Speed Metal
The half step between the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and thrash: the same gallop at twice the tempo, melody left in and the high clean voice kept. Motorhead set the pace without meaning to, and a generation of German and American bands ran with it until thrash took the ground from under them.
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Speed Metal News
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Explainers
What Was the First Black Metal Album?
Two honest answers, eighteen months apart, on different labels in different countries. Six tests set before the candidates, applied to everything from Coven in 1969...
Essential Albums
The First Wave Bands, One by One
Forty bands in a dozen countries, most of them invisible at the time. The founding six, the Italians who were early and got nothing for it, the groups working behind...
Explainers
First Wave Black Metal Explained
The first wave is not a sound. It is a period, 1982 to 1991, named backwards by people who were not there, covering forty bands in a dozen countries who agreed on th...