Origin: 1980’s California

Characteristics: Fast tempo; aggressive, bombastic drumming; riffs and guitar solos; clean or shouted vocals

Typical live hand gesture: 🤘

What is the appeal?: Cathartic release of raw energy; badass, awe-inspiring guitar riffs and solos; likely nostalgia for many listeners

In the early 1980’s, the most aggressive style of metal was easily thrash metal. Californian bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Exodus, and Testament, and New York/New Jersey-based bands, including Anthrax and Overkill, took heavy metal’s loudness, distortion, and emphasis on guitar heroism, and infused it with the attitude and speed of hardcore punk. The result was the most overdriven, violent, and simultaneously virtuosic genre of metal seen yet. Edgy, technical riffs were delivered over breakneck drumming, often pummeling the listener with dual bass pedals. The music and its live performance were visceral and passionate.

Thrash metal extended a culture of guitar heroism dating back to hard rock legends such as AC/DC and Van Halen. Like in classic heavy metal, the guitar solo was a central part of many thrash metal songs. The solo was a guitarist’s chance to display their virtuosity, to dazzle fans, to light a spark under an audience, and to pay their respects to their influences. Accomplished thrash guitarists such as Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine and Annihilator’s Jeff Waters often note how much of an influence 70’s guitarists are on their playing, with Mustaine often praising the work of AC/DC’s Angus and Malcolm Young, and Waters taking inspiration from Eddie Van Halen, along with the AC/DC brothers.

Though thrash was a phenomenon that had dozens of bands playing fast and aggressive metal, of these bands, four were revered over all others as the “Big Four” of thrash metal. These bands, who would eventually, finally play together at a select few festivals in 2010, are Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax. Numerous thrash fans will clamor to extend this to a “big five,” “six,” or “seven,” often calling for Exodus, Testament, and Overkill to be looked at in the same way, but nonetheless, the Big Four are the most recognized thrash bands, and are some of the most influential and commercially successful.

Thrash was as much a cultural movement within metal as it was a genre of music. With a low tolerance for “posers,” thrash fans valued a kind of realness, in people, in how they presented themselves, and especially in the music they listened to and idolized. Thrash listeners often wore street clothes; T-shirts, jeans, and casual shoes or sneakers, perhaps with a denim vest, at most. This style was a blatant contrast to the style of their rival 80’s genre, glam metal. A glam metal performer, garbed in colorful, elaborate clothes, giant wigs, and makeup, was just about as far away from the thrash aesthetic and values as possible. Glam performance reveled in larger-than-life visual splendor, the musicians getting out of themselves to play music as flamboyant characters, while thrash was grounded in that realness its listeners so valued.

Thrash metal famously peaked with the Clash of the Titans tour in 1990 and 1991. The European stint of the tour featured Megadeth and Slayer co-headlining, with Testament and Suicidal Tendencies opening, while the later American part added Anthrax as another co-headliner and replaced the openers with rising grunge/alternative metal band Alice in Chains.

Despite that thrash gave way in the 90’s both to underground extreme metal and to mainstream alternative metal, thrash’s influence on metal as a whole would persist, and eventually the genre would be given new life once more, as a thrash revival movement would come to pass in the 2000’s and beyond. Following their change in sound and aesthetic from a glam metal style, Texas’ Pantera would rise to dominance as one of the premier mainstream metal bands of the 1990’s. Though primarily labelled a “groove metal” band, thrash’s influence was all over Pantera’s music, with some famous songs such as “Fucking Hostile” essentially being thrash metal songs.

Thrash would gain another boost in popularity in the late 2000’s from an unprecedented medium. The popularity of music-based rhythm video games peaked around 2007 with the releases of Rock Band and particularly of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. The technical theatrics of thrash metal turned out to be the perfect content for some of the more difficult levels of the Guitar Hero games, and the widespread mainstream popularity of the games introduced heavy and thrash metal to a new generation. A cover of Megadeth’s guitar solo-filled “Hangar 18” was on Guitar Hero II, while the master recordings of Slayer’s “Raining Blood” and Metallica’s “One” were present on Guitar Hero III. The level of difficulty of these songs within the game created a sense of awe around them among players, many of whom would go on to learn how to play the real guitar. Guitar Hero did thrash and heavy metal a service by allowing a generation of new fans to learn about the magic and the passion of the age of the real-life guitar hero.

Thrash metal is one of the most influential, respected, and outright famous genres of metal music. Metallica are as widely known as Led Zeppelin, while bands like Slayer and Megadeth have a strong and permanent influence on metal as a whole, seen both in their golden age peers and the many new thrash bands continuing to play this timeless style.

Works Cited

Bienstock, Richard. “The History of Thrash Metal.” Guitar World, Guitar World, 31 Aug. 2011, http://www.guitarworld.com/features/history-thrash-metal.