As cool as it was to see Anthrax, Metallica and Megadeth united to perform Diamondhead’s “Am I Evil?” together in Sofia, Bulgaria, it was a bummer that the only Slayer member to join them was drummer Dave Lombardo. This lead many to believe that the rest of Slayer were a bunch of no fun, negative nancies. However, guitarist Kerry King revealed that he actually regrets not being able to join in on the fun.

In a recent interview with Revolver Magazine, King revealed the following:

“ It isn’t too long an explanation. [Dave] Mustaine came to me that day and James [Hetfield] came to me that day saying, ‘Hey, it would be really cool if you played.’ I knew Jeff [Hanneman] wouldn’t do it, and I knew Tom [Araya] wouldn’t do it. And I also knew after we played that neither one of them would edit our video that was going to cinemas in a couple hours, so I told James and Mustaine both, “Listen, man. I’ve gotta edit our video before I can even think about playing with you guys.” So the entire time of the set change between Slayer and Metallica, I was editing that video. I came running to the tuning room after I got done picking the songs, and they were already onstage. And to make it an even better story, I found out at 1 a.m. the night prior, so I really had no chance to work on that stuff or anything. So I wanted to; it just couldn’t happen. I’ve got a lot of flack for that but yeah, that’s the story.”

This definitely puts a different spin on the reason Lombardo gave for the rest of the band’s absence (or at least for King’s). You can read the rest of King’s interview with Revolver, where he also speaks rather nicely about the fellow Big Four bands, online.