Speed Metal

The engine with two pedals

The piston block under all of speed metal is the double kick drum, hammered into the title track of Motörhead's Overkill by Phil Taylor in March 1979 and driven through "Fast as a Shark", the opener of Accept's Restless and Wild, by Stefan Kaufmann in 1982, and everything else is bolted onto it. Wolf Hoffmann later allowed that the song might have been the first of its kind. At the time, he added, the band had simply been having fun. Nobody was counting beats per minute.

The verse and the chorus survive. So do the twin guitar harmonies, the subject matter of the old guard and a singer who climbs high enough to crack a windscreen, while the rhythm guitar runs a picked gallop at a speed the arena bands of the 1970s never demanded of a wrist. Picture a touring motorcycle with the governor sawn off: the same frame, the same chrome, the same headlight, and a needle that no longer knows where the red line is.

The line against thrash metal, the parent that eventually swallowed it, runs through melody. The younger, harsher relative fed the tune into the crusher, flattened it into rhythm and took a bark and a hardcore edge in exchange. Speed metal kept the tune. Against heavy metal the difference is the clock, and the aggression that rides with it.

Speed metal, Ottawa to Berlin

The name causes half the confusion. Through the 1980s it was stamped on records now filed as thrash, and the narrower meaning was drawn only in the 1990s, looking back. Formed in Ottawa and named after a Judas Priest song, the trio called Exciter cut Heavy Metal Maniac for Shrapnel in 1983 with drummer Dan Beehler also on vocals, the same year Razor formed in Guelph. Out in California, Agent Steel put John Cyriis at the very top of the register.

Germany built the biggest furnace. Running Wild, Grave Digger, Rage and Helloween all made their 1980s albums for Noise Records, and the Berlin label poured out galloping anthems by the ton. Helloween then walked straight across the border into power metal between Walls of Jericho in 1985 and Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part I in 1987. A darker frontier runs back to Venom and early Sodom, and blackened speed metal lives there today in bands such as Knife.

The style never died. Since the late 2000s a revival has dragged the leather and the high notes back onto the stage, with Enforcer, Evil Invaders and Ranger playing it straight a quarter of a century after the first Exciter record. The needle is still in the red.

Where to start

Seven speed metal albums in seven gears, from the first two pedal charge to the revival.

• Motörhead Overkill Bronze, 1979

  Phil Taylor's two bass drums pounding the title track like pistons on a motorway, from a band often credited as the first to play speed metal.

• Exciter Heavy Metal Maniac Shrapnel, 1983

  Recorded in August 1982 by the Ottawa trio with a singing drummer, and still pulled back and forth between thrash and speed metal.

• Razor Evil Invaders Viper, 1985

  Stace McLaren at the microphone, the band's second album of 1985, and the Guelph four's ticket onto stages with Slayer, Motörhead and Venom.

• Helloween Walls of Jericho Noise, 1985

  Kai Hansen singing, Harris Johns producing in Berlin, and the German sound at full sprint before the band turned toward power metal.

• Agent Steel Skeptics Apocalypse Combat, 1985

  The American answer, with John Cyriis aiming for the rafters while most of his peers in thrash were shouting from the floor.

• Running Wild Under Jolly Roger Noise, 1987

  Recorded in Hamburg, the record on which the band threw its Satanic imagery overboard, hoisted the pirate flag and set a course later bands called pirate metal.

• Enforcer Into the Night Heavy Artillery, 2008

  The Swedish debut that Metal Hammer's guide to the style picks as the start of the revival.