Thrash Metal and the True Birth of Evil
Thrash metal is where the "nastification" of metal truly begins.
By that, I mean that every genre we’ve covered so far involves arena rockers on steroids more than it does Satanists, horror poets, heroin addicted geniuses and other wayward kids that scare well-meaning parents. At some point, anger, defiance and a love for the extreme carried metal into this cultural boogeyman status and there’s more or less of a starting point for this.
In the seventies, two "extreme" musical styles were created and immediately started gaining traction with young people : metal and punk rock. One relied on technicality and the setting of new creative boundaries and the other was a vehicle for pure fucking anger. It was a question of time before someone would try to implement punk rock ideas in metal and vice versa and when that happened, thrash metal was born.
…and thrash metal changed the trajectory of the genre forever. It very much made metal self-aware and gave it a clear direction. It’s perhaps the most important metal genre, from a historical perspective. Buckle up, this one is gonna be long.
Everything Starts with Lemmy Again (More or Less)
The origins of thrash metal are very much debated, like the origins of every metal subgenre. Some say Queen’s 1974 song Stone Cold Crazy was the first to feature elements and ideas of thrash, like breakneck speed and intense riffing. I believe it’s a little thin, but I’m sure it did inspire thrash pioneers to craft their sound. Black Sabbath’s Symptom of the Universe from their album Sabotage is another important moment in the ideation of the genre as it was the first time the band was trying to play as fast as they possibly could and everyone tried to copy Sabbath then. Fuck, everyone is trying to copy Sabbath now.
But let’s not kid ourselves. It all really started with the first nastificator of metal, Lemmy Kilmister.
The man who claimed he would create the dirtiest rock n’ roll band in the world and totally fucking did. Although he never even pretended to play thrash metal, his input on the genre was philosophical : play as fast as you can, use double bass drum, vocal texture over harmony and pleasantness. Lemmy and Motöhread also pioneered a more working class approach to metal that focused on the music and a let-the-world-burn attitude that would become prevalent in the upcoming decades. But Motörhead was playing extremely loud rock that bordered on speed metal. Not thrash metal. They were thrash metal’s cool uncle you’d want to grow up to be like.
Discharge are the other great forefathers of the genre. Originally a hardcore punk band, they brought anger and political themes to what would become thrash metal. They would influence just about every foundational band in the genre.You can easily hear their influence on Metallica’s first record Kill ‘Em All. On Lars Ulrich’s drumming especially.
Kill ‘Em All is, by the way, the first full fledged thrash metal record. The first one that understood what it was and wasn’t trying to be anything else. We’ll come back to it later. I would also argue that it’s the only "pure" thrash metal record they ever recorded.
Metallica, Megadeth and the Bay Area Scene
There are two big foundational thrash metal scenes that emphasize completely different aspects of the genre. I’ll start with my favorite: the Bay Area Scene.
It’s the catchier of the two. It features hooks, catchy choruses and usually less guitar riffs, but more memorable ones. Metallica being the obvious example. Even when they wrote more complex songs in their early years, they always featured catchy guitar riffs you could hum to. For Metallica, riffs were as important as vocal melodies. It would become such a crucial idea, given that a lot of metal frontmen aren’t conventionally good singers. In thrash metal, vocals have become somewhat of an instrument and guitar has become somewhat of a voice.
That said Metallica were pure thrashers for a very short period. Led by their virtuoso bassist Cliff Burton, they started incorporating a lot of progressive elements to their music on their second record Ride the Lightning. You cannot look at me with a straight face and tell me For Whom The Bell Tolls is a thrash metal song. It’s a fun, iconic, mid-tempo banger, but it’s kind of its own thing. Creeping Death is considered a thrash classic, but it’s also very weird and intricate for the genre. Metallica were a thrash metal band for their first four records, but they were also very nerdy and proggy for the genre.
It’s what made their success, though. Originality, catchiness and songwriting bravery made Metallica the most important metal band in the world and quite possibly the most popular rock band south of The Beatles. Although they are criticized for never living up to their early years, they have written timeless and exquisite music that has and that will have a more lasting cultural impact than any other metal band. Even Black Sabbath.
Sabbath has never and will never be featured in a Netflix show.
Megadeth, formed by Metallica’s original guitarist Dave Mustaine after they fired his ass, is more of a pure Bay Area thrash unit. They had, in many respects, the career Metallica purists wish Metallica had. They are my favorite of the two, to be honest. Megadeth has been criticized for being a Wish.com version of Metallica over the years, but they’ve been extremely consistent and have become one of my favorites. Albums like Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction and Endgame are some of the purest, most furious Bay Area thrash metal you’ll ever hear. They’re one of these bands I don’t understand how you can hate, but they do have their haters.
Anthrax, Testament and Exodus are the three other important names from the Bay Area. The first one is somewhat of a different animal as they pioneered the crossover sound. Anthrax was always its own thing. Their sound was always more upbeat, uplifting and pioneered the use of bouncing riffs. Also, they’re from New York. Testament were a more conventional, catchy Bay Area thrash metal band. Songs like Souls of Black, Electric Crown and Practice What You Preach are immortals.The band veered into a more death metal influenced direction over the years, but they’re still thrashers.
Exodus is an interesting case. They played (and still play) a leaner, less flashy brand of thrash metal that is more akin to Teutonic Thrash, which we will see in a moment. There were many other bands from the bay area to have success like Vio-Lence and Dark Angel, but they are only marginally important to the history of the genre.
TEUTONIC THRRRRRASH!!!
Parallel to the Bay Area, another thrash metal scene was developing in Germany.
Although it is technically the same subgenre of metal, it couldn’t sound any more different. German thrash metal emphasizes technicality, precision, speed and power. It has little to no groovy riffs and catchy choruses. It focuses on all the aspects of thrash metal that I care less about, but it is the most enduring form of the subgenre, at least in its purest form. Thrash metal bands today sound more like Teutonic thrash metal bands than Metallica.
It all started when a guy named Tom Angelripper heard British rock-thrash-black-whatever metal band Venom and decided to start a band dedicated to playing extremely fast and hard. Sodom was created. The first (and my own personal favorite) Teutonic thrash metal band. Obsessed with war and annihilation, Sodom has pushed the envelope of how ridiculously fast thrash metal could get. They’re not the flashiest band. Tom Angelripper has this raspy voice that often blends in with the guitars, but there’s a purity to their aggression that is infectious.
Kreator is the other big name of the Teutonic scene. I find them to be a little monocord for my own taste, but their complex and precise guitar riffs and the odd presence of their frontman Mille Petrozza have made them legends of the genre. Kreator’s sound is dense and in-your-face. They are often favorites of thrash purists.
The other two foundational bands of the German thrash scene are Destruction and Tankard, but they’re considerably less important and successful than Sodom and Kreator. What you need to understand about the Teutonic thrash metal scene is that it is foundational to the more technical approaches of modern forms of metal. It’s a no-rock-star-artifice scene that emphasizes pushing the boundaries of how hard you can play your instrument. A lot of technical death metal bands are indebted to the Teutonic thrash bands, musically or just philosophically.
FUCKING SLAAAAAYEEEEEERRRRRR
No, I did not forget the most influential extreme metal band of all-time and my de facto favorite band. They required their own subsection. It’s a matter of respect.
Slayer are one of the 5 most important metal bands. They’re also fucking awesome. That’s why they headlined metal festivals around the world for three decades where they regularly commanded crowds of 50 000 to 100 000 audio violence connoisseurs. To say that I love this band would be an understatement. I’m currently considering getting a tattoo of their frontman Tom Araya’s face and it might’ve happened by the time you read these lines.
Although they had classic songs already, Slayer became the extreme metal monolith they are today because of their third album Reign in Blood which features two of their greatest hits : Angel of Death and Raining Blood. Guitarist Kerry King himself said it was with this album they found their sound. But it was only the beginning for the unholiest of the unholy. They would record atmospheric masterpiece South of Heaven two years later and what I consider a perfect album Seasons in the Abyss after that. God Hates Us All is another utter gem.
Slayer were heavier and more brutal than other thrash metal bands, but they were also extremely catchy. You could sing their songs. Although they were very much always a thrash metal band, they were a quintessential influence on more extreme genres like death metal and black metal. Their imagery and aggression were different. They were one of the first (and most popular) bands to be openly Satanic and address gory themes in their songs. Venom gets a lot of credit for that because they’ve influenced Mayhem and they were first indeed, but Slayer were infinitely more popular and influential. Notably because their songs were much better.
I live my life free of any form of Slayer slander. It’s like being vegan except it’s a lot more fun. They are invulnerable metal gods. Any dissident opinion is wrong and idiotic.
Thrash that Branched Into Even Harder Stuff
There are two historically important thrash metal bands that don’t really fit anywhere on this list because they spiritually belong to other subgenres of metal : Venom and Possessed.
The first is credited for inventing black metal solely because it has a song called that, but what Venom was playing was a very sloppy, fast and lurid take on what Motörhead was doing. Venom’s music was horror themed thrash metal more than it was black metal. They did have their bangers, though. Notably In League With Satan and what is undoubtedly their biggest song: Witching Hour. They were neither catchy, proggy or technical, but they had a flair for provocation and an approach to songwriting that was just bare and naive enough to work in their favor. I will discuss them in further detail in my apocryphal history of black metal, but they are not a black metal band.
Possessed are credited for inventing death metal also based on the fact they had a song called that. It’s less clear what genre Possessed were back then because they evolved into a death metal band and back then, death metal wasn’t death metal yet. It was thrash metal trying its darnedest to be mean and hard. It’s exactly how the first Possessed records sound. It’s dingy and monstrous. Although they’re from the Bay Area, they don’t sound like a Bay Area band at all. They were their own thing. Jeff Becerra and his bandmates wanted to be boogeymen. They were all about macabre energy and downtuned violence. Once again, they will be discussed in further detail down the line.
I thought this addendum was crucial to my apocryphal history of thrash metal because this is what I mean by nastification of metal. It started with playing harder and angrier and it turned really fucking quick into embodying whatever people were afraid of then. The nastification of metal was a form of empowerment for outsiders. Corrupting the youth was not enough anymore. By scaring the normies, metal gained its quintessential identity : it was the audio embodiment of all the extremes.
Pizza Thrash, Modern Hybrids and The Future
Thrash metal is alive and well in 2023. It even had a revival over the last decade or so under a more festive form often called pizza thrash or party thrash.
Bands like Bonded By Blood, Spiritworld and most notably Municipal Waste have ushered a new era, but also a new philosophy for the music. Fast now means fun and wild and thoughtless. Modern thrash metal doesn’t have to be profound. It can be just a reason to gather up among metalheads and have a good time. It ain’t quite my thing personally. To paraphrase Trent Reznor, I’m not in this to have a good time. I respect party thrash and I would totally watch a set if there’s a band on a bill, but I wouldn’t pay to watch a party thrash bill.
There are other, more serious younger thrash bands like Power Trip, Hellripper and to a certain extent Gatecreeper (although they’re more death thrash) that are really cool and successful to a certain degree. But the subgenre hasn’t integrated new aesthetic ideas in some time now. Modern thrash sounds exactly like old thrash unless it’s fully hybridized with another genre, like death thrash or blackened thrash for example. I do believe that the conventional form of thrash metal might get absorbed by other genres eventually. That it will enmesh in the fabric of more contemporary forms of metal and perhaps cease to exist. At least as an active subgenre in itself.
Because the forms of anger and artistic rebellion at the heart of its creation have been coopted and appropriated by other genres. You can do pissed off and politically nihilistic pop in 2023, which was completely unthinkable in a world without the internet. The extreme virtuosity that created the sonic identity of thrash metal has been pushed much further by death metal and progressive metal. Grindcore has become faster and angrier. Thrash metal has no extreme to call its own anymore.
That’s why I think blackened thrash metal bands like Goatwhore, Aura Noir and Deströyer 666 as well as death thrash bands like Gatecreeper, Cancer and Repugnant are really key to the future of thrash metal for they use thrash elements to supercharge an already existing sound with anger, speed and guitar shredding madness. I’m sure we’re bound to see (or perhaps it already exists) bands that take already hybrid genres like deathcore and use thrash metal elements to challenge the core notions of their sound.
Before I finish, here are five songs to help you understand the nuances of thrash metal better:
Metallica - Seek N’ Destroy : Classic catchy-ass Bay Area sound with the quirky, groovy riffs and the intoxicating chorus. It’s thrash metal at its most fun and accessible.
Sodom - I Am The War : Teutonic thrash is more lean and muscular than its American counterpart. It’s more of a purist thing, which I am not.
Slayer - War Ensemble : Faster, angrier and thematically more horrific than their Bay Area counterparts, but just as damn catchy. They’re the fucking best.
Municipal Waste - Breathe Grease : The sound is legit, the presentation is loose and doesn’t take itself seriously at all.
