100% SLAYER (D.X. Ferris; Bloomsbury, 2008; 6623 Press, 2013)

    It’s important to know your audience when you write. It’ll keep you from making an embarrassing mistake. It can be tricky to find that sweet spot of being just clear enough to make sense while also not being excruciatingly boring. You know—hope—that your writing will be read by someone else who draws meaning or inspiration or humor from it. If you can’t be a sage, maybe at least you won’t be a fool.

    Take this blog as an example. I have a clear idea of who reads it because I have told a few friends about it directly and they’ve commented or texted or emailed me about it. I also post about these entries on Bluesky each week, which means I have a general sense of who out of my followers might have noticed it and clicked through. The stats I can see on my side of the screen reveal that there’s not a lot of people who read the posts each week. That’s fine by me because even when a post doesn’t get a lot of attention, I still look on it with pride. Having kept to this weekly writing regimen has made me consider more deeply what I’m reading, hearing, and watching. Being in better touch with my taste and shaping it along the way is its own reward.

    I bring all this up because I read a pair of books about the almighty SLAYER over the past week and it stuck out to me how the author of the books positioned SLAYER relative to someone who is not familiar with them but wants to learn more. The books are an accidental duology. The first is part of Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series and focuses on 1986’s poser-conquering “Reign in Blood.” The second is from 2013 and is by the same author; it’s titled SLAYER 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years [A Metal Band Biography]. See how nicely the implied 666 of the second book fits in with the title of the original Bloomsbury series to make these two books 100% about SLAYER? It’s clever! The second book is written as a response to the first in that Ferris felt there was more to say about SLAYER than the relatively limited focus on their third album would allow.

    That first book suffers a bit from its inclusion in the 33 1/3 series because of that need to consider a wider audience. There’s a sense of needing to make SLAYER matter to the imagined average music fan. I find that kind of framing unnecessary, especially for a band as blunt as SLAYER. You either get them or you don’t. There’s no way to win someone over with words when you could just play them the record, right? It’s making me think of the quip (often attributed to ELVIS COSTELLO) that writing about music makes as much sense as dancing about architecture. In this case, anyone’s writing really fails to capture the power, the insanity of that record. The book begins with epigraphs from Drew Gilpin Faust and Cormac McCarthy. I don’t know if either of them has ever heard “Reign in Blood,” so I don’t really need to have SLAYER “elevated” by their thoughtful comments here. I also don’t need validation in the quality of the SLAYER catalog in the form of a GRAMMY nomination or win. The essential of SLAYER has nothing to do with awards or meditations on life and death. As I said above, if you don’t get it, it’s not for you to get.

    OK, now I’m in the pig-headed frame of mind to write about SLAYER for real. I’m maybe close to the mindset I was in during the winter of 2004-2005, when I listened to nothing but the cassette of “Reign in Blood” whenever I was in my car. As Ferris notes, the album is short enough that it fits on a single side of the tape. It’s made for endless playback. That winter led me to write about SLAYER in my first zine, Thunder Theft, which was all about ‘80s metal. Of the opening track of “Reign in Blood,” I wrote “the mid-paced riff in ‘Angel of Death’ is the most punishing thing a human could possibly convey with instruments. Every time Dave Lombardo hits the snare, I lose 50 brain cells.” I will stand by that comment. I also like what I wrote about “Postmortem,” which was “the loose swagger of the drums makes it simultaneously delightful and debilitating.” Don’t worry, I wrote about the lyrics and riffs, too. Reading Ferris’ book about this album makes me glad that past me had noticed the drumming. He argues a few times that technically precise drummers like Paul Bostaph or John Dette, each of whom would later sit behind the kit with SLAYER, don’t quite hit the same way that Lombardo did. Basically, Ferris correctly claims that it’s not just Lombardo’s use of double-bass kicks in “Angel of Death” that made him a legend; his feel for the beat made him impossible to replace.

    That song is infamous for reasons beyond its pummeling attack; the lyrics are about Josef Mengele’s monstrous and immoral experiments on Jewish adults and children in Nazi death camps. The typical defense of this song is that the listener knows Mengele is evil and does not need to be told that. Of course. The bigger issue is that using a topic of such grotesque violence as the source of imagery for a song is more than a bit gauche. Yes, as Ferris notes, the lyrics eventually call Mengele “rancid,” which implies that lyricist Jeff Hanneman disapproves of all of the horrors cataloged in the song. I’m certain he did. All the same, the band’s defensiveness about this song’s content never sat right with me and there’s nothing in these books that changes that. (It should be noted that tracing Tom Araya’s and Dave Lombardo’s ancestry to Chile and Cuba, respectively, is irrelevant to absolving the band of writing a song that uses Jewish suffering for shock value.) There’s really nothing else new to be said about this song at this point, so I will add that Hanneman’s use of abacinate has always intrigued me and I wish there were a more interesting story to how he came to use it (other than that he likely found it in a thesaurus).

    If nothing else, I was hoping for some kind of explanation for how Hanneman came up with the solo on “Necrophobic,” which is my all-time favorite SLAYER solo. Excuse me, they don’t have solos, they have leads. It’s incredible no matter what you call it. For all the mutilate-the-fretboard pyrotechnics he (and Kerry King) have thrown down throughout their careers, I don’t know why this one stands out. There’s something special about the way he deploys the whammy bar, I guess. Given Hanneman’s stubbornness, it makes sense that he never went on the record about how he played guitar. In Ferris’ 2013 book, he shares a story about Hanneman flaking on a promotional obligation for the company that makes his guitars. The band’s manager called him up and he said something along the lines of “I like playing guitars but I don’t like talking about them.” So I guess we’ll never know. Years ago, the second-floor apartment where I lived was near an intersection, so I would hear plenty of car stereos when there were red lights. Once, as if from a dream, a car pulled up blasting “Necrophobic” right as Hanneman’s lead started… before I could get to my window to yell SLAAAAYYYYEEERRRR! the light changed, the lead ended, and the driver left. It was a perfect moment.

    Other cool moments pop up throughout the 2013 text. One that stands out because it made me put the book down from laughing so hard was the story of SLAYER opening for JUDAS PRIEST in 1988. Kerry King apparently kept this story to himself for years, only revealing it at Hanneman’s memorial service. King didn’t drink until he was 21, so he didn’t have much of a tolerance. He and Hanneman were out with some of the road crew from the band they idolized. King wasn’t feeling well and said he wanted to be in the front seat. The driver was having none of it and told King he’d be fine. He wasn’t—he puked all over himself because the child-resistant safety window didn’t go down far enough for him to stick his head fully out the window. Hanneman laughed mercilessly at him, so King wiped some of the vomit onto Hanneman, who only laughed louder and harder at the spectacle (Ferris, 2013, p. 136). It’s disgusting but it’s also humanizing. The very end of the book gets to a similar place, where Ferris has listed a few brief tributes to Hanneman after he died. It’s Ian Christe’s from Bazillion Points that has stuck with me the most. I could read a book of cool little stories about Jeff Hanneman from his friends and fans forever.

    I still dig SLAYER. I haven’t thought about them this much in years. I am still uninterested in “South of Heaven” or anything after it. (The title track is good, though.) Although I learned plenty of the ins and outs of the band’s career (and lots more about Dave Lombardo’s personal life) from the 6623 book, I still can’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t the intended audience for the 33 1/3 book. That’s the tricky thing about that book series—you are signaling to the reader that you are passionate and informed enough to write a full book on an album, yet by being part of a book series that has to have some kind of consistency of voice, your own is lost. Better then to double down and  take things into your own hands with your own publishing press to make a sort-of sequel that is pure fandom, editorial oversight be damned.

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    It would be a little strange if my parents hadn’t enjoyed music as much as they did in their youth. They came of age in the ‘60s and were as marketed to as possible in their teen years. My mom prefers The BEATLES, my dad, The STONES. Without Mick and Keith’s influence, I may not even exist—the first time my dad spoke to my mom was when he walked up to her at the jukebox at a bar in Lawrence, Kansas, and said “Play The STONES.” The woman who would later become my mother told her friends that night that she met the man she was going to marry.

    Appropriately, then, when I, the youngest of three siblings, came along, my mom had Chicago’s V103 on the car radio nonstop. The “Oldies & Dusties” formed my initial understandings of what music could mean. I wasn’t even five years old, but being in the car with Mom or Dad when that station was on had a deep impact on me. My favorite song of all time is “My Girl” by The TEMPTATIONS, likely as a result of those trips. A very close second is the a-side of this BILLY STEWART single. It is a perfect song.

    Of course, as a kid, I had no idea who BILLY STEWART was, or that he had died in an awful car accident in 1970. I just knew I loved the song where the vocal went “sitting in the park / waiting for you” and “But nevertheless, I said / you got me waiting.” All these years later and I still love hearing the way he delivers nevertheless in that line. Its four syllables blend right into I said and that string of sounds delights. 

    The lyrics caught my attention for their sounds as much as their meaning. Nothing much happens in the song. He’s sitting in the park, he’s waiting, and then he’s gotta go. Yet, Stewart’s vocals make this three-act play sound like the most important series of events that have ever happened to anyone. I hang on to every word, especially the three-part rhyme of bench and fence and sense. Part of what makes the song so accessible and so memorable is that it is made of such everyday terms as these. As much as I appreciate lyrical imagery or clever phrasings, I see the value of simplicity as well. The instruments are uncluttered and give his vocals room to glow. The refrain of “sha-la-la-la” in the background throughout the verses and choruses occupies a space between the instruments and the vocals that helps to structure the song. It’s within the verse, after the chorus, and ends the bridge. Through it all, the focus on the all-to-human need to wait, to be patient, remains. This song will be there for you even if Billy’s girl won’t.

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Negative Space (Gillian Linden, Norton, 2024)

    As I mentioned in the review of the recent KRIEGSHÖG album that I wrote a few weeks back, I have a hard time staying away from hyperbole when writing about hardcore punk. The sound of the genre is extreme, so the words I use to discuss the music need to match that intensity. Or, so I think. It’s kind of the same with the books I choose to read for myself or to review for this blog. I am selecting certain books from a list of all possible books and I am not going to waste my own time with reading something I might not like all that much. Were I accepting submissions for materials to review here, I wouldn’t be so eager to heap praise on the things I spend my time thinking and writing about. In that light, it makes sense that much of what I have to say about the media I feature on the blog would be positive. It’s not that I’m afraid to be negative or critical. There’s just a selection bias at play with what you’ll read here. Maybe someday I’ll be more willing to write about things that are mid, things I only low-key enjoy, or things that are kind of whatever. For the time being, you’ll have to bear with a little more of my effusive encomiums.

    I’m a sucker for a book or movie or show with a teacher as the protagonist. It’s as simple as wanting to see how much I can relate to or connect with the characters and caricatures in the text. It might have nothing directly to do with teaching, but the way Gillian Linden handles the incessant rumination of her nameless narrator really hit home for me. There are at least two times in the course of the week that comprises the novel where she reflects on preparing for a class discussion of a given text with her sixth- or ninth-grade students. It’s as important for her to plan what to say as it is what not to say. That second-guessing, that boundary setting when dealing with literature and with children, can be a source of joy and worry in equal parts. The chance to turn a group of students on to a new idea or to make them see a familiar topic in a new light is exhilarating and represents one of the deeply satisfying aspects of teaching. Just the same, considerations of how much is too much—especially for young adolescents such as those in the school where the narrator teaches—can be debilitating. Add to that the prospect of teaching some students in person and some via videoconferencing due to COVID protocols, and the narrator’s decision process is even more fraught. Teaching is hardly the only job where tough or unclear choices are a daily occurrence. Linden has done well to express this part of our shared humanity through a teacher’s eyes and mind.

    Some of the paradoxes and complexities that are specific to teaching appear in conversations the narrator has with her colleagues or her husband. In discussing her conflicted feelings about being an authority figure, she compares leading her class to steering a ship. She doesn’t want that level of authority or responsibility. She wants her students to feel just as involved in steering the classroom as she is. She wants to flatten the hierarchy, but then catches herself and says to her husband, “the thing is… not having a hierarchy only works if they listen to me” (p. 24). It’s a tough balance to walk as a teacher when you want to give up some control of the classroom to the students in the class. There’s a need to have an escape hatch, a safety ripcord, an emergency brake that you can use to restore order if the time you share begins to slide into oblivion. That’s where that elusive pursuit of control, of authority can easily go astray. No one likes being ignored, especially when they gave up their power to be heard in the first place.

    Later in the week, the narrator finds herself at a new faculty meeting. New faculty in this case being defined as having spent up to six years at the school. She notices an administrative assistant, Miles, at the meeting and it prompts her to recall an interaction she’d had with him previously. He’s apparently very attuned to how much he eats and quite candidly shares that he is always trying to be smaller. She confides in us that “if Miles had been a student, he’d generate streams of emails to grade deans, department chairs, the school psychologist” (p. 49). The charge of hypocrisy, or even the pointing out of inconsistent behavior, is low-hanging fruit when critiquing another person’s habits. Still, it can be hard not to turn into a know-it-all version of a teacher when dealing with another adult’s apparent shortcomings. Learning to have tact and give grace to students as well as to the adults in the building is one of those mental gear shifts that teachers need to enact multiple times a day. It can be exhausting to know what to say or what not to say in these situations, too.

    Equally present in the text are the narrator and her husband’s children. They are younger than the students she teaches, so the need to switch conversational registers when speaking to them provides further exhaustion. I’ll admit to howling when I read the following passage. She is explaining to her children that she recently learned about how the universe is constantly expanding. Her daughter Jane, the older of the kids, asks her a question she cannot immediately answer, so she replies, “I have to read more before we can discuss this.” Marvelous. A wonderful phrase. I often use “I don’t know, but let’s find out” in similar situations. Her daughter is having none of it, though. She tells her mom “Let’s just find a video.” Deadly. Why read a book when a video can tell you the same information, but faster? (You and I know it’s not the same, but try explaining that to a child in a way they will understand.) There are earlier scenes in the book where Jane is shown to be enraptured with “the otter show,” which also provides a string of interesting facts that she shares with her mom. Whether these disparate pieces of information can be said to be an education or represent knowledge when compared to the deep inquiry in a disciplined way of thinking about the world is one of the most challenging aspects of teaching students in 2025. They have more access to more free-floating data than any teacher could have had at their age. How to help them shape it into useful or actionable information, as well as why that process is even necessary, remains fundamental to education itself. Linden understands this difficulty and has done an excellent job of revealing some of the negative space in a teacher's inner life.

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    It’s fun to read an imaginary account of what it might have been like to get into death metal in a shitty Florida suburb in 1987. One of the teen characters is Leslie, a bisexual Black twink who is very much into glam metal (HANOI ROCKS, etc.). This collection of traits and attributes is very far from the cultural imaginary of people into death metal at the time. So death metal truthers out there might say it’s not a realistic depiction of the scene. As masculine as the music is (not to mention the gender of the primary movers in the international network of tape-traders that made it happen), I am sure there are many others besides greasy whites (as represented in the other two main characters) who were drawn to it at the time.

    The narrator, Kip, is a domestic abuse survivor who occasionally lapses into violent outbursts whenever he sees a weak person being threatened. That seems a bit more in line with the idea of who might typically like death metal—someone who has experienced trauma and is using extreme music to cope with the world they’ve inherited. He lives with his grandma, too.

    Kira is the third main character—a brash tomboy who is constantly in search of sicker sounds and experiences. After a DEICIDE / CANNIBAL CORPSE / DEATH gig, when the others are glowing in the gig’s power on the way home, she punctures their reverie by saying the newly formed DEICIDE isn’t nearly as great as the other fans think they are and that the cartoony gore of CANNIBAL CORPSE is better because they don’t dress up for their gigs and do silly theatrical stuff with blood. She suffers no fools.

    This mix of characters is varied enough that you will not find yourself getting confused about anything. The way Kip, the narrator with the chip on his shoulder, transitions from kind of holding death metal at arm’s length to fully embracing it is really a fun experience to join. He has one of my favorite lines in the whole book with “I miss the days of sweatpants and Air Jordans” (p. 130). Those are the cultural signifiers I associate with death metal, even though I know that’s a silly and limiting view of the genre. It’s still a solid epigrammatic take.

    Wray is knowledgeable enough to include real bands and releases, but I do like the made up bands and songs as well. He conjures a band named PRIMORDIAL SIN with a song called “Bedrest” in one scene that itself is a slice of fantastical reinvention and memory. It sounds enough like a real band that I was mystified when I couldn’t find them on Metal Archives. I mean there are weirder bands such as EMBALMER who have a song called “The Necro-filing Cabinet,” so he was at least making this imaginary band believable. It’s tricky to pull that off without it seeming too corny or obvious. (Or maybe I’m not as well versed in death metal as I would like to pretend.) I guess I would be curious to know whether someone who has zero familiarity with this scene would have been able to pick out which band in this book doesn’t actually exist.

    I’ll say it was fun to follow the journey of these three friends over the years. If it’s not clear from the book’s cover art, they begin with death metal, then venture to LA for the denouement of the glam scene before ending up in Norway on the cusp of the notoriety of the black metal scene centered around Helvete. I learned about this book from the weekly email from a local suburban bookshop a few years back. One of the workers said it was a perfect Father’s Day gift for “any dad over the age of 35 who grew up listening to metal.” If you fit that description, I think it’ll work for you, too. Even if you aren’t an elder millennial or a dad or a metalhead (current or former), there’s plenty to dig into here. You don’t need to know the references to enjoy the narrative.

(This review originally appeared in a slightly shorter version in issue #3 of the zine Anxiety's False Promise, published in March 2024.)

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