Thrash Metal Albums of 1985

Nineteen eighty five is the year the genre stopped being a handful of records and became a scene with a middle. The founders were on their second and third albums, a second rank had arrived behind them, and in a converted chicken farm in Sonoma County six teenagers recorded something that would give another genre its name.

It is also the year the American establishment noticed, which produced a Senate hearing and a sticker that turned out to be the best free advertising heavy music has ever had.

Exodus, Bonded by Blood

The record of the year and one of the best the genre ever produced. It was recorded in 1984 and sat on a shelf while Torrid fell apart, which cost Exodus their place in the history books and cost the album nothing at all. Paul Baloff shouting, Gary Holt and Rick Hunolt writing riffs with nothing wasted, and the purest example of what this music does.

Possessed, Seven Churches

Six teenagers from the Bay Area, one week at Prairie Sun in Cotati, and a record that is faster, uglier and more chaotic than anything else released that year. Jeff Becerra's vocal is the first recognisably death metal vocal on an album, and the closing track is called "Death Metal". Whether they invented the genre they named is arguable; that they got there first is not.

Megadeth, Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good!

Made on Combat for a budget so small the band mixed it themselves after the producer left, and it sounds like it: thin, wild and technically ahead of everything around it. The chromatic riff writing and the two guitars playing separate parts were not being done by anybody else in America in 1985.

Kreator, Endless Pain

Germany's arrival, recorded at Caet in Berlin, with two members swapping the vocal from song to song because neither wanted to be the singer. Cruder than what followed and already unmistakably German: no separation, no relief, a wall coming forward.

Destruction, Infernal Overkill

The other German debut of the year, and the more musical of the two, with Mike Sifringer writing riffs that nobody else in Europe could have written.

Slayer, Hell Awaits

The transitional record, longer and more elaborate than what came before and after, with the reverb still on and the songs still sprawling. It is the last Slayer album before Rick Rubin removed everything, and it is the favourite of a substantial minority who prefer the murk.

S.O.D., Speak English or Die

Three days, four men who were not a band, and the crossover blueprint. Musically it is the template for everything with a breakdown in it; lyrically it started an argument that has now run for four decades without resolution.

The Senate hearing

In September 1985 the United States Senate Commerce Committee held hearings on explicit content in popular music, prompted by a campaign group founded by the wives of several Washington figures. A list of fifteen objectionable songs was circulated. Musicians gave evidence.

The outcome was a voluntary parental advisory sticker on record sleeves, and its practical effect on this genre was the exact opposite of what was intended. A sticker announcing that adults disapproved was, for a fourteen year old in 1986, a recommendation. Several bands have said as much, cheerfully, ever since.

What it did do was give the retail chains a reason to refuse to stock certain records, which pushed the extreme end further into the independents and the mail order networks, and arguably kept the underground healthier for longer.

What 1985 established

Two structural facts that shaped everything after.

The first is the second rank. Until this year the genre was a small number of bands who all knew each other. By the end of 1985 there were enough good records that a listener could go deep without leaving the top layer, and enough bands that the founders had genuine competition.

The second is that the extreme end now had somewhere to go. Seven Churches is not a thrash album by 1990 standards, and everybody who heard it understood that the ceiling had moved. Within four years the best young musicians in America were forming death metal bands, and the line back to a chicken farm in Cotati is direct.

The following year is the peak, and it is covered in detail elsewhere; the year the whole thing began to unwind is in Thrash Metal Albums of 1991. The wider survey is the essential albums list.

The second rank that arrived this year

Beyond the headline records, 1985 is when the depth appears, and a listener who only knows the famous names is missing most of the year.

Whiplash made Power and Pain in New Jersey, three men playing faster than was reasonable. Hirax made Raging Violence in southern California. Artillery released Fear of Tomorrow in Denmark. Bathory followed the debut with The Return. Nasty Savage, Exciter, Anvil and Razor were all active, and in Brazil, Cogumelo put out the split that carried Sepultura's first recording.

None of those records sold anything to speak of and several of them are better than albums by bands who did. That is the shape of the whole genre in miniature, and 1985 is the first year in which it is clearly visible.

What a record cost that year

Worth stating, because it explains the sound of everything above. Bonded by Blood, Seven Churches and Killing Is My Business were all made for sums that would not cover a week at a major label studio, and in each case the money ran out before the mixing did.

Possessed had one week at a converted chicken farm in Sonoma County. Megadeth mixed their own album after the producer walked. Exodus had their record held hostage by a collapsing label for a year. None of that is romantic and all of it is why those albums document a band playing rather than a band being assembled.

Sources and notes

Release dates refer to original pressings. Bonded by Blood was recorded in 1984 and released in April 1985. The Senate hearing took place on 19 September 1985.