“SOUTH OF HEAVEN”

Slayer

THE HAUNTING OPENING riff from this Eighties thrash metal classic is by itself worth the price of admission here, as guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King lay down an eerie, goosebump-inducing harmony-leads melody that sounds like it’s from the “dark ages” but with a modern twist. The use of perfect 4th intervals between the two single-note guitar parts and chromatically descending parallel major 3rds bears a strong resemblance to and sounds like it may have been inspired by the classical piece “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” written by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg in 1875. And the half-step trill at the end of bar 4 brings to mind Toni Iommi’s seminal and equally haunting riff in the song “Black Sabbath.”

Interestingly, the mix at the beginning of the song has both of the dry guitar tracks panned together, hard left, so that they sound like one instrument, while their long-tail reverb returns create a spooky audio “shadow” in the right side of the stereo image. And although it is possible to consolidate and play both parts on one guitar and combine the finger vibratos, the sonic result would not be as clear and “cutting” as the two-guitar arrangement.

The recurring riff is a harmonic hybrid of

Bb, the E blues scale (E, G, A, B, D) and the E

F#, G#, C#, Mixolydian mode (E, A, B, D) and, over the course of four bars, conveys an interesting variety of musical colors and shades of brightness and darkness. Notice that, at section B (bar 13), Hanneman, who wrote the riff, plays a slight variation on the lower, foundational line, specifically on the third note, where

F# he substitutes E (A string, 7th fret) for (9th fret), which works equally well and perhaps sounds better and more straightforward in this stand-alone single-note version of the riff.

Both King and Hanneman make great use of their guitars’ whammy bars in their solos, with aggressive vibratos and deep, gutwrenching dives. These kinds of metal pyrotechnics are best performed on guitars with locking tremolo systems, which prevent the strings from going out of tune.