Thrash Metal

Thrash metal took shape in the early 1980s, above all in California, crossing the speed of hardcore punk with the technique of British metal. The result was faster, drier and more aggressive than anything before it: palm-muted riffs, abrupt tempo changes, shouted vocals and lyrics that traded fantasy for war, politics and social criticism.

The so-called Big Four — Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax — carried the genre into the mainstream across the decade, but the scene was always broader than that. Exodus and Testament sustained the Bay Area line, Germany developed a rawer strain with Kreator and Sodom, and Brazil produced in Sepultura one of the most influential trajectories in metal outside the US–Europe axis. Thrash is also the direct root of death metal and black metal, which radicalised what it started.