Around 2004 a set of bands appeared who had not been born when the founding records came out, who had found them second hand or online, and who wanted to make the same thing rather than the next thing. A fair amount of it was pastiche. What it did was rebuild the circuit.
Where it came from
Free access to the back catalogue, essentially. A teenager in 2003 could hear a 1986 record in ten seconds, which had not been true for anybody since the records were new, and a generation discovered a genre that had been effectively unavailable for a decade.
Add cheap home recording, a functioning independent label sector and the ability to book a tour by email, and the conditions of 1983 were reproduced with better tools.
The bands
Municipal Waste from Richmond, who came at it through skate culture and made the wave fun rather than reverent. Evile from Huddersfield, who are the reason Britain finally has a thrash band worth the name. Warbringer from California, who began in pastiche and grew out of it. Havok from Denver, who started as a tribute and turned into a band with its own politics.
Behind them: Toxic Holocaust, one man from Portland doing Venom and Motorhead properly; Gama Bomb from Ireland; Bonded by Blood, Skeletonwitch, Lich King, Fueled by Fire and a hundred more.
The pastiche problem
It has to be admitted rather than defended. A substantial proportion of this wave produced records that are essentially cover versions of albums the band liked, with the titles changed: zombie artwork, high tops, lyrics about beer and moshing written by people who had never seen a pit in 1987.
Some of it was knowing and some of it was not, and the knowing version aged better. Municipal Waste were always a joke and were always extremely good at the joke, which is a harder trick than sincerity.
What redeems it
That the good ones grew out of it. Warbringer's early records are imitation and their later ones are not. Havok started as a Slayer tribute and became something with its own voice. Skeletonwitch went somewhere else entirely.
The wave functioned exactly as a scene is supposed to: a hundred bands form, ninety go home, ten become something.
| Band | From | Start with | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Municipal Waste | Richmond, Virginia | Hazardous Mutation | 2005 |
| Toxic Holocaust | Portland, Oregon | Hell on Earth | 2005 |
| Evile | Huddersfield, England | Enter the Grave | 2007 |
| Warbringer | Ventura, California | War Without End | 2008 |
| Bonded by Blood | Pomona, California | Feed the Beast | 2008 |
| Gama Bomb | Newry, Ireland | Citizen Brain | 2008 |
| Havok | Denver, Colorado | Time Is Up | 2011 |
What it actually achieved
Not a body of essential records, on the whole. What it achieved was infrastructure: small venues willing to book a thrash bill again, small festivals, a touring economy and an audience of teenagers.
Within five years there was somewhere for a young thrash band to play, which had not been true since 1991. Everything since, including the bands who made the revival stop being a revival, is standing on that.
Where it stopped being retro
With Power Trip, and the distinction matters. The new wave was making records about a period. Power Trip made a record about the present that happened to use the form, and it was reviewed by publications that do not acknowledge metal exists.
After that the question stopped being whether a modern thrash band could be good and started being what a modern thrash band should be about, which is a considerably healthier question.
Who is worth hearing now is in Modern Thrash Metal Bands, and the wider account is in The Fall and the Revival.
The look
Worth describing because it was the most visible thing about the wave and the most divisive.
Ed Repka artwork commissioned directly, or done in his idiom. High tops and shorts. Deliberately period logos. Zombies, nuclear accidents and cartoon violence. A whole visual grammar borrowed wholesale from 1986 and reproduced without irony.
For some listeners that was the appeal and for others it was the problem, and both reactions are reasonable. What is not arguable is that it worked commercially: a record with a Repka cover told a browsing listener exactly what was on it, which is the same job the artwork was doing in the first place.
What the older bands made of it
Mostly delight, and a considerable amount of practical support. The founding bands took the new wave on tour, appeared on their records and talked about them in interviews, which is not how established scenes usually treat a revival of themselves.
There is a straightforward reason. A band who had spent the nineties playing to two hundred people was not inclined to be precious about a generation who wanted to fill rooms with this music again, and the reunion circuit and the new wave circuit turned out to be the same circuit.
What it could not do
Honesty about the limits. The wave rebuilt a circuit and it did not produce a record that displaced anything from 1986, and after twenty years that has to be counted rather than explained away.
The reason is not talent. It is that the founding records were made under conditions that cannot be reproduced: a form nobody had finished yet, four scenes competing in ignorance of each other, and a set of technical questions that were genuinely open. A band in 2008 knows exactly what a thrash record sounds like, which is a considerable advantage in execution and a fatal one in invention.
What the wave did instead was keep the form alive long enough for somebody to have something new to say in it, which took another decade and arrived from a hardcore band in Texas.
Where to start
Hazardous Mutation for the fun, Enter the Grave for the straightest execution of the form, and Havok's Time Is Up for the point where the wave stopped imitating. Ninety minutes, and enough to decide whether the modern end of this genre is for you.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original releases. Judgements are editorial.
