhem Fest this year. No one held a gun to his head, I'm sure."

Sister Sin vocalist Liv Jagrell added, "“I think it’s disrespectful, to say the least, while the tour is still going on. I mean he can have his opinion, but he could have waited until after the tour. And then, of course, it’s our label he’s talking shit about. I don’t think that’s a good thing to say things about other labels and bands. So yeah, I’m not so very fond of him right now."

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