Canada was earlier than most people assume, stranger than anywhere else, and has been left out of the standard account almost completely. Six bands, three of whom have a claim to having got there before the Americans, and one who invented a musical language nobody else has used.
Anvil
Toronto, and the earliest of them. Metal on Metal in 1982 was faster and dirtier than anything else a signed North American band had released, and both Lars Ulrich and Scott Ian have said in print that they took it apart bar by bar.
Anvil got nothing for it. They spent four decades being cited by bands who outsold them a hundred to one, and then became internationally famous in 2008 because somebody made a documentary about how unsuccessful they were, which is one of the odder routes to recognition available.
Exciter
Ottawa, formed 1978, with a singing drummer and a debut in 1983 that owes the American records nothing because the band had not heard them. Their claim to have got there first is genuine and unprovable, and their second album is faster than most of what California produced in 1984.
Voivod
Jonquiere, and the strangest band in this history. Four teenagers from a paper mill town who invented their own harmonic language, built a science fiction universe across five albums with the artwork drawn by their own drummer, and sound like nothing else in music. Nothingface is the record.
Razor
Guelph, Ontario, prolific and relentless, and considerably closer to pure thrash than the others here. Evil Invaders in 1985 is as fast as anything from California that year, and the band released records at a rate that suggests they had nothing else to do.
Sacrifice
Toronto, and the most underrated. Torment in Fire in 1986 and Forward to Termination in 1987 are both excellent, the second in particular, and would be far better known if they had been made three hundred miles further south.
Annihilator
Ottawa and later Vancouver, and effectively Jeff Waters with personnel attached. Alice in Hell in 1989 set a standard for guitar writing that the genre had not previously had to meet, and it manages to be technically demanding without being cold.
| Band | City | Start with | Year | The claim |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anvil | Toronto | Metal on Metal | 1982 | Earliest, and cited by everybody |
| Exciter | Ottawa | Violence and Force | 1984 | Got there independently |
| Voivod | Jonquiere | Nothingface | 1989 | Invented a language |
| Razor | Guelph | Evil Invaders | 1985 | Purest thrash of the six |
| Sacrifice | Toronto | Forward to Termination | 1987 | The most underrated |
| Annihilator | Ottawa | Alice in Hell | 1989 | The guitar standard |
Why Canada was different
Proximity without integration, which turns out to be the ideal condition for producing something original.
Canadian bands could hear everything the American scene produced, get signed by American labels and tour into the American circuit, so they had full access to the information. What they did not have was a local scene enforcing a house style, or a press telling them what a thrash band was supposed to sound like.
The result is six bands who sound less like each other than the twelve bands in the East Bay do, and one of them sounds like nothing else at all.
What happened to them
The usual, with one exception. Most stopped or shrank in the early nineties, and most have reformed since. Voivod never really stopped and are now a decorated national institution with a Juno award. Anvil got a film. Annihilator has continued more or less continuously for thirty five years with a rotating cast.
The band who did the strangest thing with the opportunity has a piece of their own in Voivod: The Band That Made Thrash Weird, and the wider account is in Brazil, Canada and the Rest of the World.
The deeper end
Six bands carry the story and several more belong in it.
Infernal Majesty from Toronto made None Shall Defy in 1987, which is as heavy as anything from anywhere that year and almost impossible to find at the time. Slaughter, also Toronto, sat on the boundary with death metal. Piledriver was a studio project that produced one genuinely strange record. DBC in Montreal made progressive thrash of real ambition.
And Sacrifice's second album deserves saying twice, because Forward to Termination is the record from this country that most deserves to be as well known as any American album from 1987.
What the border did
Canadian bands in the 1980s faced a specific structural problem that had nothing to do with music: the domestic market was too small to sustain a career, and the American market required a work permit, a distributor and a promoter who cared.
A band from Ottawa could be signed to an American label, as several were, and still find it enormously difficult to tour into the country the label was based in. That is a large part of why so many of these bands have small discographies and long gaps, and why the ones who lasted are the ones who found a European audience instead.
Voivod, Annihilator and Exciter all built the second halves of their careers on European festivals. The border they had to cross to survive turned out to be the Atlantic rather than the one two hours south.
Where to start with Canada
Three records, about two hours, and they cover the range better than any list of forty.
Metal on Metal for the earliest and dirtiest, and to hear what two founding American bands were taking apart in 1982. Violence and Force for the fastest, and for the singing drummer. And Nothingface for the strangest, which is the record from this country that has travelled furthest.
Then, if any of it lands, Forward to Termination and Alice in Hell. That is five albums by five bands from one country, and a listener who works through them will have heard a version of this genre that almost none of the standard histories describe.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original pressings. Attributions of influence follow published interviews.
