Below the famous dozen and below the well known second rank there is a third layer of this genre, made by bands who released one or two albums on tiny labels, split up inside three years, and were rediscovered thirty years later by people trading files instead of cassettes.
A good deal of it is ordinary. A surprising amount of it is better than records that sold a hundred times more, and this is where to look once the obvious has been exhausted.
Blind Illusion, The Sane Asylum, 1988
A Bay Area band whose line up included Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde, both of whom went on to Primus, produced by Kirk Hammett. The result is thrash with a genuinely strange harmonic sense and a bass player doing things nobody else in the scene was attempting. It sold almost nothing.
Sadus, Illusions, 1988
Self released from a small town in California's Central Valley, with Steve DiGiorgio playing fretless bass at a speed that should not be possible. The songs are savage and the bass is the reason to be here; DiGiorgio went on to play with half the extreme metal bands in America.
Morbid Saint, Spectrum of Death
Recorded in Wisconsin in 1988 and released in a form and a quantity that meant almost nobody heard it for a decade. It circulated on tape, acquired a reputation entirely disproportionate to its availability, and turned out on reissue to deserve every word of it.
Deathrow, Deception Ignored, 1988
A German band who went from crude to genuinely progressive across three albums, and this is the point of arrival: technical, dissonant and years ahead of what anybody expected from Dusseldorf. It baffled their audience at the time.
Realm, Endless War, 1988
Milwaukee, absurd instrumental ability, a singer with a very high clean voice, and a Beatles cover that is the most famous thing about them. An oddity, and rewarding.
Hallows Eve, Tales of Terror, 1985
Atlanta, on Metal Blade, and one of the first American thrash albums from outside California and New York. Rough and considerably better than its obscurity suggests.
Toxik, Think This, 1989
Technical thrash with a concept and a singer who could actually hit the notes. It should have made them and instead the band dissolved.
| Album | Band | Year | Where from | The hook |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tales of Terror | Hallows Eve | 1985 | Atlanta | Early, and not from either coast |
| Power and Pain | Whiplash | 1985 | New Jersey | Faster than was reasonable |
| The Sane Asylum | Blind Illusion | 1988 | Bay Area | Two future members of Primus |
| Illusions | Sadus | 1988 | Central Valley | Fretless bass at speed |
| Deception Ignored | Deathrow | 1988 | Dusseldorf | Progressive, and unexpected |
| Endless War | Realm | 1988 | Milwaukee | Technique, and a Beatles cover |
| Spectrum of Death | Morbid Saint | 1988 | Wisconsin | A legend built on a tape |
| Think This | Toxik | 1989 | New York | A concept, and a real singer |
Why these bands vanished
Almost never for musical reasons, and the causes repeat with depressing regularity.
A label with no distribution outside two states. A pressing of two thousand. A tour that could not be financed. A line up change at the wrong moment. An album finished in 1990 and released into 1992, by which point the audience had gone. And in several cases nothing more dramatic than members reaching twenty five, looking at the accounts, and getting jobs.
The one thing none of them lacked was material. Every record above contains writing that would have carried a career in 1987 if it had been attached to a distribution deal.
How to explore this properly
Two suggestions, because the third layer is large and mostly uncurated.
Follow the labels rather than the bands. Combat, Metal Blade, Roadrunner, Noise and Steamhammer each have a catalogue from this period, and working through one of them chronologically will surface twenty records nobody has recommended to you.
And follow the personnel. A bass player who later appeared on a record you love was in a band in 1988, and that band is usually worth an hour. That is how most people find Blind Illusion, and it works for a dozen others.
The full survey of the genre's records, from the famous to the obscure, is in the essential albums list, and the earliest end of it is covered in the 1983 albums.
The international third layer
Everything above is American and German, and the same layer exists in a dozen other countries with even less documentation.
Brazil has Vulcano, Chakal, Holocausto and Mutilator, all on Cogumelo, all operating with no expectation of ever leaving the country. Poland has Kat and Turbo, both making records under a state controlled pressing system. Japan has Doom, Outrage and a network of small labels that the rest of the world barely knew existed. Australia has Hobbs Angel of Death and Slaughter Lord, the latter of whom never released a proper album and whose demos are still traded.
The pattern in every case is the same as at home, only harder: no distribution, no imports, no press, and a band whose entire commercial existence was a few hundred records and a tape network. What comes out the other end is frequently stranger and more extreme than anything from California, for exactly that reason.
What the reissue labels changed
Almost all of this material is now available, which was not true fifteen years ago, and the change came from a small number of specialist labels doing painstaking work.
Records that existed as a two thousand copy pressing on a defunct label have been licensed, remastered from whatever tapes survived, and reissued with the demos attached. Morbid Saint went from a legend built on a cassette to an album you can buy. Blind Illusion, Deathrow, Realm and dozens of others followed.
The effect on the historical picture has been real. Bands who were assumed to be following a trend turn out on the evidence to have got there first, and the chronology of who heard what has been quietly rewritten more than once by somebody finding a master tape in a garage.
Sources and notes
Years refer to original pressings, several of which had extremely limited distribution. Recording and release dates diverge for more than one of these records.
