Speaking of heavy metal, it's hard to not mention Slayer. But do we really  have Slayer in mind when we're talking about punk? I don't think so, not  until now, anyway. On the 20th of May Slayer will release an album where they have picked some of their old time hardcore-punk favourites. With the new wave of punk in mind this may seem like Slayer's protest to the new punk-movement...

- Those bands around today that call themselves punk-bands are just laughable. Bands like Green Day and Offspring are fake, and I think it's an insult that they use the term "punk" for what they're doing. The word punk is only an image for them, says guitarist Kerry King.

So this is an protest, then?

- You may say that, but that was never the intention. In fact this was not even  meant to be a punk-album. What we had in mind was to do an album with a  selection of songs from bands that we where very much influenced by in the early  days, bands that helped create Slayer as it has become. I'm thinking of bands like  Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and these kind of bands, but we never managed to  get these songs any good. They tended to sound too "old", so we dropped the idea  and chose some punk-songs instead.

This punk-album should originally be entitled "Selected & Exhumed", but the title has now been changed to "Undisputed Attitude". The reason is cover artwork, according to Kerry King.

But when you decide to cover some classic punk-tunes, I must say that I miss songs from British bands like Sex Pistols, Clash, Sham 69 and similar bands...

- Well, we wanted to do the hardcore-punk bands. We had Exploited in mind, but we have done a song by them before, so they where dropped this time. There are also three Slayer-originals on this album. Two of them where written by Jeff Hanneman back in '84, while the track "Gemini" is brand new.

Why did you decide to bring in these tracks on an cover-album?

- The "Gemini" tracks sounds like a punk version of Slayer so we thought it may fit
brilliant with this old stuff.

Slayer will be doing lots of festivals this summer, before entering the studio to record their new studio-album in late autumn.