King tells tells the Phoenix New Times: "A lot of people don't know that a year before Jeff died I lost my guitar tech. He passed away too. More unexpected than Jeff was - that was difficult for me."

The tragedies went towards inspiring the track Chasing Death, which appears on upcoming Slayer album Repentless. King explains: "I'm getting to that age where you deal with more deaths then you do weddings.

"I was having conversations with Jeff about his spider bite and everything, and I told him that he had just been chasing death. I said he needed to focus on getting better and get rolling again.

"So part of that song is about addiction and part of it is about the finality of dealing with death. I don't know. I had to write it. I don't usually have to write songs - but I had to write that one."