I grew up listening a lot of metal. When you are young you will get easily impressed by all kinds of music. I used to listen to highly accessible and melodic stuff, such as power metal, gothic metal, black metal with lots of keyboards. I don’t listen to much of that stuff anymore. As I got older I began listening to less technical and melodic music. One of the genres I knew but didn’t interest me in particular was thrash metal. Sure, as virtually every young metal listener I discovered bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Sepultura, Slayer etc…
My interest in (hardcore) punk music of more recent years brought me back to listening thrash. Similar to punk it is loud, fast, contains anti-establishment lyrics and usually doesn’t dwell too much on the technical stuff.
Some years ago thrash metal got a revival and showed that there are still a lot of good bands around. Also, some bands decided to use a more humorous approach in the lyrics. Since I like extreme music but often find the lyrics crap (the usual stuff about death, destruction, the apocalypse etc. over and over again) I think this is a good thing because in the end, a lot of people go to gigs to drink some beers and have fun!
So, here some fine examples of thrash 🙂
Kreator, one of the big German thrash bands, still raging on after decades:
Municipal Waste is one of the revival bands and is highly influenced by crossover thrash. Also they make funny lyrics and videos which is GOOD!
Again, German thrash nails it. Sodom are still around, but I like their old albums best, especially Persecution Mania because of its black metal influences and old school “analog” production. Also, great audible bass guitar, something I often miss in metal.
Gama Bomb is another one of them fun bands. Like ’em 🙂
Fueled by Fire sounds kind of old school especially the vocals, which are perfect because they are just heavy metal enough without going all AAAAAAAHHHH
And the last one I came up with, Flesh Made Sin, a Dutch thrash metal band. AFAIK they don’t exist anymore, but they made some great stuff:
