Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Fifty bands is a stupid number. It is too many to be a top ten and too few to be a genre, and any list that long ends up with a band at number 37 that nobody can defend and nobody can remove. So this is not a countdown. It is a map. If you want the story told in order, chapter by chapter, that is the thrash history overview; this chapter is the index at the back, arranged by scene and by job, so that you can see which bands invented something, which ones perfected it, and which ones were simply very good at the thing everyone else had already invented.
The rule here is one or two sentences a band, with a record to start with, a year, a label, and an honest line about what they do. Where a band is overrated I will say so. Where a band is better than its reputation I will say that too, which is most of them, because thrash has always had more good bands than the market had room for.
The four that got the label
Metallica wrote the first thrash album, Kill 'Em All (Megaforce, 1983), and the best one, Master of Puppets (Elektra, 1986), and then spent thirty years being judged against both. Start with Ride the Lightning (1984), which is the record where the band stops being a very fast covers act with good ideas and becomes a writing band. What they do badly is edit themselves after 1988, and the ...And Justice for All mix is the most famous mistake in the genre.
Slayer are the purest of the four and the least interested in progress. Reign in Blood (Def Jam, 1986) runs twenty-nine minutes, has no chorus worth the name and no wasted second, and it ended a lot of arguments. South of Heaven (1988) is the more interesting record because it is slower and they had to write actual songs. Their weakness is that Kerry King's solos are a rhetorical device rather than music, and after 1990 the band repeats itself with total commitment and diminishing returns.
Megadeth are the technicians. Dave Mustaine came out of Metallica with a grudge and a superior right hand, and Rust in Peace (Capitol, 1990) is the most difficult record any of the four made: two guitar players, Mustaine and Marty Friedman, playing lines that should not fit together and do. Peace Sells... but Who's Buying? (1986) is the one to start with, because it is nastier and half the length of the arguments about it. Mustaine's lyrics have always been his weak point.
Thrash has always had more good bands than the market had room for.
Anthrax are the odd ones, and the ones people underrate because they wore shorts. Among the Living (Island, 1987) is a New York record built on hardcore bounce rather than European speed, with Scott Ian's rhythm playing as the whole point and Joey Belladonna singing in a register nobody else in thrash could reach. They are also the four's most embarrassing band when they try to be funny, and they try often.
The grouping itself was an accident of touring and press rather than a judgement. Four bands happened to be on the right kind of deal at the same moment, and by the middle of the decade the phrase had hardened into a fact that nothing since has dislodged. Almost every band in the rest of this article has a case against it. Exodus were in the room first. Overkill have outlasted all four. Kreator made the record that mattered most to everyone who came afterwards. The Big Four is a useful shorthand for the bands that sold, and a poor guide to the bands that count.
The rest of the Bay Area
Exodus should have been in that list and were kept out by a year's delay. Bonded by Blood (Torrid, 1985) is the purest thrash record of the decade, Paul Baloff barking about posers over Gary Holt and Rick Hunolt's twin downpicking, and it is the album the whole scene copied. Fabulous Disaster (Combat, 1989) is the one that sold, and the band's later catalogue with Steve Souza is more consistent than its reputation suggests.
Testament are the most musical band the East Bay produced. The Legacy (Megaforce, 1987) has Alex Skolnick playing lead guitar like a man who has been to lessons and Chuck Billy singing rather than shouting, and The New Order (1988) refines it. Their problem is a sweet tooth for the chorus, which cost them the 1990s and won them the 2000s.
Death Angel recorded The Ultra-Violence (Enigma, 1987) as teenagers, with a drummer who was fourteen at the sessions, and it still sounds like a band playing faster than it can quite manage, which is the charm. Forbidden made Forbidden Evil (Combat, 1988), the best-sung thrash album of the era thanks to Russ Anderson, and were then wrecked by label trouble rather than by any failing of their own. Vio-lence were the loudest and least subtle: Eternal Nightmare (Mechanic, 1988) is a wall of shouting with Robb Flynn on rhythm guitar before he formed Machine Head. Heathen took Cliff Burton's harmonic road and made Victims of Deception (Roadrunner, 1991), which arrived exactly when nobody wanted it. Possessed belong here too, though Seven Churches (Combat, 1985) is the record where thrash stops being thrash and death metal starts.
The East Coast
Overkill are the most reliable band in this article. Formed in New Jersey in 1980, they have never broken up, never changed singer, and never made a record that embarrasses them. Feel the Fire (Megaforce, 1985) is the young one, all Bobby Ellsworth's air-raid siren and D.D. Verni's bass mixed at the front, but The Years of Decay (1989) is the one to own: produced by Terry Date, slower in places, and containing "Elimination" and a ten-minute "Playing with Spiders/Skullkrusher" that has no business working.
The East Coast worked differently from California. There was no Ruthie's Inn, no single room where the whole scene met, and the bands grew up next door to hardcore rather than across a bay from it, which is why the records are shorter, angrier and less interested in guitar solos. New Jersey in particular ran on Megaforce, on Jon Zazula's record shop, and on a set of musicians who all knew each other and swapped members without much ceremony. What the region never built was the Bay Area's sense of itself as a movement. It made records instead of a mythology, and it has been undersold ever since.
Nuclear Assault came out of Anthrax's line-up trouble when John Connelly and Dan Lilker started again from the punk end. Game Over (Combat, 1986) is short, shrill and political, and Lilker's bass playing is the reason to stay. Whiplash, also from New Jersey, made Power and Pain (Roadrunner, 1986), which is thin-sounding and relentless and beloved by people who like their thrash uncomfortable. Demolition Hammer arrived late, from the Bronx, and Tortured Existence (Century Media, 1990) and Epidemic of Violence (1992) are as heavy as thrash ever got without turning into death metal. Nobody bought them at the time.
Los Angeles beyond Slayer
Dark Angel advertised themselves on the number of riffs per song, which sounds like a joke until you count them. Darkness Descends (Combat, 1986) is faster than Reign in Blood in places and has Gene Hoglan behind the kit at eighteen, playing patterns nobody else in Los Angeles could hold. He turned nineteen between the April 1986 sessions and the November release. Their flaw is that the songs run into one another; Leave Scars (1989) is more organised and less exciting.
Hirax were the joyful ones. Katon W. De Pena sings in a high, wild register that has nothing to do with the barking everyone else was doing, and Raging Violence (Metal Blade, 1985) is about half an hour of it. Abattoir made Vicious Attack (Combat, 1985), a speed metal record that thrash claimed after the fact, and it is worth an hour of anyone's time even if the band itself never settled on a line-up.
| Scene | Band | Start with | Year | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bay Area | Exodus | Bonded by Blood | 1985 | Torrid |
| Bay Area, melodic | Testament | The New Order | 1988 | Megaforce |
| East Coast | Overkill | The Years of Decay | 1989 | Megaforce/Atlantic |
| Los Angeles | Dark Angel | Darkness Descends | 1986 | Combat |
| Germany | Kreator | Pleasure to Kill | 1986 | Noise |
| Germany, the war records | Sodom | Agent Orange | 1989 | Steamhammer |
| Technical | Coroner | No More Color | 1989 | Noise |
| Progressive | Voivod | Nothingface | 1989 | MCA |
| Brazil | Sepultura | Beneath the Remains | 1989 | Roadrunner |
| Canada | Annihilator | Alice in Hell | 1989 | Roadrunner |
| Crossover | D.R.I. | Crossover | 1987 | Metal Blade |
| Modern | Power Trip | Nightmare Logic | 2017 | Southern Lord |
The Germans
Kreator are the best band in this half of the article. Pleasure to Kill (Noise, 1986) is a blur of tremolo and Mille Petrozza's shredded throat, cut quickly and mixed so that everything sits in the red, and it is the record that told a generation of future black metal musicians what was permitted. Extreme Aggression (1989) is the one where they learn to write, and the band's 2000s comeback is genuinely good, which almost never happens.
Sodom began as three men from the mining towns who could barely play, and Obsessed by Cruelty (1986) proves it. Then Frank Blackfire joined, and Persecution Mania (Steamhammer, 1987) and Agent Orange (1989) turned Tom Angelripper's band into a machine with a subject: war, told from the ground, without any of the flag-waving an American band would have added. Destruction are the sharpest writers of the three. Eternal Devastation (Steamhammer, 1986) has riffs that turn corners, and Schmier's voice is an acquired taste worth acquiring. Tankard have been singing about beer since 1982 with no sign of tiring, and Chemical Invasion (Noise, 1987) is far better than a joke band has any right to be. Holy Moses put Sabina Classen in front of a very fast band at the start of the decade, years before anyone thought that unusual, and Finished with the Dogs (Aaarrg, 1987) is where to start.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The technical wing
Coroner were three Swiss men who had worked as roadies for Celtic Frost and then made records nobody else could have made. No More Color (Noise, 1989) is the balance point between Tommy Vetterli's classical phrasing and the sheer weight of the rhythm section, and Mental Vortex (1991) is stranger and colder. They never had a chorus and they never wanted one.
Voivod are the outlier of the entire genre. A band from Quebec with a drummer who drew the covers and a guitarist, Denis D'Amour, who used chord shapes borrowed from outside metal altogether, they turned from a filthy speed metal act into something else across Killing Technology (Noise, 1987), Dimension Hatross (1988) and Nothingface (MCA, 1989), which contains a Pink Floyd cover that works. Start at Nothingface and go backwards.
Coroner never had a chorus and they never wanted one.
Watchtower, from Texas, got there first. Energetic Disassembly (1985) is thrash played by a jazz rhythm section, and Control and Resistance (Noise, 1989) is the one people actually finish. Toxik made Think This (Roadrunner, 1989), a paranoid, over-arranged record with a singer aiming at Geoff Tate, and it is better than that description. Realm put a cover of "Eleanor Rigby" on Endless War (Roadracer, 1988) that should be ridiculous and is not. Atheist sit on the boundary: Unquestionable Presence (1991) is filed under death metal, but the writing is thrash writing put through Latin rhythm, and thrash fans who avoid it because of the vocals are cheating themselves.
The world
Sepultura came out of Belo Horizonte with Morbid Visions (Cogumelo, 1986), a record made by teenagers with no equipment, and three years later made Beneath the Remains (Roadrunner, 1989) with Scott Burns in Rio de Janeiro, which is one of the five best thrash albums ever recorded and the place to start. Arise (1991) is heavier and slightly less alive. Sarcofago, from the same city, made I.N.R.I. (Cogumelo, 1987), which is barely competent and enormously important, since a good part of Norway heard it and took notes.
Distance shaped all of this. A band in Belo Horizonte or Toronto or Sydney in 1986 had no local label worth the name, no radio and no realistic route to an American tour, and what they had instead was a post office box and a cassette. The records that came out of that arrangement sound like people who learned the genre from third-generation tapes rather than from the bands themselves, and the mishearing is exactly what makes them worth owning. Nobody in Norway would have made the records they made a few years later if a Brazilian band had not first misunderstood Venom in a useful way.
Canada gave the genre Razor, whose Violent Restitution (1988) is a brutally simple record played at an unreasonable tempo, and Sacrifice, whose Forward to Termination (1987) is the better-written Toronto album that far fewer people own. Annihilator are essentially Jeff Waters and whoever he has hired. Alice in Hell (Roadrunner, 1989) is a guitar record of real invention, and most of what follows Never, Neverland (1990) is a decline that Waters keeps arresting for one album at a time. Britain's contribution was small and good: Onslaught's The Force (Under One Flag, 1986) is the honest one, and Sabbat's History of a Time to Come (Noise, 1988) pairs Martin Walkyier's crammed pagan lyrics with Andy Sneap's guitar and sounds like nothing else in the decade. Australia's Mortal Sin cut Mayhemic Destruction in three days in Sydney in July 1986 and put it out themselves on Mega Metal Productions before the year was over. Vertigo picked it up for a worldwide reissue in 1987, and the band never quite converted the momentum.
Crossover, and the bands still worth an evening
D.R.I. started in Houston as a hardcore band playing songs that lasted twenty seconds and ended up on a metal label with metal riffs at the same tempo. Start with Crossover (Metal Blade, 1987), then go back to Dealing with It! (1985). S.O.D. existed almost by accident, three quarters of an Anthrax line-up plus Billy Milano, and Speak English or Die (Megaforce, 1985) invented a whole sub-genre in a few days of recording while being juvenile enough that a good part of it has aged badly. Suicidal Tendencies came out of Venice as a hardcore band and turned metal around Join the Army (Caroline, 1987), and Rocky George's guitar playing is the underrated element. Municipal Waste revived the whole idea in Richmond, Virginia, with The Art of Partying (Earache, 2007), a party record made by people who clearly own every album named above.
The modern bands worth your time are fewer than the revival's press suggested, but they exist. Power Trip made Nightmare Logic (Southern Lord, 2017), the only thrash record since 1991 that can stand next to the classics without apology, and then lost Riley Gale in 2020. Havok, from Denver, write better riffs than anyone else currently doing this, and Time Is Up (Candlelight, 2011) is the proof. Warbringer have improved steadily for fifteen years and got to Woe to the Vanquished (2017). Vektor took Voivod's road into science fiction and made Terminal Redux (2016), a concept album of well over an hour that is either the most ambitious thrash record of the century or simply a very long one, depending on the evening. If you would rather work through records than bands, the record-by-record version covers the same ground from the other direction.
