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When I was 10 years old, Slayer scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t the punishing music or the satanic themes. I worshipped at the altar of Metallica, Megadeth, Exodus, Celtic Frost, Mercyful Fate and their like in the mid-1980s. Speed, Satan, violence, aggression — that’s what kept me going during my “awkward years.” Yet I was intimidated by Slayer.
It was because of the fans. READ FULL STORY »
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Jeff Hanneman, guitarist for legendary thrash metal band Slayer, has died of liver failure. He was 49. The band posted the news on their website and Facebook page Thursday. Hanneman founded the band with fellow guitarist Kerry King in 1981 and created a sound influenced by heavy metal and punk, writing Slayer classics like “Raining Blood” and “Angel of Death.”
The full statement on Slayer’s website reads:
Slayer is devastated to inform that their bandmate and brother, Jeff Hanneman, passed away at about 11AM this morning near his Southern California home. Hanneman was in an area hospital when he suffered liver failure. He is survived by his wife Kathy, his sister Kathy and his brothers Michael and Larry, and will be sorely missed.
In 2011, Hanneman suffered a spider bite and contracted a flesh-eating disease, taking time off from the band to recuperate, but it is unclear if this contributed to his death.
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Over the course of his band’s two-hour set to close out the Big 4 show at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night, Metallica frontman James Hetfield repeatedly asked the assembled crowd of over 41,000 headbangers, “Can you feel it?”
He didn’t have to worry; the collective had no trouble feeling it. Or hearing it. In perhaps a grandiose feat of overcompensation for the outdoor venue and the noise from the adjacent subway line, everything was cranked up to 11 from the first note to the last bellow.
Of course, this is metal, which means the louder the better, and while everybody brought their best noise, Metallica reigned supreme above them all. The bands populating the under-card all fared well, with Anthrax picking up points for sheer enthusiasm — most of the members are from New York, they were celebrating the release of their new album, and there was a spry joie de vivre that infiltrated even their thrashiest material, especially on the set-closing “I Am the Law.”
Megadeth primed the crowd for the headliner with some early shout-alongs (the one-two punch of “Symphony of Destruction” and “Peace Sells” was surprisingly anthemic), and Slayer bowling over everybody with a solid hour of ritual eardrum destruction (“Mandatory Suicide” was especially savage).
But then Metallica emerged, and everybody was reminded exactly why they remain one of the biggest bands in the world. Aided by some well-orchestrated pyrotechnics, a healthy dose of theatricality, and a bucketload of massive songs, the members of Metallica spryly navigated the huge stage parked in the outfield and held heavy court. READ FULL STORY »
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As any devil-horn devotee will tell you, metal is forever.
There will always be a cadre of kids looking to bang their heads, which is why hard and loud music has endured the ups and downs of the musical marketplace in the 21st century.
Case in point: The biggest concert event of the fall concerns a quartet of bands who were all founded in or before 1983. After a well-received weekend in Indio, California, earlier this year, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax have come east and will take the stage at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night, September 14. It will be a huge, loud spectacle, the kind that only metal veterans can deliver.
It’s an extra-busy week for Anthrax, who not only have the hometown show to look forward to (the founding members of the band are all from New York) but also their tenth album to promote (it’s called Worship Music, hits stores today and features the first recordings with singer Joey Belladonna in two decades).
EW caught up with guitarist Scott Ian to talk about the new album, the Big Four, and why he no longer buys Rolling Stone.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: With the Yankee Stadium show and the new album out, is this the busiest week in Anthrax history?
SCOTT IAN: It very well could be. It started last Tuesday, and now it’s really ramping up.
How did Worship Music come together?
We spent most of the time working on this record last fall. Joey rejoined the band in the beginning of 2010 and we spent most of the year on the road doing Big Four shows and then another tour with Slayer and Megadeth, which we called the Almost Big Four. We spent pretty much every day in the dressing room working on that record. We had something like 14 tracks, and it was just a case of listening to them and nitpicking the hell out of them. Once we finished that tour, we were ready to go back in and re-record stuff and let Joey go in and sing everything.
The song that really stands out to me is “The Constant.” Can you tell me where that came from?
That was one of the first songs that came together, at least musically. It went through a couple of different rewrites. The idea initially came from an episode of Lost called “The Constant.” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Scott Legato/FilmMagic.com; Steve Thorne/Redferns/Getty ImagesLast night in New Jersey, a few folks in black t-shirts got together and pretended like grunge never happened. The American Carnage tour, which brings together Slayer, Megadeth, and Testament to relive the glory of old-school speed metal, came through the New York area last night. Slayer played their 1990 classic Seasons of the Abyss and Megadeth ran through 1990′s Rust in Peace, both in their entirety.
Sort of a second coming of each band’s last hurrah before alt-rock swept in and changed the hard-rock landscape. Metallica, who actually joined Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax for a show in Bulgaria earlier this year, would have fit right in on American Carnage if 1988′s …And Justice For All were only recorded two years later. The difference between Metallica and Slayer (and to a lesser extent Megadeth), of course, is that while Metallica cut off their hair, slapped on eyeliner, and recorded Bob Seger covers in response to alt-rock, Slayer is, and always has been effing SLAYER. No apologies, no compromise, no mercy.
That’s certainly what the freakishly dedicated fans at the Izod Center came to see. Is there such a thing as an ex-Slayer fan? You may have never liked Slayer. But anyone who ever did very likely did a lot, and almost certainly still does today. It’s a (Reign in) blood-in, (World Painted) blood-out fandom that last night attracted everyone from the teenage outcast who wasn’t even born when Seasons was released to the 50-year-old bald dude who threw on cargo shorts and a tattered Hell Awaits t-shirt and ran out of the office so quick he didn’t even have time to change out of his black dress socks. READ FULL STORY »
