In his first Spine of Overkill column since the passing of Jeff Hanneman, Chris “Woody High” MacDermott pays homage to the late Slayer guitarist and recalls the glory days of Haunting the Chapel and Hell Awaits. It’s as fitting a tribute as I could imagine.

Should you happen to be in the area, Woody‘s band, Mighty High, have a gig this Friday in Brooklyn. The show is at The Grand Victory and Black Thai, Infernal Overdrive and Tarpit Boogie share the bill. More info on Thee Facebooks.

Enjoy:

The death of Jeff Hanneman hit every metal fan hard. Fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR are one of the few bands that all metal heads agree on. When it was announced earlier this month that Jeff had passed away from liver failure everyone was reaching for their favorite fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR album to blast at maximum volume. For most, it’s the 1986 classic Reign in Blood, one of the greatest metal albums of all time for sure. But when old dudes like me want to get nostalgic, we reach for the ones that came before the Reign.

My last Spine of Overkill column was all about picking sides in 1983. Great bands were beginning to get stale and a new breed were emphasizing everything faster, louder and more intense. Fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR‘s debut Show No Mercy came out in December 1983 and there was no turning back for me. Show No Mercy was a great album of Venom-fueled Satanic panic but there was a lot of competition out there. Every month there was at least one new demo tape of blasphemous speed arriving in my mailbox, not to mention the deluge hitting the racks at the record stores. How was fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR going to keep my attention and avoid getting confused with another band called Slayer from San Antonio? The answer arrived in June 1984, when Metal Blade issued the three-song Haunting the Chapel 12″ single. EPs (extended plays) were kind of unusual for metal, even more so in America. British bands like Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Saxon, etc., had a tradition of releasing singles in both 7″ and 12″ formats with great artwork and killer jams on the B-side, usually one unreleased song or exclusive live versions. Diehards would buy both versions but if you could only afford one, it was always the 12″. In early ’84, Metallica put out a 12″ of “Jump in the Fire” with supposedly live versions of “Seek and Destroy” and “Phantom Lord” on the flip side. The cover art was cool even if it was kind of an unexciting release. Later in ’84, Metallica would put out a 12″ of “Creeping Death” from their forthcoming Ride the Lightning album with great covers of Diamond Head‘s “Am I Evil?” and Blitzkrieg‘s “Blitzkrieg” on the back. Still one of the best things they ever put out and my blue vinyl version is one of my prize possessions.

But fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR‘s Haunting the Chapel was a totally different story. This was three brand new songs and no mention anywhere on the sleeve of “from the forthcoming album…” It was also in a legit cardboard album cover, not one of those flimsy, top loading sleeves that 12″ import singles came in. As usual, I waited to read what Bob Muldowney had to say about it in his essential zine Kick*Ass. He gave it a rave review and I picked it up immediately. As great as Show No Mercy was, fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR made a huge leap forward on this release. The six minute “Chemical Warfare” was the only song on side A. The first thing I thought of was of the Dead Kennedy‘s song with the same title. As soon as I dropped the needle down, I instantly forgot it. With “Chemical Warfare” fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR also made me forget about most bands. Holy shit. I knew right away that any band bragging about being the fastest and heaviest was now full of shit. After playing “Chemical Warfare” a few times in a row I decided to give the other side a try, figuring it probably wouldn’t be as good. Turns out I was wrong. “Captor of Sin” starts off with a drumstick count off and someone yelling in the background before launching into a frenzied Mercyful Fate-inspired romp. The pounding chorus is still one of my favorites to yell along with – “Hot! Wings of hell! Burns! In my wake! Death! Is what you pray! BEHOLD! Captor of Sin!” The Venom-inspired title-track wraps up the blasphemy. Apparently, recording engineer Bill Metoyer was a religious sort and the opening lyrics of “the holy cross, symbol of lies” made him question his career path. Another fun fact is that while recording this EP, Dave Lombardo‘s drums were sliding around on the floor. I guess no cinder blocks were around so Dark Angel drummer and fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR roadie Gene Hoglan held the kit together while Dave bashed the skins.

The Haunting the Chapel EP only made impatient headbangers like me want more fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR. Luckily there were new albums from Venom, Exciter, Celtic Frost and VoiVod to keep me happy when I wasn’t blasting Motörhead’s No Remorse for the rest of 1984. Fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR threw us a bone later in the year with another EP, this one a picture disc called Live Undead. Side one had three songs from Show No Mercy recorded live in a New York studio — “Black Magic,” “Die by the Sword” and “Show No Mercy.” The performances were definitely live but the people screaming in the background sounded like they were added later. The other side had the same studio versions of “Captor of Sin” and “Haunting the Chapel” from the EP as well as “The Final Command” from Show No Mercy. I had heard it was going to include a cover of Judas Priest‘s “Dissident Aggressor” but that didn’t get recorded until 1988’s South of Heaven. Live Undead was cool to have for the artwork but only made me want new fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR as soon as possible.

Thankfully, the wait wasn’t too long and in the spring I got my hands on Hell Awaits. I had trouble finding it at first but a dude I was tape trading with on Long Island grabbed a copy for me at Slipped Disc in Valley Stream and mailed it to me. Can’t remember the dude’s name but whoever you are, wherever you are, thanks again. Hell Awaits is still my favorite fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR album. The front cover is low budget but scary. The back cover is even cooler with all the live photos of the band. No more raccoon eye makeup for fuckin’ SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR. Kerry’s armband full of nails immediately made me think of the one Richie Stotts wears on the cover of Coup D’Etat by the Plasmatics. Someone should ask Kerry if that’s where he got his inspiration. The full band shot is awesome. They’re all headbanging, there are upside down crosses on the amps and a huge cloud of smoke so you can’t see the drummer just like on Priest‘s Unleashed in the East. I interviewed Reed Mullin of Corrosion of Conformity for my high school newspaper right around this time and we were both really psyched that Jeff was wearing a C.O.C. shirt on the back cover.

The first spin of Hell Awaits is something I’ll never forget. The long intro with the chanting seemed to go on forever. It sounded like they were saying “synot” over and over but I knew this was a backwards message just like at the start of Venom‘s “In League with Satan.” When I stopped the turntable and began spinning it back I was thrilled to discover they were saying “join us!” Hell yeah, I knew this was gonna be good. Once the music kicked in, it was exactly what I had hoped for. Seven long songs that were totally heavy, totally fast, totally Satanic, drowning in reverb. It sounded like they had snuck into a cathedral and recorded it there under a full moon. I loved every song but side one with “Hell Awaits,” “Kill Again” and “At Dawn They Sleep” remains my favorite SLLLAAAAYYYEEERRR side to this day. The photo collage on the lyric sheet is still fun to look at. There’s a shot of all four members of VoiVod wearing Show No Mercy shirts. There’s another cool photo of them partying with Mercyful Fate. Every tiny photo is jam packed with stuff that I wanted to do back then — snort giant rails off the bar, harass a life size Michael Jackson cutout, hold a can of beer and scream, etc. A fun fact about Hell Awaits is that it was mixed by Ron Fair, who would later go on to be a big pop music producer for the Black Eyed Peas, Pussycat Dolls, etc. Only in Hollywood!

Farewell, Jeff. Thank you for helping to accelerate my bad habits and antisocial behavior the last 30 years. Kill again!

Slayer, “Chemical Warfare” live 1985

Slayer, “Hell Awaits” live 1985

Slayer, South of Heaven (1988)

I’m quite sure the metallic sphere of the internet is pouring with Jeff Hanneman tributes today — I honestly haven’t even had the chance to look — so I’ll do my best not to add to the slew of dudely cliches, but it seemed only appropriate in light of Hanneman‘s passing at the age of 49 to end the week with 1988’s South of Heaven. Probably any Slayer record would’ve done the trick, since he made his mark on all of them, but South of Heaven marked a sort of maturation point for the band, where they really established the dynamics that would carry them forward for the next decade-plus after the raging and ultra-pivotal speedfest that was Reign in Blood, and well, I like that.

Never having been a guitarist, I don’t listen to Slayer with that kind of ear, but it’s still pretty easy to pick out which leads are Jeff Hanneman‘s and which belong to Kerry King. King‘s solos have that bull-in-a-china-shop quality that one finds mirrored in his persona — all aggression with little time or concern for finesse. Hanneman was hardly what you’d call progressive in his level of technique, but his relatively nuanced approach helped set up one of heavy metal’s most formative dual-guitar attacks, setting a precedent in thrash that many try and most still fall short of achieving today, and where King‘s style is so much his own, Hanneman always struck me as more of a guitarist’s guitarist, someone people could hear and try to figure out what he was doing — which I’m pretty sure, if you actually get to that point, you’ve already learned how to play a guitar without realizing it. So kudos.

I wasn’t around for Slayer at the beginning, but I remember hearing them at around the age of 12 and I definitely remember them leaving an impression that in the years to come would develop into a metallic loyalism that I carry to this day. I’m glad I got to see them as many times as I did, as they were and I suppose still are one of those acts who’ve grown to embody a certain brand of extremity that, although others have come along since and played faster, louder or heavier, still retains a sense of being unsurpassed. And like King, and bassist/vocalist Tom Araya and drummer Dave Lombardo, Hanneman was an essential piece of what made Slayer‘s thrash that much more visceral than their counterparts in other bands, and an essential piece of what has made their albums endure for these many years. And just as their work has made an impact on heavy metal like none other — not to say they’re the most influential metal band ever, because they’re not, just that they’ve impacted the genre in a different way — so too is his contribution to that legacy by extension unmatched.

On my way to the Clutch show last night, I had the radio news on to see if they’d mention Hanneman‘s death at all. More than an hour I listened — through the whole cycle of news and then some — and there wasn’t a word about it. This is someone who’s work I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say has touched more than a million lives over the course of the last 30 years, and nothing. For me, it underscored the wider cultural irrelevance of this music, just how much of a niche it is that someone like Hanneman, who penned the lyrics to “Angel of Death” and “Raining Blood” and so many others, can go unmarked by the wider populace even as an entire subculture enters a period of mourning. It felt bizarre to listen for it and even more bizarre when I didn’t hear anything.

Like I said, the internet will likely be flooded with tributes of varying shittiness to Hanneman‘s impact on metal, so I’ll leave it there, but it’s a sad occasion and if I didn’t at least make some note of it, then I might as well cut my hair and get a real fucking job because this whole project is worthless.

—

I end the week like I began it: In a hotel room. After I got out of work, The Patient Mrs. and I drove north and are staying in Providence, RI, for the night en route to look at more houses in Massachusetts early tomorrow. I’ll head back to Jersey before tomorrow night, but if you happen to be in Boston, Gozu are doing their release gigs with weekend at Radio in Somerville. I think the first one was tonight. I was really hoping to have that interview up before those shows, and it’s a serious letdown that I didn’t get to do it. I’ve never so seriously entertained the notion of using a transcription service, but I just haven’t had the chance to do it myself in I don’t even know how many weeks now. I’ll get there. Unfortunately not in time to plug Gozu‘s release shows.

Speaking of things I haven’t had time for, if you’ve sent me an email in, say, the last three to four weeks and not heard back, I’ll soon be rectifying that. Give me a couple more days. The Patient Mrs. is out of town early next week and while I want/need to catch up on a few email interviews as well going out — even though I think of the last four I sent out I only got one back — answering email is definitely also on my agenda. I’m not blowing anyone off, there’s just only so many hours in the day (it’s after midnight as I write this, for example, so it’s actually tomorrow even as I’m posting for today) and I need to spend as much of it as possible writing in order not to completely lose my shit. I’m doing my best.

Thanks too for your patience on reviews. Next week, Lamp of the Universe, Sgt. Sunshine and hopefully Before the Eyewall. Also stay tuned for a Kings Destroy track premiere on Tuesday, more info on The Eye of the Stoned Goat 3 and as ever, a ton of other stuff I don’t even know about yet. It’ll be a good time, I promise.

As always, I wish you a great and safe weekend, wherever you might be or whatever you’ve got going on. I’ll be checking in on the forum, as I hope you will, and we’ll pick back up Monday with more riffly plod and all the rest of it. Until then, here’s to Jeff Hanneman.

Metal aficionado and Mighty High guitarist/vocalist Chris “Woody High” MacDermott returns with a new installment of his column, “Spine of Overkill.” This time around, Woody asks who’s side you were on in 1983: Was it Slayer and Raven or Def Leppard and Quiet Riot? Fortunately for all of us, Woody made the right choice in his younger days.

By way of a plug, Mighty High will be playing a 4/20 spectacular at The Gutter in Brooklyn with Pants Exploder and Smokewagon. More info on that is on the Thee Facebooks event page.

Please enjoy:

In one of my frequent, restless and wild internet pontifications, Swiss metal maniac Erich Keller spontaneously erupted a bold theory about the year 1983. Basically, he pointed out that a lot of great metal bands began to stink in 1983 and the new breed of bands coming up were either lightweight bullshit or mega heavy real deal. 1983 was the year headbangers were forced to choose – are you gonna wimp out or go heavy? Be sure to check out Erich‘s excellent blog Good Bad Music For Bad, Bad Times for some killer vinyl rips from his immense collection. Warning! You will spend a lot of time there.

The 1983 challenge was put out right off the bat in January with two albums representing the extremes – Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Exciter‘s Heavy Metal Maniac. Pyromania was inescapable back then. They were constantly on the fuckin’ radio and MTV. Everyone in my high school would walk around saying that stupid “ooben eeben ouben glouben” thing that starts of one of their songs. Ugh! It was even worse when it seemed like the entire school bought those British flag shorts and sleeveless shirts. I’d been pretty indifferent to Def Lep prior to that point but now, as Tank would say in June of ‘83, “This Means War!” I wish I had scored a copy of Exciter‘s Heavy Metal Maniac when it first came out, it would have made the rest of the year easier for me. I was a diehard Motörhead fan and searching for more stuff like that. It wasn’t until the end of the year that I even saw a copy of Heavy Metal Maniac when I started making regular trips into NYC to buy records. Paul’s Record Hut in New Rochelle carried a lot of cool stuff but not much heavy.

Quiet Riot released Metal Health in March. I bought a copy at Crazy Eddie’s in Yonkers just because it had the word metal in the title. I tried convincing myself that I liked it because I paid full price but after a few plays I realized I’d been tricked. Fuck! Two other albums I picked up in March were better – Saxon‘s Power & The Glory and Thin Lizzy‘s Thunder & Lightning. Both albums had a lot of filler but there were enough killer jams to maintain the steady screams of “turn it down!” from my mother.

In April, things really began to change for me. On a trip to Bleecker Bob’s I saw an album called Forged in Fire by a band called Anvil. Remembering how I’d been burned by Quiet Riot I wasn’t sure if I should take a chance. It was an import, two or three bucks more than a domestic album. Three dollar bags of weeed were being phased out but you could always find someone to split a nickel bag with. Every dollar really mattered. Back then import albums were never shrink-wrapped so I checked out the lyric sheet and the raunchy lyrics of “Motormount” appealed to me so I picked it up. Thankfully the album was indeed heavy and not a repeat of the Metal Health experience. Metal on Metal held its own when I played it back to back with Ace of Spades and British Steel. Now the search was really on for more stuff like this.

Iron Maiden‘s Piece of Mind was a mandatory purchase in May of ‘83. I liked it a lot but not as much as Number of the Beast. Dio‘s Holy Diver came out the same month. I opted not to buy it but to tape it from a friend. By this point metal was getting bigger and most of my friends were getting into it, too. It was great not to have to buy every record. My after school job assembling trophies in my science teacher’s garage didn’t exactly pay big money so I had to spend wisely. My mother certainly wasn’t going to give me any money for albums, concert tickets, t-shirts, beer or weeed so I really had to hustle to keep up. Maiden‘s show at the Garden later in ‘83 was great, even with Quiet Riot opening up, but it was one of my last arena show for well over a decade. There were guys with Venom album covers painted on the back of their jackets and covered with patches of bands I needed to discover.

June was a huge month for me. Twisted Sister‘s second album You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll came out and had a lot of kick ass Godz-like biker rock. But even better were the import 12″ singles with unbelievably heavy live recordings on the B-sides. Twisted Sister had yet to break nationally in the US but were massive in the UK. They recorded some shows at the famous Marquee club and the versions of “Destroyer,” “Tear it Loose,” “Run for Your Life” and the blistering cover of “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)” they released let everyone know this wasn’t a phony glam band. Not yet, at least.

Ads in Kerrang let me know Motörhead was putting out a new album called Another Perfect Day featuring their new guitarist Brian Robertson of Thin Lizzy. Motörhead were my favorite band and I made sure to get a copy as soon as it hit the shelves at Bleecker Bob’s. I wore that album out. I fuckin’ loved it and didn’t care that it got bad reviews. I scored a ticket to see them play an all ages show at L’amours in Brooklyn at the end of July. I’d never been there, had no idea how to get there but knew I’d figure it out. That show was an eye opener for sure. It was the first time I ever heard “Fast as a Shark” by Accept, “Nuns Have No Fun” by Mercyful Fate and a ton of other killer jams. Motörhead’s set was devastating. I knew I couldn’t go back to sitting in the balcony of Madison Square Garden after standing about 12 feet away from Robbo‘s triple Marshall stacks. My ears rang for eight days.

Metallica‘s Kill ‘em All came out in July on a brand new East Coast record label called Megaforce. Anticipation for this album was high since the No Life Til Leather demo had been circulating fast and furiously. I scored a third or fourth generation dub of it not too long before the official album. It was a great tape but my copy was so hissy and washed out it was hard to hear anything. I also thought it was dubbed at the wrong speed because the vocals were so high pitched. The same day I picked up Kill ’em All I decided to buy another new release from Megaforce, Manowar‘s Into Glory Ride. Both these albums blew me away but Kill ’em All was exactly what I was looking for: Total Motörhead/Venom speed and aggression mixed with Priest/Maiden twin axe attackery.

Megaforce followed up those first two killer releases with another one, Raven‘s All for One. God damn! I was looking for heavy and Megaforce was delivering big time. It is to my eternal regret that I didn’t see the Kill ‘Em All For One tour. I knew they were playing L’amours but it wasn’t all ages and didn’t want to take a chance of not getting in with my crappy fake ID. It wasn’t until years later that I found out they played the Rising Sun in Yonkers. I should have tried getting in to that show. Ugh. What a drag.

Also out in August was Accept‘s new one Balls to the Wall. After hearing “Fast as a Shark” at that Motörhead show I immediately bought Accept‘s Restless & Wild. That album really blew me away but Balls was a bit of a disappointment. It had some great songs but nothing close to R&W. Black Sabbath‘s Born Again came out that same month and it felt like I was the only person in the world that liked it. I’d always been a huge Deep Purple fan and thought it was a great idea when Ian Gillan replaced Ronnie James Dio. I still listen to “Trashed” and “Zero the Hero” all the time. I taped a friend’s copy of Flick of the Switch by AC/DC, another album I still love. I liked it a lot more than For Those About to Rock but I’ve always been in the minority on that point, too. Shit that was a good summer!

Back to school in Zeptember brought Mötley Crüe‘s Shout at the Devil. I’d bought so many albums at Record World in the New Rochelle mall I had a coupon for a free one. I decided to give the new Crüe a try. It had a pentagram on the cover so how bad could it be? Turns out it was Quiet Riot time all over again for me. I liked some of it but was disappointed that the Satanic lyrics weren’t evil enough. I had no idea if Venom were really devil worshipers but “Sons of Satan” was the sound I preferred to “Too Young to Fall in Love.” And while we’re talking about Satan, I got a lot more than I bargained for when Mercyful Fate‘s Melissa was released by Megaforce in October. Jeezus, that album confused the hell out of me. The music was unbelievable. It sounded like the album I wanted Iron Maiden to make after Killers, but I was totally unprepared for the bizarre vocals of King Diamond (or “Queen Rhinestone,” as my hero Bob Muldowney of Kick*Ass Monthly used to call him). The Satanic lyrics didn’t bother me in the least but the screeching got on my nerves until I sort of got used to them. I actually like Fate a lot more now than I did then.

A big bummer in October was the release of Riot‘s Born in America. Restless Breed and Fire Down Under remain some of my favorite albums of all time but Born in America just didn’t cut it. The metal landscape was changing so fast. Riot went in a more commercial direction with disastrous results. After being dropped by Elektra, Riot wound up on a Canadian label. Even if they had the money to really push it, the album just wasn’t very good. It didn’t help that Quiet Riot was the biggest metal band around and no one gave a shit about just plain old Riot. Such a shame. They shoulda broken through in ‘81 or ‘82 and helped “Kick down the Walls” for the next wave of heavy bands. In November, I taped Headhunter by Krokus and Bark at the Moon by Ozzy but didn’t listen to them too much.

1983 ended with the sound of my future – Slayer‘s Show No Mercy. If any album forced you to decide which side you’re gonna be on, this was it. Some of the more mainstream headbangers were resistant to Kill ’em All at first but were starting to come around. Just as they’re getting used to heavier shit, here comes Slayer. On New Year’s Day 1984 I certainly wasn’t listening that fuckin’ U2 song. I had made my choice. What did you do?

THIS!

Not this.

After the stink I made when my first copy of Slayer?s World Painted Blood was stolen out of my mail, a review of the album seems the least I can do since Columbia was kind enough to send over another watermarked copy. Even if the review is about a month late. To whatever bastard took that original, first off, thanks for not ripping it and spreading it online, second, screw you anyway and third, I hope you got as much of a kick as I did out of the medical waste bag the disc came in.

World Painted Blood is Slayer?s 11th full-length studio album, and finds the original Bay Area thrashers working well within their element while adding just enough of the (relatively) unexpected to keep things interesting for themselves and anyone in their fanbase who might want to see them step outside their prescribed formula. The opening title track, for instance, shows some signs that the songwriting might be trying to reach beyond the fast-as-hell riffing and soloing. There?s a surprising amount of melody and the general feel more of a Slayer closing track, especially since at 5:53 it?s the longest song the band has put on a record since the title cut of Seasons in the Abyss in 1990.

If there?s one thing Slayer are at this point, though, it?s aware of what?s expected of them. They are workman metallers in the sense that they deliver what the fans want and offer their progressions almost on the sly. While ?World Painted Blood? is surprising in how up-front it is ideologically and in its actual placement, ?Unit 731? is not much more than an affirmation of Slayer?s influential and long-established methodology. This is the case for several of the cuts throughout, where it?s ?Slayer being Slayer.? ?Snuff,? the catchier, faster third track, does little to innovate, but satisfies on the grounds that it?s got Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King solos, psychotic Dave Lombardo drumming and Tom Araya?s vocals. It?s cookie cutter, but nearly 30 years later, it?s also still pretty badass.

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Fuck you, dude. Seriously. Fuck you.

Slayer‘s World Painted Blood is out Nov. 3. Only assholes steal records. And only real assholes steal records and then leave the torn envelope to go through to the recipient anyway, so they can know they’ve been ripped off.

You know, I fucking woke up this morning with my god damn left eye swollen shut from a fucking stye. I had this whole fucking day planned out, was gonna go visit the family, was gonna review a couple records, do some writing for school, and all I’ve done all day is sit here and be in fucking pain and then this bullshit?

Fuck it. Day over. I’m punching out. If anyone needs me, I’ll be hosting my own private Dexter marathon on my couch and wishing it was me stabbing everybody.