Thrash metal
subgenre of heavy metal
Thrash metal (or simply thrash) is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by its overall aggression and fast tempo. The songs usually use fast percussive beats and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead guitar work.
The genesis of the genre dates back to the 1970s when early heavy metal, hard rock and punk rock bands released songs that featured traits of what would eventually become thrash metal, speed metal, or both. The thrash metal genre was established from the early-to-mid-1980s, during which musicians began to fuse the double bass drumming and complex guitar stylings of the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) with the speed and aggression of skate punk, hardcore punk, and speed metal, and the technicality of progressive rock. Philosophically, thrash metal developed as a backlash against both the conservatism of the Reagan era and the much more moderate, pop-influenced, and widely accessible heavy metal subgenre of glam metal which also developed concurrently in the 1980s. Derived genres include crossover thrash, a fusion of thrash metal and hardcore punk.
The early thrash metal movement revolved around independent record labels, including Megaforce, Metal Blade, Combat, Roadrunner, and Noise, and the underground tape trading industry in both Europe and North America. The genre was commercially successful from approximately 1985 through 1991, bringing prominence to Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax, all grouped together as the "Big Four" of U.S. thrash metal. Other bands, such as Overkill, Metal Church, Nuclear Assault, Flotsam and Jetsam, and Bay Area acts Exodus, Testament and Death Angel, never achieved the same level of success as the "Big Four" but had also developed a strong following in the metal community, through MTV's Headbangers Ball or otherwise. Some of the most popular international thrash metal bands from this era were Brazil's Sepultura, Canada's Voivod and Annihilator, Switzerland's Coroner, England's Onslaught, and the genre's German "Big Four": Kreator, Destruction, Sodom, and Tankard.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thrash metal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.