Florida death metal veterans CANNIBAL CORPSE have dedicated their participation in the second annual Decibel Magazine Tour to SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who died on May 2 at the age of 49.
Video footage of CANNIBAL CORPSE vocalist George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher paying tribute to Hanneman on May 16 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, California during the Decibel Magazine Tour can be seen below.
CANNIBAL CORPSE bassist Alex Webster recently called Hanneman “one of the greatest musicians and songwriters in metal.”
In April 2011, CANNIBAL CORPSE guitarist Pat O’Brien played several shows with SLAYER as the fill-in for EXODUS‘ Gary Holt while Holt spent a few days away from the SLAYER European tour to play with his own band EXODUS.
Members of SLAYER released a statement on May 9 saying that Hanneman died of alcohol-related cirrhosis. He is credited for writing many of the band’s classic songs, including “Angel Of Death” and “South Of Heaven”.
A photo tribute to late SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman by photogapher Kevin Estrada can be found at this location. It consists of photos from this past Thursday’s (May 23) public memorial celebration for Hanneman at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, California as well as photos of Jeff and SLAYER that Kevin took between 1984 and 2010.
Says Kevin: “I started shooting SLAYER in 1984… and in that time, I became close with the band. From sneaking my camera into the club shows to becoming a co-producer on the ‘Soundtrack To The Apocalypse’ box set — it has been a great ride. But this one hit hard.
“At [Jeff‘s] celebration, every snap of my camera brought me closer and closer to the end of a big chapter in my life.
“I know SLAYER will go on — in one form or another — but there is such a sense of unwanted closure. It is hard to put in words — so I am giving you a little taste of what SLAYER gave me over the years.
“Thank you Tom, thank you Kerry, thank you Dave, thank you Paul and Jon… and lastly — thank you Jeff, and farewell.”
Members of SLAYER released a statement on May 9 saying that Hanneman died of alcohol-related cirrhosis. He is credited for writing many of the band’s classic songs, including “Angel Of Death” and “South Of Heaven”.
The guitarist, who passed away in Los Angeles on May 2, had actually not been playing with SLAYER for more than two years since he contracted necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating disease, from a spider bite in his backyard in January 2011. The infection ravaged the flesh and tissues of Hanneman‘s arm, leading to numerous surgeries, skin grafts and intense periods of rehab that forced him into semi-retirement and left him near death at several points.
Hanneman‘s last appearance with SLAYER was in April 2011, when he played an encore with the band at the “Big Four” concert in Indio, California.
Hanneman recalled in a 2011 interview with Classic Rock magazine that he initially didn’t even feel the spider bite, adding, “But an hour later, I knew that I was ill. I could see the flesh corrupting. The arm was real hot. I got to the emergency room, and thank god the nurse knew straight away what it was . . . At that point, I was an hour away from death.”
Hanneman was well known for his aversion to the spotlight, avoiding interviews and even turning off his phone when he was not on tour to spend time with his family. He is survived by his wife Kathy, his sister Kathy and his brothers Michael and Larry.
SLAYER was founded in 1981 in Los Angeles and went on to become one of most popular bands of the speed/thrash metal movement, eventually being considered one of the “Big Four” alongside METALLICA, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX.
While never a band that got any substantial radio airplay, the group has long been considered a major influence on the metal genre and acclaimed as one of the best live metal acts of the past 30 years.
SLAYER guitarist Kerry King received a huge ovation from the crowd at the Revolver Golden Gods awards show on May 2 at Club Nokia in Los Angeles, where he said that Hanneman would have wanted “noise” rather than a moment of silence and then drank two shots in his bandmate’s honor.
SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo sat out the band’s recent Australian tour due to a contract dispute with the other members of the group. Filling in for him was Jon Dette (TESTAMENT, ANTHRAX).
The Jeff Hanneman Memorial Celebration took place last night (Thursday, May 23rd) at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. The legendary SLAYER guitarist passed away on May 2nd at the age of 49.
Check out fan-filmed footage below of a special memorial photo slideshow, along speeches from with his bandmate Kerry King, METALLICA’s Robert Trujillo, Metal Blade’s Brian Slagel and American Recordings’s Dino Paredes.
Kerry King said of Hanneman’s legacy: “Jeff was my doorway to punk and it really helped Slayer to become the doorway between the metal kids and the punk kids. Jeff hated being famous, but he loved being onstage.”
The metal world is mourning the loss of Jeff Hanneman and while the future of SLAYER seems uncertain (with Dave Lombardo booted and currently out of the picture), one thing remains certain – Jeff Hanneman was the driving force that pushed Slayer’s music from the obscure West Coast underground to a worldwide phenomenon. With his recent passing, it’s sad to admit that Slayer will never be the same.
Slayer’s music is beyond important in the history of metal’s burst out of the underground during the early 1980s. Out of the major players that create the “Big Four,” Slayer were the darkest, angriest, and most shocking of them all. While other metal bands from that era had plenty of songs with dark themes and imagery, Slayer went straight to the hell for their inspiration and seriously didn’t care who was offended, shocked, or confused about what they hearing or seeing.
Slayer has always utilized Satan-approved artwork and images, hyperactive guitar riffs, atonal music composition, breakneck tempos, and disturbing lyrics that weave an intricate poetic web of war, death, destruction, social isolation, suicide, and they even left a little room to sing about the Nazi’s (Josef Mengele specifically).
The latter happened to be an interesting (and controversial) hobby for Hanneman, as his collection of Nazi medals, artifacts, and memorabilia became an obsession throughout his life. His Nazi collection began when he was much younger and his father presented him with a collection of Nazi artifacts that he had brought home after the Second World War.
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Hanneman has the distinction of being one of the few metal artists to be nominated for a Grammy five times, and he took home the coveted music award twice for Best Metal Performance with the songs “Eyes of the Insane” and “Final Six” (along with Slayer vocalist/bassist Tom Araya) from the 2006 Slayer album Christ Illusion.
To learn more about Jeff Hanneman’s Guitar Style, go HERE.
The Jeff Hanneman Memorial Celebration will take place on Thursday, May 23 at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles from 3:30 – 7:30PM. Hanneman passed away on May 2 at the age of 49.
The Memorial Celebration will be free and open to the public on a first-come, first-in basis (subject to venue capacity). All ages are welcome, and paid parking will be available around the venue.
Jeff Hanneman helped shape Slayer’s uncompromising thrash-metal sound as well as an entire genre of music. His riffs of fury and punk-rock attitude were heard in the songs he wrote, including Slayer classics “Angel of Death,” “Raining Blood,” “South of Heaven” and “War Ensemble.” Hanneman co-founded Slayer with fellow-guitarist Kerry King, bassist Tom Araya and drummer Dave Lombardo in Huntington Park, CA in 1981. For more than 30 years, Hanneman was the band member who stayed out of the spotlight, rarely did interviews, amassed an impressive collection of World War II memorabilia, was with his wife Kathy for nearly three decades, shut off his phone and went incommunicado when he was home from tour, did not want to be on the road too late into any December as Christmas was his favorite holiday, and, from the time he was about 12 years old, woke up every, single day with one thing on his mind: playing the guitar.
It was once suggested to Slayer that if they would write “just one mainstream song that could get on the radio,” they would likely sell millions of records and change the commercial course of their career, similar to what had happened to Metallica with 1993’s “Enter Sandman.” Jeff was the first to draw a line of integrity in the sand, replying, “We’re going to make a Slayer record. If you can get it on the radio, fine, if not, then fuck it.”
SLAYER have just issued the following update via their Official Facebook Page:
While the details are being worked out now, Slayer wants its fans to know that there will be a celebration of Jeff Hanneman‘s life sometime later this month, along with Jeff’s family and friends, the public will be invited to attend. More information will be posted here soon.
Kerry King and Tom Araya are trying to deal with the loss of their brother by remembering some the good times they shared.
KERRY: “I had so many great times with Jeff… in the early days when we were out on the road, he and I were the night owls, we would stay up all night on the bus, just hanging out, talking, watching movies… World War II movies, horror movies, we watched “Full Metal Jacket” so many times, we could practically recite all of the dialogue.”
TOM: “When we first formed Slayer, we used to rehearse all the time, religiously, 24/7. Jeff and I spent a lot of time hanging out together, he lived in my father’s garage which was also our rehearsal space. When he got his own apartment, he had an 8-track and I would go there to record songs I’d written, not Slayer songs, other stuff I’d written. At a certain point, you still have the band but you start your own lives outside of the band, so that 24/7 falls to the side, you don’t spend as much time together as you once did. I miss those early days.”
KERRY: “He was a gigantic World War II buff, his father served in that war, so when Slayer played Russia for the first time – I think it was 1998 – Jeff and I went to one of Moscow’s military museums. I’ll never forget him walking around that place, looking at all of the tanks, weapons and other exhibits. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. But that was Jeff’s thing, he knew so much about WW II history, he could have taught it in school.”
TOM: “We were in New York recording South of Heaven. Jeff and I were at the hotel and we had to get to the studio – I think it was called Chung King, a real rundown place. So we left the hotel and decided to walk, but then it started raining. We walked maybe five blocks, and it was raining so hard, we were totally soaked, so we decided to get a cab. Here we are, two dudes with long hair and leather jackets, absolutely soaked, thumbing to the studio. No one would stop. We had to walk the entire way.”
TOM: “Jeff was a lifeline of Slayer, he wrote so many of the songs that the band will always be known for. He had a good heart, he was a good guy.”
*****
We’ve just learned that the official cause of Jeff’s death was alcohol related cirrhosis. While he had his health struggles over the years, including the recent Necrotizing fasciitis infection that devastated his well-being, Jeff and those close to him were not aware of the true extent of his liver condition until the last days of his life. Contrary to some reports, Jeff was not on a transplant list at the time of his passing, or at any time prior to that. In fact, by all accounts, it appeared that he had been improving – he was excited and looking forward to working on a new record.
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