Slayer's social media outlets are reporting that founding member Jeff Hanneman died Thursday morning at 11am, of liver failure. A constant of the band from his first meeting with Kerry King in 1981 until taking his leave from the band in 2011 due to a case of necrotizing fasciitis potentially contracted from a spider bite while on tour, Hanneman is undoubtedly one of the most influential guitarists in metal history.

It's too early to say if the lingering effects of the illness directly contributed to his death this morning, but as recently as April 8 Tom Araya was quoted as saying that Hanneman was still very much a part of Slayer and would return soon, after working on new material he was writing. Below is the post, taken from Slayer's Facebook account.

See also:
-The 10 Heavy Metal Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
-Slayer Helped Get Me Through Chemotherapy
-Dave Lombardo Leaves Slayer, Says He was Forced Out for Questioning Finances

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Wikipedia

Word's just come in from the New York Times and AP: the country music legend behind dozens of perfect songs, including "He Stopped Loving Her Today," "Tender Years" and "A Picture of Me (Without You)," died Friday in Nashville. The Saratoga, Texas native and honey-voiced singer died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center after being hospitalized for fever and irregular blood pressure. He was 81 years old.

Jones' influence spanned the decades, as the AP points out: He had chart-topping songs in five separate decades. His songs ranged from the joys of small-town Saturday nights to heartbreak ballads, which in his later years became the iconic sound of pure country (see: "These Days (I Barely Get By)."

Pour one out for George.

Last Sunday, Dallas lost a true beacon in the scene. Christopher Evans Kelly, a.k.a. DJ Quick Chris, died of pneumonia and congestive heart failure after a year-long fight with lymphoma.

"Even through his ongoing stays in the hospital, Chris continued to create new and original sounds," says his sister, Melanie Kelly. "Anyone lucky enough to visit him would be... inspired by his talent and creativity, as he would explain his thought process in creating his new works."

Kelly was a founding member of Neva Dug Disco, the hip-hop collective & label home to artists like Wordlife and Tape Mastah Steph. He was an incredibly talented turntablist, and spread his passion for true school, four elements hip-hop throughout the community. In his DJ career, he shared the stage with the likes of Hieroglyphics, Planet Asia, Wu-tang Clan, and Questlove. But in speaking with his friends and family, I soon realized that Kelly's legacy carries much more than an accomplished hip-hop CV.

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Jeff Fielder

Last Friday, Voice Media Group announced the winners of their first music writing awards. This winning piece by Jesse Sykes first appeared in Seattle Weekly's print edition.

By Jesse Sykes

As I was growing up in New York state--where the residents want you to know they don't live in "The City"--the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Woodstock, and the music of The Band were all entangled in the region's mythology; on occasion, the boundary between the distant and recent past blurred completely. The Redcoats moved through our town during the Revolutionary War, 109 of our residents served in the Civil War, The Band's music--made a familiar 100 miles away--was a ubiquitous presence, and Woodstock took place on a farm down the road from a house our family used as a hunting cabin. In my young mind, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, Levon Helm and Max Yasgur all seemed to be of the same era, one far removed from my own.

Life as a child is surreal anyway, but my hometown of Pound Ridge was like re-enactment bootcamp, with the adults hell-bent on making little anachronisms of us all. Fife-and-drum corps was a rite of passage for most, and Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Fourth of July events all ended with gunfire at the village cemetery set on a beautiful hillside in the middle of town: "Burial Hill," they appropriately named it, where the graves seemed like museum installations. As kids, it seemed unfathomable to think that you could be set on that hillside for eternity, lying beside strangers who had died in ways that we couldn't comprehend.

Most of the homes in the area were hundreds of years old, and came with incredible stories. But more important, they came with ghosts. Even the newer houses seemed haunted, and we kids were sure they were built on Native American burial grounds. My first meaningful kiss was on the "pound" that Pound Ridge was named for--the flat, long hill where the Native Americans kept their game animals. Roads ran through these ridges: "Pound Ridge Road," "High Ridge," "Long Ridge." These ridges, with their dark winding roads, held secrets, waged bets, mercilessly took lives on blind curves, and provided boundless beauty and depth of field. If you listened, there was the sense that they were willing to reveal their secrets.

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On December 23, thrash metal lost another legendary pioneer when Mike Scaccia, lead guitarist for Ministry and Rigor Mortis, died shortly after collapsing during a performance at the Rail Club for Rigor Mortis/Warbeast frontman Bruce Corbitt's 50th birthday celebration.

Scaccia, who suffered from heart disease, died of a sudden heart attack, according to Tarrant County medical examiner's office. He was only 47 years old.

In 1983, Rigor Mortis formed when drummer Harden Harrison and bassist Casey Orr met Scaccia, who shared an interest in horror and metal. The band not only developed a sound that influenced generations of metal bands, but also created an underground metal scene that still inspires generations of North Texans.

Although Scaccia left the band in 1991 to join Ministry, he still had a special place in his heart for his original bandmates and later reunited with the original lineup in 2005, performed at Ozzfest in 2008 and recently recorded their first studio album in 25 years, Slaves to the Grave.

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The marquee at the Continental Club in Austin over the weekend

Nick Curran passed away on Saturday, October 6, after a two-year battle with oral cancer. He was just 35 years old. After touring with Dallas rockabilly legend Ronnie Dawson when he was barely in his 20s, Curran moved to DFW from Maine to back Kim Lenz and the Jaguars. More recently, he'd been living in Austin, becoming a fixture at the Continental Club. He also played with the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Flash Boys.

Check out Curran playing Sons of Hermann Hall back in 2010, after the jump.

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Much has already been shared on the death of SXSW creative director Brent Grulke, who passed away yesterday after a heart attack, at age 52. It's our modern way to try to console each other via links, texts, emails. Amassing and distributing information to make sense of death.

I was a music editor at the Austin Chronicle from 2006-2011, and though Brent and I shared hellos while passing each other in the grassy walkway between the Chronicle and SXSW offices, or nods at office parties, that was about as deep as our friendship got.

In my time at the paper, I heard numerous people talk shit about SXSW, as it grew in numbers and sponsorships. About how it wasn't fair that certain bands got picked to play, while others had to languish in obscurity. That it was a popularity contest. That they didn't really care about music, just money.

I suppose that could be said of any large-scale festival, but what Grulke and his partners did with SXSW over 25 years cannot be dismissed as a glad-handing popularity contest. They set the bar for festivals, and people are still trying to catch up to their model. I've been guilty of bitching about SXSW fatigue myself, but when it's over and everyone's gone home, I always have a pang of the blues. If you are a music fan, you feel it too, despite the mayhem that ensues during that week. And Grulke was a fan. He was the music editor at the Chronicle long before I was there, and before that, a writer at The Daily Texan, a paper that hosted many of the city's creative misfits in the '80s. He saw Austin music through many phases and trends and fads, and stuck with it.

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Phil York (left) and Willie Nelson during the recording of Red Headed Stranger

Yesterday, I got the sad news that Dallas sound engineer and Texas music hero Phil York had passed away last Saturday. I met York while researching the liner notes for the 2009 Heavy Light release of The Relatives' Don't Let Me Fall. He had engineered the original Relatives sessions and his gentle spirit and generosity were obvious from the moment I stepped into the studio of his modest Irving home. Well, as modest as a home can be with gold records hanging on the wall.

That generosity extended to his stories about some of the biggest names in music. When a seasoned vet reminisces about his time behind the boards with Willie Nelson or The Rolling Stones, it's best to shut up and keep the tape recorder rolling.

Here, York shares Nelson's vision for "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," the first track put to tape during the Red Headed Stranger sessions at Autumn Sound Studio in Garland.

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Praaaaaance

As my Mixmaster companion Jamie Laughlin and I were driving to lunch today, Prince's "Purple Rain" came on the radio. We both looked at each other and threw up a fist when the breakdown came, that part when Prince starts ecstatically screeching like only he can. And there is the beauty of a Prince song.

Fans often like to break up his career into "early" Prince and "later" Prince, but his catalog never really had a definite before and after to me. I recently went back to his 1987 LP, Sign "O" the Times, and found it to be a solid R&B album. I'd almost forgotten songs like "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" and "Housequake" among the hits like "U Got the Look."

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by Chris Gray

Sci-fi fans across the world were saddened when prolific author Ray Bradbury died Tuesday, Wired magazine reported. The typewriter-loving Bradbury was 91 and lived in Los Angeles.

Bradbury was best-known for writing that set the standard for post-WWII science fiction such as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. His novels and stories often addressed popular Cold War-era themes such as paranoia, censorship and space travel, but Bradbury also wrote fantasy, horror and the screenplay for the 1956 Gregory Peck/Orson Welles film, Moby-Dick.

As one of the few 20th century sci-fi authors to become a household name (alongside Isaac Asimov and a few others), Bradbury inevitably developed some fans among musicians, some of whom grew quite fond of him indeed.

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