Jeff Hanneman in rehearsals (Photo: Slayer website)
Yesterday was a particularly sad day for me. Not only did I attend a memorial event for our friend and former neighbour Ian McKie (I’ll write more about that at a later date, once I’ve processed the news a bit more), but I also learned of the death of Slayer guitarist and songwriter Jeff Hanneman.
The first time I heard Slayer was in a church basement in Whitley Bay. The album was Reign In Blood, which is still regarded by many as the definitive thrash metal album. The album was released in October 1986 and as I was on a Borders Scripture Union summer camp I guess it must have been 1987.
Slayer was the first metal band I saw in concert, at the Edinburgh Playhouse in 1988, promoting their South of Heaven album; Nuclear Assault were the support act.
Jeff Hanneman suffered a spider bite in 2011, which resulted in a condition called necrotizing fasciitis, a rare and horrible flesh-eating disease which almost immediately put his life at risk. As was reported on the Slayer website recently,
for a couple of days after he went to the ER, things were touch-and-go. There was talk that he might have to have his arm amputated, and we didn’t know if he was going to pull through at all. He was in a medically-induced coma for a few days and had several operations to remove the dead and dying tissue from his arm. So, understand, he was in really, really bad shape. It’s been about a year since he got out of the hospital, and since then, he had to learn to walk again, he’s had several painful skin grafts, he’s been in rehab doing exercises to regain the strength in his arm. (Source)
Despite his rehab reportedly going well, and making an appearance at The Big Four show at Coachella in 2011, Hanneman never rejoined Slayer in a full time capacity. His place in the band was filled on tour by Exodus guitarist Gary Holt.
Sadly, the news broke yesterday that he had died from liver failure, although it was made clear on some reports that as yet there is no clear indication whether this was directly related to the spider bite.
This is the news currently on the Slayer website:
Slayer is devastated to inform that their bandmate and brother, Jeff Hanneman, passed away at about 11AM this morning [Thursday, May 2] 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. (Source)
I know I’m a metalhead, but this is just such a beautiful and perfectly written song.
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in fields of gold
So she took her love
For to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold
Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the fields of barley
We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in fields of gold
See the west wind move like a lover so
Upon the fields of barley
Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth
Among the fields of gold
I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear in the days still left
We’ll walk in fields of gold
We’ll walk in fields of gold
Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
This year was a pretty frugal one for me in terms of album buying, but a very prosperous one in terms of free albums acquired on Freecycle. I added only 15 albums and EPs to my collection, and five of those were free (but not free as in pirated!).
How To Kill A Zombie is a death metal band from right here in Fife, Scotland. The guitarist, Chris Marr, is a friend of mine from St Andrews.
I’d heard a few demos of the band before I bought their EP, and I narrowly missed seeing them live here in Anstruther in 2011, but I sustained a back injury the afternoon before their gig. I need to make a point of seeing them live in 2013.
Musically they remind me of elements of old-school, British thrash band Xentrix, American thrashers Lamb of God, and God Forbid. Their songs are very well written, structured, and played. This is a band that definitely deserves a wider audience.
My current favourite track on the EP is track 2, ‘Revolution’.
9. Steve Lawson—11 Reasons Why 3 is Greater Than Everything (Remastered)
Strictly speaking this isn’t a 2012 album, it’s a 2011 album that was remastered and re-released as a free download. (I’m sure Steve will correct me if I’m wrong.) I should also declare that Steve is a friend, not that that guarantees that I’ll love everything that he puts out.
Steve Lawson is a critically acclaimed solo bass player. Which somehow seems to do him an injustice. It might be better to say that he’s a critically acclaimed musician who happens to express himself using a bass guitar and a floor-full of technical gadgetry that enables him to accompany himself.
This is an album that I should play more. As with much of Steve’s music, it’s beautiful, gentle and thought provoking. (Unlike the harmonica solo performed by a four year old that I’m listening to in the background while writing this!)
My stand-out tracks on the album are the opening two tracks: ‘A year afloat’ and ‘Travelling north’.
8. Dodgy—Stand Upright in a Cool Place
Dodgy’s Free Peace Sweet album was pretty much my soundtrack of 1996. I’ve had a soft spot for Dodgy ever since, but had never seen them live until this summer when they rolled into Edinburgh and played a blinding gig in a tiny venue backing onto Waverley railway station.
This is a fabulous return to form for the English three-piece power-pop band; their first album since reforming in 2007. The songs are fun, complex and layered. It’s a rare album that lifts my spirits quite as much as this one does. Brilliant stuff.
My current favourite track is ‘What became of you’.
7. Down—Down IV, Part 1: The Purple EP
This is the one and only CD that I got for Christmas, last week. It has done well to sneak in to number seven so soon.
This is the first of what is rumoured to be four EPs, supposedly to get the music out to fans quicker than waiting for a full album. And it’s a great start with Down’s signature laid-back, southern, stoner metal groove to each of the tracks with more than a tip of the hat to Black Sabbath on a couple (the opening of ‘The Curse’, anyone?).
My favourite track just now is ‘Misfortune Teller’.
Here’s the video for their first single from the EP, ‘Witchtripper’:
6. Candlemass—Psalms for the Dead
I first got into Candlemass when I heard ‘Bewitched’ from 1987′s Nightfall on Tommy Vance’s Friday Night Rock Show on BBC Radio 1. Candlemass were my first introduction to doom metal, and to my mind/ear they are still one of the best. (Writing this reminds me that I’ve still got five of their studio albums still to buy.)
Psalms for the Dead is supposedly Candlemass’s final studio album, an album about the presence and absence of time, about leaving, goodbyes and farewells. And true to the album’s theme Candlemass parted company with their fifth vocalist, American, Robert Lowe shortly after the album was released, replacing him with Swedish vocalist Mats Levén (At Vance, Therion, etc.).
All in this is a great album… apart from the intro to the final track ‘Black as time’ which is a spoken-word piece and possibly one of the cheesiest intros to a metal song I’ve ever heard; and it reprises halfway through the song. If I can ever be bothered I’ll edit it out! Which is a real shame as ‘Black as time’ is one of my favourite tracks on the album.
5. Prong—Carved into Stone
If there is a band listed here that deserves to be better known then it’s Prong. Fronted by Tommy Victor (who has also performed with Danzig and Ministry) the list of former band members is like a who’s who of alternative metal: Swans, Danzig, Fear Factory, Godflesh, Jesu, Killing Joke, Murder Inc.
There are a number of bands who can churn out fabulous riff after fabulous riff. Helmet is one, Prong is most definitely another. And this album is packed full of them. If I could be in any metal band on the planet then I’d want to be in Prong. I would never get tired of playing their twisting, heavy, melodic riffs.
My current favourite track is the friendly-sounding ‘Revenge… best served cold’.
4. Stone Sour—House of Gold & Bones, Part 1
This is the fourth studio album from Stone Sour, featuring Slipknot front-man Corey Taylor and guitarist Jim Root (if you don’t include the special edition of Come what(ever) may) and it rocks!
If you like your metal melodic, heavy and thought-provoking with a few dalliances into acoustic ballads then Stone Sour is the band for you.
This album is the first part of a double, concept album. It’s a reflection of how crazy this year has been that I’ve still to read the lyrics and the booklet to figure out what the plot is.
My favourite song currently is ‘Tired’, simply for the opening riff.
3. Jessica Curry—Dear Esther Official Soundtrack
For the last few years I’ve bought the latest titles into the Call of Duty or Battlefield PC games franchises. This year (until I received LEGO The Lord of the Rings in late November) has been about only one game: Dear Esther.
Set on a remote and abandoned Hebredean island, this is not so much a game as an interactive novel. It is simply the most beautiful game that I’ve ever played, and I suspect will ever play. Each time I’ve experienced it (not just played it but even watching walkthroughs on YouTube) it left me feeling contemplative and… I guess, in awe. It is quite astonishing.
And the soundtrack simply adds to the game’s beauty. It is hauntingly beautiful, and quite spooky in places, particularly if you’re listening to it in the pitch black, in bed, as I have done on more than one occasion this year.
There is a free version of the soundtrack available, taken from when the game was a mod rather than a standalone release. I also bought the full, final soundtrack which is slightly different. I only wish there was also an audio book version that included Nigel Carrington‘s perfect voice-over.
2. Storm Corrosion—Storm Corrosion
This is an album that I had been looking forward to for quite some time: the collaboration between Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt and Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson.
The resulting album, the self-titled Storm Corrosion didn’t disappoint.
It’s a thoughtful and ponderous album that in many ways helps make sense of both the last Opeth album Heritage and Steven Wilson’s 2011 solo album Grace for drowning. It’s an album that you have to listen to again and again to get into, to unlock, to appreciate the various layers and subtleties. It could easily be a soundtrack, as demonstrated perfectly in the official video for the opening track ‘Drag ropes’.
1. Testament—Dark Roots of Earth
There are some who say that the Big Four of thrash (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax) should have been the Big Five with Bay Area thrashers Testament filling that final spot. I actually think this album equals, if not betters, anything that the Big Four have put out in the last couple of years. This is a great metal album.
The album kicks off with the adrenaline-fueled ‘Rise Up’, tanks through ‘Native Blood’, before slowing down a little with the melodic but crushingly heavy ‘Dark Roots of Earth’ that reminds me in parts of 1992′s The Ritual, which is not surprising given Alex Skolnick’s return to the band.
The rest of the album is a lesson in how good old school thrash metal sounds with modern production.
One of my favourite aspects of this album is the bonus CD which includes a rather disappointing and incomplete cover of Queen’s ‘Dragon Attack’ from The Game (1980), and a rather better cover of Iron Maiden’s ‘Powerslave’, from the 1984 album of the same name.
LAST FM CHARTS
Of course, this year I’ve listened to more than just the music that has come out this year. Whenever I listen to music on my PC, and I’m connected to the internet, the tracks are recorded to my Last.fm account.
My top-ten most played:
Artists
Metallica (367 tracks)
Lamb of God (324 tracks)
Opeth (321 tracks)
Prong (246 tracks)
Testament (223 tracks)
Stone Sour (188 tracks)
Big Country (184 tracks)
Porcupine Tree (179 tracks)
Paradise Lost (155 tracks)
Iron Maiden (154 tracks)
Albums
Lamb of God—Sacrament (341 tracks)
Porcupine Tree—The Incident (334 tracks)
Opeth—Ghost Reveries (293 tracks)
Anthrax—Worship Music (281 tracks)
A Perfect Circle—Mer De Noms (268 tracks)
Mastodon—The Hunter (268 tracks)
Godflesh—Streetcleaner (266 tracks)
Slipknot—Slipknot (254 tracks)
Opeth—In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall (234 tracks)
This is a marvellous version of Mastodon‘s “Leviathan” on piano. As the video says on YouTube: “One amazing album, one uninterrupted take, one white whale.”
That’s the kind of performance that makes me wish that I’d stuck with piano lessons.
I do rather like Tom Waits, ever since I heard my friend Richard Grocock singing a Waits’ song at a National Youth Choir of Great Britain course cabaret.
An album that I’ve been anticipating for quite some time is Storm Corrosion: a collaborative project between Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth and Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree. It was released in the UK on Monday 7 May.
I loved the last Porcupine Tree album, The Incident; the last Opeth album, Heritage, has been a grower; I enjoyed Steven Wilson’s second solo album Grace for Drowning. I knew that this album wouldn’t sound like any of these.
In an interview with Steven Wilson about the record he said
“If anything, it’s even more orchestral, more stripped down, even more dark, twisted and melancholy… but it certainly feels like it comes from the same place as Heritage and Grace For Drowning, which indeed it does because it was written during the same period. We were, in a way, egging each other on to do those particular records but also at the same time coming up with the music that’s now going to be on Storm Corrosion. So it’s a very orchestral record, as you’d expect, the songs are quite long and develop in unusual ways. I’m realistic about it, that half the people are going to hate it and half the people are going to fall in love with it. I’d be happy with that anyway.”
The album is dark and atmospheric and beautiful and odd and unexpected and it has the feel of a 1960s soundtrack (which is perhaps why I like the video to Drag Ropes so much). In many ways it reminds me of Richard Thompson‘s 1997 collaboration Industry with bassist Danny Thompson (no relation).
Dodgy playing live at Edinburgh's Electric Circus (L-R: Andy Miller, Nigel Clark, Mathew Priest)
On Wednesday evening I drove down to South Queensferry, teamed up with my brother Eddie, and the pair of us took the train in to Edinburgh Wavelery to see—what Wikipedia calls—’English power pop trio’ Dodgy in concert at The Electric Circus on Market Street (which is right next to the station).
The summer of 96
In 1996 I was working with homeless young people in London, and living in a very nice basement flat in Eccleston Square with my good friend (and former National Youth Choir of Great Britain member) Jonny Coore. We had a summer of beautiful weather. It was the summer of Euro 96, which was hosted by England, and the city was alive; the atmosphere was electric. It was the year that I got engaged for the first time. And the soundtrack to that summer of 1996 was Free Peace Sweet by Dodgy.
In many ways it was a strange choice of album for me. I was heavily into metal (still am), I was trying my hardest to avoid anything with the ‘Britpop‘ label, like Oasis and Blur, and yet here I was listening to Dodgy again and again and again.
But the song writing was fabulous, and I loved the use of acoustic guitars throughout the songs.
Live
I was always under the misconception that Dodgy were from Birmingham. Apparently they started out as a band called Purple, a trio from Bromsgrove and Redditch in Worcestershire, who moved to London had a few line-up changes and re-badged themselves as Dodgy.
So, they were in London in 1996. I was in London in 1996. How on earth did we never bump into each other?! I would have loved to have seen them in concert back then.
So I made up for it this time around. They were coming to Edinburgh on their UK tour. I live about 50 miles from Edinburgh. I bought a ticket. My brother bought a ticket. And on Wednesday evening, I stood about 10 feet from the tiny stage at The Electric Circus and grinned from ear to ear for about 90 minutes.
It was an intimate gig. Dodgy were fun, and professional, and played a fabulous set. Despite my dodgy back (no pun intended), which was really beginning to hurt by the end of the set, I could have stood and listened to them for another 90 minutes.
Guitarist Andy Miller stood stage left behind a lap steel guitar on a stand. His playing was intricate and delicate but never too much. At times his guitar sounded more like a keyboard and I loved it for that. Every now and then he would look out to the crowd and smile. He obviously seemed to be enjoying himself.
Vocalist, guitarist and bassist Nigel Clark stood centre of stage, armed for most of the evening with an acoustic guitar, occasionally taking bass for a few of their earlier hits. The rest of the evening bass duties were handled very comfortably by a friend of the band. There was a warmness and confidence about his stage presence that suited the venue.
Drummer Mathew Priest has a fabulously simple drum set-up but he plays it so melodically and with such space. If I was a drummer he’s the kind of drummer I would want to be. I enjoyed his between songs chats, and we all marvelled at his knitted drumstick warmers in what I presumed were Aston Villa colours.
I don’t get out much these days. That’s my choice. I have three small children and a wife to support. So when I do get out to see a live band it’s a real treat. I’m glad I made the effort this time. Dodgy live were more than I expected. The venue was much smaller than I had expected but as a result there was an intimacy and a relaxed feeling to the gig that I relished.
The gig also reminded me how much I miss playing in a band live. Maybe one day I’ll get back to it. I sure hope so.
As my brother and I stood on the platform at Edinburgh Waverley to catch our return to Dalmeny, Eddie asked me “So, have you got any other bands you’d like to see live on your… bucket list?”
If you don’t already know, a ‘bucket list’ is a list of things you’d like to do before you kick the bucket (die).
“Why?” I asked, “If I don’t are you just going to shove me in front of the next train?”
Dodgy were definitely on my list. I’ve scored them off now… but do you know what? I think I might just write “Dodgy” on that list again.
Epilogue
A few weeks ago I got a phone call from my Mum.
“Hello Mum!”
“What’s this I hear about you going to a dodgy gig?”
“The band are called Dodgy.”
“Ah… right,” she said, obviously sounding quite relieved.
