Ten records from a scene of about a dozen bands operating out of three cities, several of which are among the most consequential albums heavy music has produced.
1. Kreator, Pleasure to Kill, 1986
The record where the German scene stopped following anything. Cut at Musiclab with Harris Johns, with the guitars fused into a single mass and Ventor's drumming audibly at the limit of what a person can hold. Death metal came out of it, and half the extreme musicians of the following decade have said so.
2. Sodom, Agent Orange, 1989
The commercial high water mark of the whole scene, and the best written of their records. About a hundred thousand copies at home, a top forty placing, and an album about a defoliant sprayed over a war Germany did not fight, made by a man who had worked underground.
3. Destruction, Eternal Devastation, 1986
The most musical German record of the period, with Mike Sifringer writing riffs that nobody else in Europe could have written. It is the one to reach for when somebody claims the German bands could not play.
4. Sodom, Persecution Mania, 1987
The record on which a noise band became a functioning one, with Frank Blackfire arriving on guitar and Harris Johns keeping the menace intact through the improvement.
5. Kreator, Coma of Souls, 1990
Recorded in Hollywood with Randy Burns, and the best produced German thrash album of the era: cleaner, wider, still fast, with Petrozza writing the sharpest lyrics of his life. Whether the clarity is worth the loss of the 1986 murk is the argument German thrash fans have been having ever since.
6. Destruction, Release from Agony, 1987
The technical peak, with a third guitarist and arrangements that go where nobody expects, and the point at which the band began to come apart.
7. Kreator, Terrible Certainty, 1987
Sits between two more famous records and is arguably stronger than either, with the band's first genuinely controlled performances and Petrozza's writing acquiring a subject rather than a mood.
8. Sodom, In the Sign of Evil, 1985
Nineteen minutes, barely competent, and one of the three or four most influential extreme metal releases ever made. It is on this list for what it did rather than for what it is, and it earns the place.
9. Deathrow, Deception Ignored, 1988
The one nobody names, from Dusseldorf, and the most dramatic improvement curve in the genre: crude in 1985 and genuinely progressive by 1988. It baffled the band's own audience and is now cited as a lost classic.
10. Tankard, Chemical Invasion, 1987
The best of the Frankfurt records, and a demonstration that a band writing exclusively about beer can be as fast and as tight as anybody in the scene.
| # | Album | Band | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pleasure to Kill | Kreator | 1986 |
| 2 | Agent Orange | Sodom | 1989 |
| 3 | Eternal Devastation | Destruction | 1986 |
| 4 | Persecution Mania | Sodom | 1987 |
| 5 | Coma of Souls | Kreator | 1990 |
| 6 | Release from Agony | Destruction | 1987 |
| 7 | Terrible Certainty | Kreator | 1987 |
| 8 | In the Sign of Evil | Sodom | 1985 |
| 9 | Deception Ignored | Deathrow | 1988 |
| 10 | Chemical Invasion | Tankard | 1987 |
What is not here
Celtic Frost and Coroner, because they are Swiss and because neither is really a thrash band. Helloween, because they are the melodic tradition. And the whole German recovery from 2001 onwards, which contains several records that would make this list on quality and which belong in a separate conversation.
If the modern material were eligible, Kreator's Violent Revolution and at least two of its successors would displace things in the lower half.
Where to start
Pleasure to Kill, obviously, and be prepared for it to sound like a wall on first contact. Then Agent Orange, which is the most immediately enjoyable. Then Eternal Devastation, which is the one that changes what people assume about this scene.
The full account is in Teutonic Thrash, and the bands below the famous three are in the Swiss neighbours.
How the list was made
On the same criteria as everything else on this site: riff economy, whether the arrangement goes somewhere, whether the rhythm section is writing rather than keeping time, and whether there is something behind the noise.
The German records complicate the second criterion, because several of them deliberately abandon legibility in favour of mass, and that has been treated as an achieved intention rather than a failure. Pleasure to Kill is at the top of the list precisely because it does the opposite of what a Bay Area record does and does it completely.
The recovery records
Excluded above for period reasons and they belong in any full account of German thrash, because several of them are as good as the 1980s material.
Kreator's Violent Revolution in 2001 is the record that ended the scene's wilderness years, and the run that has followed it, through Enemy of God, Phantom Antichrist and Gods of Violence, has no weak entry. Sodom and Destruction have both released consistently since 2000.
A German thrash list that ran from 1984 to the present rather than stopping in 1990 would have at least three post-2000 records in its top ten, which is not something that can be said of the American scene.
How to work through them
Chronologically, and starting in 1985 rather than 1986. The scene developed extremely fast, and hearing In the Sign of Evil before Pleasure to Kill makes the second record considerably more impressive.
Then the two 1987 albums, then Agent Orange, then Coma of Souls. That is about five hours and it covers the whole arc from barely competent to properly produced in five years.
The one that is always argued about
Coma of Souls at number five will annoy people in both directions. A substantial constituency regards it as Kreator's best record on the strength of the writing and the production; another regards the Hollywood sessions as the point where the band lost the murk that made them.
Both are defensible. The record is unquestionably better made than Pleasure to Kill and unquestionably less frightening, and which of those matters more is a question about what you think this music is for.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original pressings. Sales figures for Agent Orange are the widely reported German domestic figures and should be read as an order of magnitude.
