Goodbye, Jeff Hanneman

Jeff Hanneman, guitarist for the legendary Slayer, passed away yesterday in California at age 49.

The heavy metal world is mourning the loss to liver failure of Hanneman, known for his screeching, wailing, atonal guitar sounds, aggressively controversial lyrics, and devil-may-care attitude.

Once a pillar of stability for Slayer, performing with the band consistantly for three decades while other members flirted with other groups and projects, Hanneman had been absent from performances for the past 2 years because of health problems. His passing ends hopes of seeing him once again tear up the stage with his ferocious riffs and raw, uncompromising energy, but his legacy–he gave Slayer the music and lyrics fans love best–will endure.

Hanneman cofounded Slayer in 1981 with fellow guitarist Kerry King, and the pair’s chaotic, mind-blowingly fast riffs helped lead the group to become one of the “Big Four” thrash metal acts, alongside Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. They first hit mainstream success in ’86 with Reign in Blood, their first major label album, which departed from their earlier Satanic themes to focus on more “street level” topics, like meditations on death and insanity. The album was a critical and commerical success, and is widely considered a classic–it’s been called the greatest metal album of all time and the heaviest album of all time.

Of course, it wouldn’t be metal without controversy, and Hanneman’s lyrics to the album’s opening track, “Angel of Death,” caused quite a bit of controversy. Musically, the track is an unqualified triumph, featuring brilliantly intricate guitar work and mind-blowing drumming from drummer Dave Lombardo, but it’s the contents of the lyrics, screamed by vocalist and bassist Tom Araya, that caused offense.

Hanneman, whose father fought for the allies at Normandy in WWII, had a fascination with Nazi culture and Third Reich memorabilia, and the song is based on Josef Mengele, the Nazi “doctor” who performed sickening experiments on Jews, Romanis, and others interred at Auschwitz. Mengele’s horrific experiments with children, twins, and the disabled, as well as his reputation for enjoying the task of choosing which new camp arrivals would go into forced labor and which would be sent straight to the gas chambers (a role most officers couldn’t bring themselves to do sober), earned him the nickname “Angel of Death.”

Hanneman’s lyrics discuss the horrors of Megele’s reign of terror, but in the context of metal, where Satanism and violence are revered and peace and love mocked, it can be hard to tell if the song is sympathizing with the “pathetic harmless victims/left to die” or the “rancid angel of death/flying free.” Hanneman himself insisted that he found Nazism interesting but didn’t support it, and that he didn’t expicitly say Mengele was evil “because to me–well, isn’t that obvious?? I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” The song continues to be a Slayer mainstay, performed at nearly every Slayer show, and along with “Raining Blood,” from the same album, it was Hanneman’s personal favorite to play live.

Slayer was never as commericially-oriented as as the other three groups in the Big Four, and they refused to compromise the purity of their style to produce more accessible tracks for non-metalheads. Hanneman himself epitomized this, a brilliant guitarist who composed some of their best music but who shunned the spotlight and left the publicity to others. Their fidelity to metal makes Slayer the epitome of the thrash style–in true testament to their power, when South Park is invaded by hippies, Eric Cartman blasts Reign in Blood to disperse their hippie jam fest.

Hanneman had also been known for his classic stage presence–appearing in an Oakland Raiders jersey, tossing his long, unkempt hair as he thrashed away on one of several personalized guitars, including one which featured “Hanneman” written in place of “Heineken” in the logo of the Dutch beer he endorsed. Unfortunately, he had to pull out of performances and was replaced by Exodus guitarist Gary Holt in 2011 after he contracted necrotizing fasciitis, also known as the “flesh-eating disease,” from a spider bite. He’d been suffering from the disease, which sees sections of skin die off due to toxins released by bacteria and which almost cost him his right arm, since then, although it’s far from clear that the NF was related to his passing. There’s been much talk implicating his lifestyle–although Hanneman spoke openly about his years of cocaine and pill use, he’d said that he and Araya had given up the practice in the 80s and that he only drank alcohol after that; still, given the cause of death, there’s been speculation that heavy drinking may have contributed.

Since Slayer made the announcement yesterday on their Facebook page, there’s been an outpouring of tributes from fellow metal men. David Mustaine, frontman of Megadeth, tweeted, “Tonight one less star will be shining and sadly, the stage just got a little bit darker.” Guns N’ Roses‘s Slash called the news “tragic & shocking” and added, “What a sad day for Metal,” Anthrax’s twitter feed said the news was “like a punch in the gut,” and condolences were tweeted by Testament, Pantera, Papa Roach, and Mötley Crüe‘s Nikki Sixx.

For international fans who want to celebrate Hanneman’s legacy, Slayer has dozens of tour dates scheduled for this summer in Europe and South America, but they won’t be getting closer to the U.S. than Mexico City. Those of us stateside will have to be content with some of the other metal groups peforming this summer, like Lamb of God, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, or Alice Cooper & Marilyn Manson, to get our fix of violence on stage.