The Bay Area Thrash Thread

Exodus - "Pleasures Of The Flesh" (1987)

Exodus sophomore record is often overlooked due to the quality of the releases either side of it but when taken on its own merits it's a damn fine piece of Bay Area thrash that includes a few of the band's best tracks. Exodus were clearly a class act at this point in time & the professionalism of the composition & performances is obvious from start to finish. Plus, these guys had riffs for days & are up there with most gifted thrashers of all time in this department. In saying that though, there's a fair bit of self-plagiarism going on at times as I find myself quite regularly noticing structural similarities to tracks from "Bonded By Blood". Plus, the couple of more restrained & melodic tracks on the B side don't appeal to me too much as that was never Exodus' strength. New front man Steve Souza's first up effort is up & down in that he brings a truck load of energy & enthusiasm to the table but I find a few of the choruses to be a touch flat & this prevents some otherwise fantastic tracks from reaching their full potential. Still, there's enough high quality thrash on offer to satisfy all but the most critical of thrash fans, particularly on the A side which is very strong indeed.

4/5

Heathen - "Breaking The Silence" (1987)

The 1987 debut album from this Bay Area outfit offered mixed results in my opinion. On the one hand you have an incisive production job with an aggressive rhythm guitar sound & some blazing, ultra-shreddy solos. On the other you have some inconsistent vocals, some unimaginative riff structures, a few sub-par choruses & the odd cheesy power metal moment scattered across the tracklisting. I'd actually suggest that only half of "Breaking The Silence" is actually thrash metal to be honest with the other half residing much more comfortably under the speed metal banner. In fact, the title track is pretty much full-blown power metal so the album comes off as a combination of US thrash bands like Exodus & Overkill & more melodic & accessible metal acts like Iron Maiden & early Helloween. Overall, the positives overcome the negatives with the quality delivery & execution carrying Heathen's weaknesses for the most part.

3.5/5

Death Angel - "The Ultra-Violence" (1987)

Can someone please fill me in on what is supposedly so special about the debut album from this family-owned Bay Area thrash outfit? I first encountered it three decades ago now & are still no closer to understanding the reason for the high regard it seems to be held in by almost every thrasher out there (with the possible exception of Ben who has always agreed with me). Don't get me wrong. It's a more than handy thrash record & was quite the achievement for such a young group of dudes but it doesn't really come close to competing with the big boys of the genre in my opinion. The triple play of "Kill As One", the title track & "Mistress Of Pain" is really great but it's book-ended by some material that doesn't exactly stand out from the crowd with a couple of tracks not really cutting the mustard for me personally (see the awful vocal performance on "Voracious Souls" or the light-weight & generic riffage of "Final Death"). I don't think Death Angel have ever released anything I'd regard as being close to a classic but their best work was yet to come in my opinion. A lot of that has to do with the dodgy vocal performance here as front man Mark Osegueda hadn't learned to sing in key just yet. A decent if overrated release for fans of Testament, Metallica & Exodus.

3.5/5

Testament - "The New Order" (1988)

"The New Order" saw Testament taking on a fresh new sound which included a growing reliance on melody & a more mature approach to song-writing. There are still plenty of the energetic thrash riffs that made "The Legacy" so appealing but the numerous acoustic sections & extra melodic content accentuate the heavier moments which gives them greater significance. Alex Skolnick's guitar solos are the clear highlight here & they lifted him to legendary status with me as a budding young shredder. His ability to create truly memorable lead solos without compromising on the technical wizardry was mind-blowing. Greg Christian's bass performance has plenty of energy & should not be overlooked either. He reminds a lot of Anthrax's Frank Bello at times while Chuck Billy's vocal display is top notch. Unfortunately there are some negatives to speak of though. The production is well short of the mark (especially in the rhythm guitar department) & this removes any chance "The New Order" had of reaching true thrash classic status with me personally. Louie Clemente's drumming is also pretty basic which leaves much of the material feeling like there's some untapped potential that could have been uncovered with a more adventurous & exciting approach.

As for the songs themselves, we have a pretty consistent record overall. The Aerosmith cover "Nobodys Fault" is the clear weak point & sounds more like Skid Row than a thrash band. It should certainly have been omitted as it's simply not at the same standard as the originals but I think the rest of the material is very solid. Of the proper songs my highlights include the title track, "Disciples Of the Watch" & "Into The Pit" but the real highlight for me is two-minute instrumental "Hypnosis" which shows Skolnick's lead guitar skills at their absolute best. It's a soaring & highly emotive performance that easily manages to overcome the production issues that hold back the rest of the album (which is partly due to it's lack of rhythm guitars in all honesty).

Overall, "The New Order" is a quality thrash metal album that had the potential to be a real classic with a bit more care in the production department. It's certainly a worthy follow-up to Testament's more widely celebrated debut which has a slight of edge over it's younger sibling with me these days thanks to its raw & aggressive tone. 

For fans of Metaliica, Exodus & Death Angel.

4/5

Testament - "The Gathering" (1999)

Californian thrash metal establishment Testament's eighth album seems to be held in very high regard these days which perhaps has more to the amazing lineup than it does the musical result. Don't take that comment the wrong way though. "The Gathering" is certainly a quality release from a super-capable group of musicians but I'm not sure it comes close to being a genuine classic at any point. The inclusion of James Murphy (Cancer/Death/Hallows Eve/Disincarnate/Obituary) on lead guitar, Steve DiGiorgio (Autopsy/Control Denied/Death/Iced Earth/Sadus/Soen) on bass & Dave Lombardo (Slayer/Dead Cross/Fantômas/Grip Inc./Misfits/Mr. Bungle/Suicidal Tendencies) on drums is a salivating idea for any thrasher worth his salt however I think the eventual outcome is somewhat of a missed opportunity. I mean the talent of these musicians hasn't really been fully utilized here, particularly that of Murphy whose solos are generally pretty short & uneventful & DiGiorgio who seems quite restrained for the most part. There seems to be a groove metal influence creeping into Testament's sound at times too & I have to admit that the groovier moments inevitably represent some of the weaker parts of the album for me personally.

The tracklisting is fairly inconsistent with thrashing belters like "Legions of the Dead" & album highlight "Fall of Sipledome" being mixed in with disappointing inclusions like "Eyes of Wrath", "Allegiance" & the depressingly flat "Careful What You Wish For".  Despite the hits & misses though, front man Chuck Billy puts in a commanding performance & is definitely the focal point of the star-studded band, his powerful bellows often bordering on death metal. He carries some of the weaker tracks & adds some much needed weight to the record. Overall I think "The Gathering" is a more than decent thrash metal album that's worthy of a few spins but is certainly not as mind-blowing as a lot of people make out & is a clear step down from Testament's classic first two records.

For fans of Metallica, Exodus & Death Angel.

3.5/5

Hey Ben, I see your excellent review of Master of Puppets is featured on RYM's front page today.

Cool to see so many Testament albums reviewed here.  Way better than Anthrax ever were, nd it gets on my nerves that they made it to thrash's big four and Testament didn't.

Cool to see so many Testament albums reviewed here.  Way better than Anthrax ever were, nd it gets on my nerves that they made it to thrash's big four and Testament didn't.

I 100% agree. In fact, along with Metallica and Slayer, Testament were for a long time one of my favourite bands. I owned all their albums on CD up until Low, by which point I was focussed on more extreme pastures. I still haven't listened to the band's last few releases, which is something I really should remedy.

I disagree. I'd take "Spreading The Disease", "Among The Living" & even "Armed & Dangerous" over anything Testament has released. I've never considered Testament to be a tier one thrash band to be honest.

I'd have Sepultura in my Big Four ahead of Anthrax, Testament or Megadeth.

Cool to see so many Testament albums reviewed here.  Way better than Anthrax ever were, nd it gets on my nerves that they made it to thrash's big four and Testament didn't.

I think one of the reasons is that the "Big Four" of thrash metal was eastablished very early on and Testament didn't release their debut until 1987, four years after Show No Mercy and Kill 'em All, by which time thrash had become very established as a genre and precedents had already been set. On the upside, in light of the demise in credibility of most of the Big Four, particularly Metallica and Anthrax, Testament may be better served by not being associated with them. Personally, I think Chuck Billy and co. are one of the more consistent thrash outfits and thoroughly deserve whatever accolades are awarded them.

Just thinking about it now, my Big Four would be Slayer, Metallica, Kreator & Sepultura.

I listen to more of tech-thrash than conventional thrash while enjoying a small bit of the latter, so this would be my personal Big 4: Annihilator, Sadus, Coroner, Dark Angel

I think Testament are consistent and I will spin most of their stuff over the course of a year at some point, but they never dug in and developed like some of the other artists mentioned here.  The first Sepultura releases where ugly as fuck and the path they went on up to and including Arise was amazing.  Metallica dropped the ball in latter years but that golden run of those first four albums has never been matched in my book.  Not a big fan of Anthrax having never viewed them as a total package.  Vocally they have always been poor and the fact that when Belladonna went and they somehow brought in a worse choice with Bush absolutely baffles me.

• Metallica - faded badly after the black album but that golden run across Kill 'Em All through to an including ...And Justice For All is timeless
• Sepultura - pretty much the same as above only they started from a very different (and much more extreme) place and in some ways herald more accolades from me for progressing so well over 5 releases
• Kreator - another example of a band who were pretty much flawless in terms of their progression for the first 15 years of their career.  Pleasure To Kill remains one of my favourite thrash metal releases.
• Exodus - (yes, not Slayer) and I mulled muchly over this one.  Although not in the same league as the others on the list in terms of consistency of output over a significant period, these guys still remain incredibly relevant to this day.  Last years Persona Non Grata release was a banger.  Had things turned out differently, the combination of Holt and Hammett on guitars would no doubt have been one of metal's more celebrated partnerships by now.  Also, flawed though it is, Fabulous Disaster was a huge record for me as a teenager.

I disagree. I'd take "Spreading The Disease", "Among The Living" & even "Armed & Dangerous" over anything Testament has released. I've never considered Testament to be a tier one thrash band to be honest.

I'd have Sepultura in my Big Four ahead of Anthrax, Testament or Megadeth.

Adding non-U.S. bands is blatantly cheating and you know it! 

If we're going worldwide then my personal Big Four would be Slayer, Metallica, Kreator and Sepultura. Just missing out would be Megadeth, Testament and Coroner.

I've always found Exodus and Anthrax to be overrated. Just my opinion though.

It would appear that you've copied my Big Four. Now who is the cheat?

It would appear that you've copied my Big Four. Now who is the cheat?

No I didn't! Your big four were...um...they were...shut up Daniel, or...or I'll tell mum!

I agree that Spreading the Disease and Among the Living are better albums than any Testament produced, but Anthrax fell hard and Testament had better staying power.

If we were naming a worldwide Big4 then I would go Slayer, Kreator, Metallica, Celtic Frost with Megadeth and Sepultura marginally missing out.

Slayer - Hell Awaits (1985)

Hell Awaits was the very first Slayer album I bought as I expanded my thrash metal awareness beyond Metallica's first two albums. It is probably my least favoured of their first three albums. I love the youthful exuberance of the debut (and it contains The Antichrist) and Reign in Blood is the greatest thrash album ever. But even despite that, Hell Awaits is still a fucking top-tier thrash metal release and most bands can only dream of producing something this awesome.

When first listening to it all those decades ago it was, without doubt, the darkest album I had ever heard, with lyrics about hell, demons, serial killers and vampires, not in some tongue-in-cheek, Hammer Horror, camp-it-up style, but in red raw, visceral glee. Being the time, in the UK at least, of the video nasty laws banning "extreme" horror videos, it was hard to believe this was even allowed! Hell Awaits was most assuredly the biggest knee in the bollocks to the shiny glamour of the new romantics, hair metal and stadium rock that was proliferating in the mid-eighties and sowed the seeds, both musically and thematically, for much of the extreme metal that was to follow. This was most definitely an album and a band I could get behind.

Funnily, for a band as direct and in-your-face as Slayer, some of their most awesome tracks have an extended intro. I'm thinking Seasons in the Abyss, Raining Blood and, most pertinent to this review, the opener and title track, Hell Awaits, with the faded-in build-up and sinister backwards chanting of the intro. When the riff breaks and things begin in earnest, Tom Araya spills out words of an impending conquering of heaven by the hordes of hell, as if he was some old testament prophet in the throes of delivering demonically-inspired prophecy, fighting to impart the visions he has seen in a flurry of verbiage he can barely control. Add to this the increased intensity of guitarists Hanneman and King, their riffs bludgeoning metalheads worldwide insensible even as their solos left behing trails of blistering flesh, so white-hot were they. This was the first time I had heard solos so intense that it seemed like the Slayer duo had weaponised the art to the point that it could cause physical harm! Drummer Dave Lombardo had also grown exponentially in stature and confidence, although his tour-de-force was still an album away, and he and Araya's (very prominent) bass underpin and punctuate the two six-stringer's lethal assaults.

An interesting idea was ending the album with an outro that is the same as it began with, providing an ouroborous-like loop which reinforces the idea of eternity and the endlessness of the torments that await in hell. I think it is safe to say that this is an underappreciated album, which I am as guilty of as anyone. It feels like a quantifiably superior album to Show No Mercy with better performances, songwriting and production, yet I have a fondness for the debut that, irrationally, I don't feel for Hell Awaits on the same level - even whilst recognising it as a great album nonetheless. People are just weird I guess.
4.5/5

I disagree. I'd take "Spreading The Disease", "Among The Living" & even "Armed & Dangerous" over anything Testament has released. I've never considered Testament to be a tier one thrash band to be honest.

I'd have Sepultura in my Big Four ahead of Anthrax, Testament or Megadeth.

Adding non-U.S. bands is blatantly cheating and you know it! 

Even though Sepultura are better than Anthrax and Megadeth, I did in fact leave out bands outside of CA.

Anthrax aren't from California though.

Anthrax aren't from California though.

Really?

Yet ANOTHER reason they should be kicked off!

But I am a goat, and the greatest of all time.  You suggest I wouldn't know by now?

I agree that Testament has a lot of similarities to Metallica.  The New Order falls right in line with Master of Puppets.  But this suggests that Anthrax's legacy is built on being more commercial, which makes some sense.