The Story of Rock presents: Thrash Metal
While the mainstream Rock scene in the 80's mainly focused on those Glam and Pop Metal bands, there's a paralel scene taking and absorbing the pressure, waiting to emerge with literally a bang; Thrash Metal.
It's for the love for bands in the late 70's such as Motorhead and Daimond Head who were part of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal movement that James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich decided to start a band that will play faster than anyone else; a certain band called METALLICA. They were so tired and pissed off at the LA Metal scene that they relocated themselves to San Francisco, the Thrash capital at the time with bandsslike Exodus generating buzz.
But they were not the only teenagers who love the Heavy sound and wanted to do something faster and different. So came a band called Slayer......and a New York band called Anthrax. And right after this genre took off around 1983, we had another band added to the big 4, Megadeth who ex-Metallica Dave Mustaine got fired and started his own band.
So now we have the big 4 of Thrash Metal: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax.
The combination of Heavy Riff, fast pace drums, and hard singing voice granted the bands places in the hearts of teenagers around the world who got sick of the popular and so called Heavy Metal music with bands like Motley Crue and Bon Jovi hitting the charts without any real musicianship but only dressed like girls.
Thrash Metal bands was slowly winning a crowd at a time with their live shows because MTV was never going to have them on their channel. But then came the year 1986 which spitted out 3 Thrash Metal classics: Master of Puppets by Metallica, Reign In Blood by Slayer, and Among The Living by Anthrax. These albums were the ones that took this sub genre to a new level that they were noticed more and more and being recognized as real Heavy Metal bands. Their stamps on the Rock world are in themselves very evident. The big 4 bands are still doing great, selling out stadiums, with no sign of stopping comparing to those of Hair Metal genre who almost all seemed to dissapear after the early 90's.
Thrash Metal is very important also because it influenced so many bands and other sub genre to emerge. For example, Slayer is one of the main band who inspired Death Metal bands like Death to take what Slayer did to the extreme therefore creating Death Metal; while Venom who (I think) accidently created Black Metal by naming one of their song 'Black Metal' and by doing all the theatrics stuff on the stage; Anthrax was to inspired the Hardcore/Metal style type of music; Metallica inspired countless bands; and Megadeth laid down the riffs and musicianship for the later generation to try to match. Bands like Lamb of God, The Haunted, and Bonded by Blood from the new generation of Metal were greatly influenced by those Thrash Metal bands as the riffs and ways of playing were so Thrash-like, though not without a twist.
As the big 4 gained more and more popularity, the so called 2nd tier of Thrash Metal bands like Exodus, Testament, Venom, and Kreator started to receive reputation as being the real deal too.
So who started it all? The bands that claim to have really started it all cannot argue the fact that the first band to bring it to the mass population was the dude-look-like-a-lady inspring Motley Crue. Their efforts proved crucial to influenced (sometimes co-influenced alongside bands like Ratt and Hanoi Rocks) many upcoming bands. They were the first to gave Heavy Metal glamness and certainly the epitome of "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll" concept. They undoubtedly gave the later bands the need to dress like girls but have sex like beasts. Their music, though, cannot be left out. Songs like Live wire, Shout at the devil, Looks that kill, Home sweet home, Girls girls girls, and Dr.Feelgood still rock like they did back in the old days. If their first LP too fast for love did not reach the wide audience, shout at the devil, their second album certainly shocked the world both musically and fashionably.
Apart from Motley Crue, there were many bands like Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Ratt, Twisted Sister, Stryper (Chirstian Metal? What!!!!), and many more bands that musically fell into the grey area between the old school heavy riffed Metal and soft ballad Pop Metal songs, and fashionably between man/women shock looks. But in the middle 1980's the world of Hair Metal was introduced to even more bands that captured the concept of competing to dress like girls the most (i.e. Glam Metal) and made the cachiest ballad (i.e. Pop Metal).
Poison was certainly one of the if not glammiest of them all while Bon Jovi seemed to be putting out ballad hit after hit after hit. But make no mistake about it, songs like Talk dirty to me, Every rose has its thorn, You give love a bad name, and I'll be there for you still captured the heart of sensitive metalheads today. But more successful bands like Warrant, Cinderella, Europe, Whitesnake, White Lion, Faster Pussy Cat mastered the great combination of dressing like girls while also having great ballads. This proved crucial as bands like Firehouse, Extreme or Mr.Big were commercially mediorce at best (great ballads but looked like dudes! Nah).
But talking about Hair Metal cannot be completed without the bands that took the mix of Punk, Blues, and heavy riffs and hit the world so hard at the turn of the decade; Skid Row and Gun n' Roses. Skid Row came into the scene very late but they were undoubtedly one of the most succesful and beloved band of that period (It certianly helped when Sebastian Bach was the frontman). While I remember you and 18 and life won the hearts of sensitive metalheads, Slave to the grind and Youth gone wild made hardcore metalheads go headbanging-crazy. But the success of Skid Row cannot even be in the same league as those guys who really marked the peakest of the peak (and also the end) of 80's Hair Metall: Guns n' Roses.
Guns n' Roses was so popular because they reached out to virtually everyone: from Glam haters to Glam lovers, from ballad lovers to heavy riffed fanatics, from mainstream to underground, from U.S.A. to Thailand, from business owners to Texas farmers. Everyone loved it. Although use your illsion double cds marked the end of the era and a very short life span of the band, Axl's screech and songs like Sweet Child o' mine, Welcome to the jungle, Don't cry, Paradise City, November rain, and many more will be forever remembered and embraced by every Rock fans.
Love it or hate it, every Metal fans must once paid attention to those bands that made Metal music so popular and worldwide. Without the 80's era, Metallica would seems average, Nirvana would never be as popular (more on these later), and Disco music may dominate the world today! Yaaaack.
Band recommedation:
HALOGEN, monday and thursday
MUNSON, friday, sunday, monday, tuesday, and wednesday