A ranked ten, with the criteria stated first so the argument is about something. Bands are judged on the quality of their catalogue, the consistency of it, and what they did that nobody else did. Sales are not a criterion and neither is fame.
Two of these placings will annoy people, and both are defended below rather than hidden.
1. Slayer
Five consecutive albums between 1983 and 1990 with no weak one, a sound nobody has ever successfully copied, and the record that defines the outer edge of the genre. One misstep in thirty five years.
2. Metallica
The strongest four album run in the genre and the largest influence on everything after it, held back from the top only by having stopped playing this music in 1991.
3. Kreator
The highest placing that will cause an argument. Kreator made the most violent record of 1986, lost five years in the nineties, and have since released two decades of albums that stand next to their best. No other founding band has managed that, and career quality is a criterion.
4. Megadeth
The finest writing in the genre attached to the least stable band in it. Peace Sells, Rust in Peace and Endgame are as good as thrash gets; Risk is as bad.
5. Exodus
There before anybody, taught the East Bay to play, and made the least diluted record the genre has. Forty years of line up trouble and not one album that abandons what they are.
6. Sepultura
Out of a country with no industry, no venues and no imports, and into two of the best records of the late eighties. Then a restyling that worked, then a split that has never healed.
7. Testament
Forty years, no disgrace, and a late catalogue as strong as the early one. The most underrated career in the genre and the band most likely to be somebody's answer once they have heard everything.
8. Voivod
The other contentious placing. A band 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. Originality is a criterion and nobody else in this list scores on it.
9. Overkill
Twenty studio albums and not one bad one, a singer who has been shouting since 1980, and a complete refusal to change with any decade. If longevity alone decided this list they would be first.
10. Sodom
A working miner's band who started barely able to play, made the most successful German thrash album, never slowed down for anybody, and are still going. The purest career in the genre.
| # | Band | Country | Start with | The argument |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Slayer | United States | Reign in Blood | Consistency and nerve |
| 2 | Metallica | United States | Ride the Lightning | Ambition and influence |
| 3 | Kreator | Germany | Pleasure to Kill | Still this good at forty |
| 4 | Megadeth | United States | Rust in Peace | The writing |
| 5 | Exodus | United States | Bonded by Blood | First, and undiluted |
| 6 | Sepultura | Brazil | Beneath the Remains | Everything against them |
| 7 | Testament | United States | The New Order | Forty years, no disgrace |
| 8 | Voivod | Canada | Nothingface | Originality |
| 9 | Overkill | United States | The Years of Decay | Twenty albums, no duds |
| 10 | Sodom | Germany | Agent Orange | Never once softened |
Who is eleventh
Anthrax, and their absence is the third thing people will object to. The reason is not the music, which at its best is the most enjoyable in the genre, but the catalogue: three or four indispensable records and then a long stretch of drift with changing singers.
Behind them: Death Angel, Coroner, Destruction, Dark Angel, Annihilator, Nuclear Assault, Vio-lence and Sacred Reich, in an order that would change with the weather.
What a ranking cannot do
Two honest limitations, because a list like this pretends to more precision than it has.
It cannot compare a band with three great albums against a band with twenty good ones, and any weighting between those is a preference dressed as a judgement. Slayer at one and Overkill at nine is a decision about intensity over durability, and the opposite decision is entirely defensible.
And it cannot handle bands who did something once. Possessed made one record that named a genre and then effectively stopped; on catalogue they are nowhere, and on consequence they are top five.
The full map, organised by scene rather than by rank, is in the bands you need to know, and the ones this list has undersold are in Underrated Thrash Metal Bands.
How to use a list like this
Not as a shopping order, and certainly not as a settlement. What a ranking is actually good for is exposing the weighting behind somebody's taste, and once that is visible you can decide whether it matches yours.
This list weights consistency heavily, originality moderately and influence lightly. That is why Kreator are third and Anthrax are outside, and it is why Voivod appear at all. Reweight influence upwards and Metallica go first, Possessed enter the ten and Voivod drop out entirely.
The useful exercise, if you want one, is to write down your own three criteria before you write down any bands. Most people find that the list which follows from their stated criteria is not the list they thought they held.
The bands who could not be ranked
Two cases break any ranking system and it is worth naming them rather than pretending they fit.
Possessed made one album, named a genre, and effectively stopped when their guitarist joined Death and their singer was shot and paralysed. On catalogue they cannot be placed; on consequence they are top five.
Celtic Frost changed shape on every record, got one of them catastrophically wrong, disappeared, and returned in 2006 with an album nobody predicted. They are not really a thrash band and they influenced more of this genre than half the list.
What the list looks like in twenty years
Worth a paragraph, because the ten above is a snapshot of a genre whose story is not finished.
Kreator, Testament, Overkill, Exodus and Sodom are all still releasing records, and every one of them is currently making music that would have to be weighed. Power Trip would be somewhere on this list if their singer had lived. Vektor have one album that belongs in any serious discussion and have not followed it up.
The likeliest change is that career quality keeps rising as a criterion, because the founding bands who kept working now have forty year catalogues to judge, and the ones who stopped in 1991 do not. On that trajectory Kreator and Testament climb, Metallica slip, and the whole list starts to look less like a snapshot of 1988 and more like an assessment of who actually did the work.
Sources and notes
Placings are editorial. Catalogue judgements refer to studio albums under the band's principal line ups.
