Sad news for the world of metal today–Billboard reports that Slayer co-founder and lead guitarist Jeff Hanneman has passed away. Hanneman, who was 49, had been in failing health recently, and had not performed with the group live since contracting necrotizing fascitis (most likely from a spider bite) in 2011.
Sad news for the world of metal today–Billboard reports that Slayer co-founder and lead guitarist Jeff Hanneman has passed away. Hanneman, who was 49, had been in failing health recently, and had not performed with the group live since contracting necrotizing fascitis (most likely from a spider bite) in 2011. The cause of death was reported to be liver failure, and according to Billboard, “it is not known what role the disease played” in Hanneman’s death.
Hanneman’s back cover photo from Slayer’s debut album, Show No Mercy, 1984
Founding Slayer in 1981 along with guitarist Kerry King, Hanneman was heavily involved in Slayer’s essential work defining the thrash metal sound of the 1980s. Over their three-decade career, Slayer released 12 albums, most recently 2009’s World Painted Blood. Hanneman and King’s unusual sharing of the lead guitar role, in which the two traded solos while singer Tom Araya grounded their arrangements with simpler basslines, set Slayer apart from their contemporaries. Hanneman’s love for California hardcore bands of the early 80s, such as The Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat, influenced an overall increase in Slayer’s typical tempo which culminated in their third album, 1986’s Reign In Blood. This Rick Rubin-produced 10-song, 28-minute slab of raging fury set new benchmarks for speed and heaviness that would soon influence the death and black metal scenes that sprang up as the 80s ended. Slayer followed Reign In Blood with two other albums considered equally important in the pantheon of metal–1988’s South Of Heaven and 1990’s Seasons In The Abyss. The slower tempos and chunkier, heavier riffing of the latter two albums were as much an influence on the hardcore scene of the time as earlier generations of hardcore bands had been on Slayer, and a direct line can be traced between Slayer’s work in the late 80s and early 90s hardcore bands like Unbroken, Earth Crisis, and Integrity.
Slayer circa 2010, Hanneman second from left
Since Hanneman’s contracting of necrotizing fascitis in 2011, he’s been replaced for Slayer live performances by Exodus guitarist Gary Holt. However, other members of Slayer frequently emphasized in band interviews that Hanneman was still a member of the band, and that they were confident he’d return to live performance as soon as he’d fully recovered from his affliction. Earlier today on their facebook account, Slayer posted a public announcement of Hanneman’s passing, in which they referred to themselves as “devastated” to learn of his death. Whether or not Slayer will carry on with Gary Holt as a permanent replacement for Hanneman is not known. Regardless of what they decide, though, this is truly a great loss for the world of metal, and of music in general.
