Anthrax - Indians
I had not long moved from the south east of England to a small village on the east coast of Fife in May or June 87 and was missing my mates and civilisation and was listening more to metal than ska and punk and this is the first thrash song I ever heard, actually I only heard a few seconds of it on the Chart Show Metal Countdown on a Friday evening and immediately knew I had to get hold of the single.
It ended up that the Among The Living LP became mine instead.
I went outside on the Saturday morning and asked the first kid I saw where the nearest record shop was and after cycling 20 miles, seemingly uphill both there and back (and to find the record shop was actually a newsagents), I got home (exceedingly sweaty and with legs like jelly as we didn't have hills like that in Essex...) and blasted it out on my Dad's Technics hi fi with the big fuck off speakers and it totally blew me away, it opened up the floodgates to being obsessed with fast music. Iron Maiden, Dio, Whitesnake, and Twisted Sister just weren't going to cut it anymore after that day. I still have the LP and listen to it regularly and does it make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up after all these years? Every fucking time yes!
Metallica - Damage Inc
I went back down to Harwich to see friends a couple of months after hearing Anthrax and before coming home I went into Colchester to buy some stuff that was impossible to get anywhere near Anstruther and ended up in a market type area with stalls draped with leather jackets, t-shirts and tapes so figured I'd try and get some more of this elusive thrash stuff (I'd only managed to get Def Leppard, Motley Crue and Megadeth tapes thus far in return trips to John Menzies in St Andrews) to listen to on the six hour train journey home.
I was tempted to get Dark Angel - Darkness Descends as the cover just looked great, the colours told me it would sound sick, but it was on vinyl and that wasn't going to fit in my walkman so I perused the racks of tapes and came across Master Of Puppets, I wasn't sure what it would be like but, fuck, they were called Metallica so they weren't going to be a pop band were they? Decision made I headed off to start my train journey home. Once in my seat I unwrapped the tape and popped it in the walkman and had a slight moment of misaprehension when the acoustic intro of Battery came on before being smashed in the face by what came after. It was certainly thrash but much different to Anthrax, less fun, less manic but more precise and epic sounding.
I listened to the tape over and over all the way home, briefly running off the train at Newcastle to restock on batteries and nearly missed getting back on because some prick in front took a week to buy a fucking mars bar.
It's kinda hard to pick a single song from this album as they're all great and all have something special about them so going for the straight up thrashiest of them because fuck it all and no regrets yeah
Slayer - Hell Awaits
Obviously Slayer were going to be here and obviously it was going to be Angel Of Death because it's so fucking furious and genre defining. Well no, it's Hell Awaits because that was the first track I heard of them, taped the Power Hour in the middle of the night and was enthralled by the Hell Awaits video, the grainy film and poor lighting looked like it was something totally underground and dangerous and the sound, fuck, listen to those guitars like the protesting screams of devils being pulled from the depths, and look at Kerry's guitar, all burnt and melted and shit, it looks fucking awesome (incidentally just pouring lighter fluid over your guitar and setting it off does not achieve that look...) and then there's Lombardo's pounding which was like what I imagined the orc drums in the Mines of Moria to have been like, it sounds pure fucking evil, it still does.
Also I didn't hear Reign In Blood until after South Of Heaven because I lived in the arse end of nowhere with no real record shop in cycling distance, couldn't just download the fucker in twenty seconds like these days...
Testament - Over The Wall
Do I really need to say anything other than"That riff"? If your heart rate doesn't immediately double upon hearing it then you're probably already dead, although it's got enough energy in it to kick start a dozen corpses, maybe you're just a poseur...
This was another Power Hour discovery (probably buried between a bunch of poseur hair metal stuff too), and me and my new mates all loved it and could totally relate to having a mini mosh in a small enclosed space...
My mate Gareth got the LP on a trip to the far flung reaches of Dundee, and the relative bonanza that was the metal section of Our Price while I tried to find Slayer records. Dundee was about two hours away by bus (but only about forty minutes if you weren't fourteen and had a car) and then obviously two hours back. I feel I should point out here that I would get absolutely awful headaches on a bus journey of more than about ten minutes so doing this stupid trial by public transport should serve as testament (sorry) to my dedication to buying records.
Death Angel - Voracious Souls
We're still in 87 (if only eh?) and the Power Hour delivers another gem in the middle of the night for us.
Look at these guys, they're just like us, twatting about, skateboarding, setting fire to shit on the beach and moshing around it, playing in a band and folk going fucking nuts for it.
Ok the last bit is going to need some work on our behalf and we have to wear about ten extra layers because the wind coming off the north sea ain't some happy Californian summer breeze but apart from that they're totally us. Thrashers.
Ended up getting the album via tape trading as never came across the vinyl, I did find Frolic Through The Park on import for silly money though (like £18 in '88 which would be like what £300 these days?! I don't know, it was whole weeks earnings so it sounds about right...) but it wasn't a patch on The Ultra-violence sadly.
Anyway this track rips with it's stompy beat and squealy guitars.
Dark Angel - Darkness Descends
Remember I said I nearly got this album on vinyl instead of Master Of Puppets? Yeah, well I never found it on vinyl again so got it via tape trading (due to the village newsagent getting Metal Forces in for me which always had a huge poster in the middle with a ton of pen pals and tape traders on the back, an invaluable resource for those of us on the fringes of the known universe)
So did it live up to what the album art I'd seen previously hinted at.
Oh fuck yes.
It Thrashes.
To fuck.
Listen to that intro. It's the wrath of the dark judges coming down on you via shredding denim clad demons and once it hits, it doesn't let up, in just steamrolls you over and over.
Holy Terror - Judas Reward
I soon discovered that it was less hassle to get to Edinburgh than it was to get to Dundee thanks to the free train travel I had due to my Dad's redundancy package. No headaches on trains and I could generally get a lift to the train station in Leuchars on a Saturday morning.
In Edinburgh I discovered they had a huge HMV and a huge Virgin basically next door to each other, which was awesome, what was even more awesome was wandering up into the old town and finding Avalanche records, no wading through any of that pop shite there, it was stuffed to the gunnels with thrash and punk stuff that I'd seen on tape trading lists but now it was there on vinyl and what really blew my mind was the second hand section where LPs were £3.
Here's my wages mate, fill a fucking bag.
Anyway I picked up Holy Terror in there as the covers looked awesome and one look at the band photos on the back of Terror And Submission and I knew they were going to thrash so I bought both that and the Mind Wars LP.
Both albums are superb more speed metal than absolute thrash, melodic Maiden on steroids or something with lyrics about alien conspiracies and religious heresy. Ace.
Sepultura - Inner Self
Beneath The Remains is by far the ultimate Seps album although I say that as someone that never got anything they did after it for some reason.
First got into them via tape trading and had quite a lot of live tapes of them and loved the proto black metal sound they had and thought they were getting less extreme with Schizophrenia going to straight up thrash when stuff seemed to be going the other way with the rising tide of death metal coming through, but it really was just them getting tighter and BTR distilled it to perfection. Could have picked any track but going with inner self due to the fact I used to listen to it a ton on my walkman while dondering about so 'walking these dirty streets, with hate in my mind, feeling the scorn of the world, I won't follow your rules' always connected.
Also that chuggy chuggy riff just sounds mean as shit.
Sacred Reich - Surf Nicaragua
It was a toss up between this and Death Squads but Surf takes it on the hook. Savagely heavy yet catchy as fuck and sounds that little bit punchier. Then there's the Beach Boys break too.
I always thought Sacred Reich had a punk edge to them with more socially conscious lyrics than a lot of thrash and thirty years on the lyrics to this are still being played out just in a different area of the world now. Nothing changes.
I saw them in 1990 in the Venue in Edinburgh and the place was insanely packed out and hot as hell, sweat was forming clouds and raining back down on the heaving mass of bodies squashed into the pit. I was lucky enough to have perched myself on the side of the stage to take photos which made stage diving easier when you didn't have to try and pull yourself out of the crush I can tell you.
Acid Reign - Humanoia
What's gauranteed to make me want to stagedive like a fucking loon?
Cowbell.
Obviously.
These guys often got written off as a joke and I think that's because they were just so much fun live and what's a gig apart from a great party? I'd rather have no other hosts either, always welcoming and no divide between the band and audience and on top of that they had some gnarly fucking riffs. Who wants to go watch a dour faced cunt mope over their guitar anyway when you could go be part of the best time with cunts that'll dive off the top of step ladders?
Was tempted to go for Motherly Love off the Moshkinstein MLP for the sing alongs but went for this due to the bouncy energy it conveys, pumps you up like diving with the aid of a trampoline.
So there you go, my top ten 80's thrash tunes. Yeah, I know, no Exodus (certainly considered them) or Megadeth (nah wore their guitars too high it turned out), what about the germans? Kreator, Sodom, Destruction? Do you even know thrash you poseur? Hey I'm not laying down the law here, just my picks, let me know your's and why if you feel that strongly about it...
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