Happy holidays, fellow moshers! Once again, we find ourselves at the end of the year. A calendar is about to get thrown out just to be replaced by another one with a new number on it. But what a year it was! 2019 has been one of the strongest years…
Good day to you all, fellow thrashers! Have you missed me? I’ve certainly missed all of you. However, there are only so many topics to discuss with thrash metal these days still. That being said, we are getting a lot of what I would call solid gold releases. This quarter…
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure…
We here at Heavy Blog like to ponder the big questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Thrash ballads: yay or nay? You know, the big stuff. In order to better address such pressing matters, we bring you Heavy Issues: a now-monthly column by which we plan to get…
Bay Area thrash legends Death Angel have returned bringing us Humanicide, an album endeavoring to lay out a portrait of a decaying world in all its forms. The band are one of those veteran groups who once stood hopefully alongside Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, and Metallica until circumstances took them in…
So far on this column, I’ve referred to a lot of the heavy hitters of the subgenre. I personally have a lot more thoughts about them because there’s just a lot more material to go through with them. It’s the same for people who are really into Shakespeare. There’s just…
Due to the way we’ve decided to divide up the time zones, correspondence with an international audience from the humble southern continent of Australia often feels akin to looking into the past. Yet, despite this perceived futurism, Australian culture often trails its American and European counterparts by some distance. So it is that, while the northern thrash revival has come and (more-or-less) gone, the Australian metal scene is currently experiencing the biggest genre boom it has undergone since thrash metal originally emerged in the mid ‘80s. Back then, we brought our own quality acts to the fold, most notably in the form(s) of Mortal Sin and Hobbs Angel of Death, and the Allegiance in the ’90s. Yet, while the style had effectively remained dormant since then, the last five-to-ten years have seen an explosion in the amount of world-class thrash metal bands to have emerged from these southern shores.
Welcome back to our Taxonomy series, where we break down umbrella genres like progressive metal, post rock and doom metal and outline all of the progressions and subgenres that have matriculated over the past few decades. The dissection of thrash metal you’ll find below contains a detailed dissection of the most crucial genre in extreme metal style. Thrash led to incredible innovations over the years, and in turn, a multiplicity of styles has made its way back into the genre’s core traits to form some of the most forward thinking metal coming out today. Seriously, many of the bands mentioned below have released records less than a year ago, and in some cases, less than a month. There’s a ton of ground to cover here, so without further ado, let’s riff on some of the best thrash you can use to mosh in your bedroom.
Slayer, Anthrax and Death Angel
Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater, Austin, Tx.
10/08/16
The 2,750 capacity Moody Theater feels like a miniature version of an arena, with a general admission floor and two mezzanines. The sold-out venue provided Slayer fans with a contradictory experience: seeing an arena-sized production with an arena vibe… in a small room. Like an 80s scale model, Slayer, Anthrax and Death Angel took concertgoers back to thrash metal’s heyday not by simply cranking up the nostalgia time machine, but by reminding listeners of what it was like when classic metal bands were releasing their classic albums and were eager to present their newest tunes to fans. Both Slayer and Anthrax accomplished this by putting new songs in key spots in their sets, something almost unheard of for bands that are 30+ years old.
Last weekend was New England’s riff-heavy showcase, the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival XVII in Worcester, Massachusetts. Several bands brought on-stage devastation for three days (unfortunately, photographer Mark Valentino was only available for two). Contained below the cut, we have a short review of the day as well as…