Following our mailbag post last week, Pete and I thought we’d get further antiquated with a good old-fashioned Heavy Blog is Heavy playlist swap. We each put together a list of the songs that we thought best defined our personal thrash metal tastes and where we think the genre is…
One of the last true UK metalcore heavyweights, Renounced are just about ready to release one of the year’s toughest, catchiest records via Holy Roar. Beauty Is A Destructive Angel perfectly channels all of the youthful aggression of the genre’s fledgling years in the early 2000s – when melodeath riffing…
Hello fellow pit-sters! This month, I thought we could do something a little different. You all know I’ve been playing fast and loose with the schedule of this column, and August will be no different! Fellow thrash Josh Bulleid and I thought we’d introduce ourselves to you all a little…
Germany’s Destruction are by no means an unknown quantity, but they’re also frequently the most overlooked and neglected of the Teutonic thrash scene’s “Big Three”, which they form alongside the much more widely celebrated Sodom and Kreator. (Some people might attempt to add Tankard to that list in order to…
They say the classics never go out of style… Whatever Refused might have to say on the matter, there’s a reason some albums are heralded as near-untouchable classics. Some records are simply timeless – their appeal near-universal. For as varied and extreme as Acid Death’s sound has been over the…
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…
There’s something gorgeous happening in Denmark. It seems you can’t throw a guitar into a crowd without hitting great new hardcore and metal bands from the Nordic country – Copenhagen, in particular, is the home of many of these talented, tuneful new acts, forcing me to drastically consider a music-centric…
What’s worse than the deja vu horror of reliving the same tired mistakes time and time again with no end in sight? No, I’m not talking about listening to your umpteenth atmospheric post-black metal album of the year, I’m talking about that Bill Murray in Groundhog Day or kind of…
Maybe more than any modern thrash album, Omicida’s Defrauded Reign sounds like a lost ‘80s underground classic. The LA-come-UK outfit’s debut full-length is pure Bay Area worship done to the highest degree, and an early standout in a year already jam packed with quality thrash metal. Omicida themselves might be…
If there’s one thing the world needs more of, it’s blackened thrash. In some ways, it’s the original black metal sound. It’s chaotic and raucous, just like we all love our metal. However, it’s also overtly dark and evil sounding, a constant grind on your senses that still has its…
