Jeff Hanneman, key songwriter and guitarist of Slayer, has died at the age of 49. While both Hanneman and 2nd guitarist Kerry King wrote songs for the band, Hanneman’s music was the better of the two (e.g., “Angel of Death”, “Raining Blood”, “War Ensemble”, “South of Heaven”.)
Hanneman, like King, was not a great guitar player (in terms of soloing), but the music he wrote, when he nailed it, was groundbreaking thrash (a metal sub-genre that consummate music enjoyed almost exclusively by white heterosexual males.)
Here’s 1988’s “South of Heaven”, my favorite Slayer song, and the most evil thrash metal song I’ve ever heard. Were Satan himself to emerge from the fiery, splitting ground of an earthquake, it would be to this song:
Here is Slayer’s cover of Minor Threat’s hardcore song “Guilty of Being White”.
I’m sorry for something that I didn’t do
Lynched somebody, but I don’t know who
You blame me for slavery
A hundred years before I was born
Guilty of being white…
