The Batlord

As much as I like coming up with something interesting, or at least something that's interesting to me, I also love wallowing in the past when it suits my whims, and thrash metal was what got me into music in the first place. Sure, I listened to god awful **** like Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, and Ozzy Osbourne beforehand, but it was thrash which truly set me on the path to musical obsession, and without it, I don't know if I would have developed that visceral need to listen to music all day every day. It was my gateway, not only into metal, but music in general, so I'm let's take a trip down self-indulgent memory lane in no particular order (I'm too drunk to rate anything). Sorry if this doesn't satisfy any thrash elitists' taste for obscure thrash, but this is the list of someone who is revisiting his past, when thrash was "new", before he became burned out from listening to the same ol' same ol', so expect some Big Four worship...






I clearly remember that it was after listening to Anthrax's Fistful of Metal (my first Anthrax album, and possibly one of the first metal albums I ever listened to) telling my mother that I was officially a metalhead (she was thrilled), but it was after first hearing this album that I realized that I was first and foremost a thrash metalhead. For weeks after, I listened to this album at least once a day every day, and often multiple times. This album ruled my life in a way that few others have in my twenty-nine years of life, and even if other Exodus albums have beaten my ass into the ground, no other will ever have the same thunderous impact on my psyche.

The riffs are abominably badass, the vocals are metal-to-the-core, and the production is perfectly in-between the self-consciously ****ty sound of black metal and the relatively sleek sound of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

But what truly draws me to this album is just how dated and ****ty it is. These days I would recognize this and love it ironically as much as I legitimately love it, but at fourteen I was such a n00b to all forms of music that I didn't even realize (I honestly didn't even recognize that Paul Baloff's vocals were cheesy). All I knew is that it was intense and unapologetically badass in a way that no other album I had ever heard had ever ascended/descended to. I can totally understand why this is so revered, since without the "benefit" of modern sophistication this album simply exemplifies to the Nth degree everything that is metal and macho.

And the bomb dropping intro of the title track, followed by that god damn ****ing riff still sends chills down my spine. It is pure metal personified: bitchin', brain-dead, and fun.






Back in the day I listened to Metallica's first four albums way, way, way too many times for any one of them to have made that much of an impact on me over the others. First my fav was Master of Puppets, then for the longest time it was Ride the Lightning, but now it is unquestionably Kill 'Em All. So let's go with that.

Call it a thrash album if you want, but I see this as more of an NWOBHM album that used hardcore punk to make a flying leap into what was then unknown territory. It's fast, furious, and full of young, dumb, and full of cum. Other Metallica albums might have been more accomplished, but KEA was just, like Bonded By Blood, the personification of metal. If you're not a dyed-in-the-wool metal fan, or someone who needs no brains in their metal, then this might not be a selling point to you, but as a fanboy of metal-for-metal's-sake, this is the pinnacle of metal. Straight up.

No Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Death, etc album can come even close to bringing me that childish joy that this album does. This is one of those albums that makes me feel like that teenager who listened to nothing but metal, respected nothing but metal, and cared about nothing but metal. The sheer joy for metal exemplified by this album is a shot of pure euphoria for me.

The fact that it contains "Hit the Lights", "The Four Horsemen", "Jump in the Fire", "No Remorse", and the bonus tracks of "Blitzkrieg" and "Am I Evil?" is almost just a bonus. Almost. Cause those are the best metal songs ever recorded. **** your mother.





For the longest time this was my favorite Metallica album, and it's still my second fav. Diverse songwriting, badass thrash, complex yet approachable tunes, and beautiful melodies that pretty much no other thrash band could ever hope to tough, this album is an anomoly, not only in the genre, but in the band's back catalog.

It has the dark, lo-fi aesthetic of the debut, but matured like a fine wine. Pretty much every song on this album is a singular masterpiece of metal perfection. No other album before or since has sounded like this... this.

I'd already loved "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "Creeping Death", and "Fade to Black" (the greatest metal ballad that isn't "Hallowed By Thy Name") from the radio, but came to love "Fight Fire with Fire", "Escape", and the title track just as much (alright, maybe not quite as much).

This is an absolute masterpiece.






This was the first true thrash album I ever listened to, back when I didn't even know that thrash was a thing, and I listened to it so many times that it doesn't even make sense. I bought Load and Reload at the same time, but I'd like to think that the brutality of this album made an exceptional impression on me (can't say for sure, though, as I still thought Rob Zombie was pretty wizard at the time).

I don't love this as much as the above two albums these days though, mostly because it doesn't have any songs that quite hit as hard as "Seek and Destroy" or "For Whom the Bell Tolls", but what this album lacks in stone cold OMFG classics, it more than makes up for in consistency and, most of all, an absolutely perfect album flow (the only slight, slight, slight misstep is the almost-but-not-quite filler of "Disposable Heroes"). All in all, though, this album is a nearly perfect headbanging experience from start to finish.

The flow of this album is deceptively simple: the "welcome to the thrash fest" of "Battery", followed by the more epic title track, leading into the more mid-paced crushery of "The Thing that Should Not Be", which ends the A-side with the anti-thrash of "Welcome Home (Sanatorium)".

The B-side begins with the aforementioned quasi-mediocrity of "Disposable Heroes", which leads into the even more crushing "Leper Messiah", with the brilliant interlude of the instrumental "Orion", and ends with the sister track to "Battery", "Damage, Inc." which is a "welcome to the thrash fest" bookend to the album that is quite possibly the most appropriate and perfect closer to an album ever recorded.

Even if single tracks don't quite add up to Metallica's best tracks, the consistency of the album is mind-boggling. When I first heard the album, I just assumed that bands could do this, but I honestly don't think I've ever heard an album, metal or not, that could provide a more cohesive listening experience from start to finish.

Even if Master of Puppets isn't as diverse as Ride the Lightning, or as definitive a thrash statement as Slayer's Reign in Blood, it is quite possibly the most consistent metal album of all time. Whether or not I agree that it is the best metal album ever recorded, I won't fault anyone who claims that it is.






I could give a **** about technicality, but on this album Megadeth managed to turn proficiency into manic insanity in a way that no other band ever managed to duplicate in any way, shape, or ****ing form. This was the first Megadeth album I ever bought, and possibly one of the first five metal albums I ever bought in general (****, if you don't count Load and Reload then it was probably the third metal album I purchased) and as such it was HIGHLY influential to my impressionable, fourteen-year-old mind.

I can't think of another album that is this pissed off. Plenty of punk albums are angry, but that is generally because they are self-righteous, radical wannabes, but on this album, Dave Mustaine was expressing a personal grudge against his former band in a way that only an aphetamine-amped, borderline psychotic could. This album is rage and hate personified. Dude seriously needed to be medicated.

It might not have the polish and consistency of Peace Sells... But Who's Buying, or Rust in Peace, but it more than makes up for it in the pure venom. The main riff to "Last Rites/Loved to Deth" is malevolence personified, and that rhythm guitar to the title track is one of the most badass riffs of all time (I've heard Dave Mustaine's rhythm guitar described as more impressive than most bands' lead playing, and this song is the ultimate proof of that.

If you claim to be a metalhead and you can't appreciate the genius of this album, then you are a poseur. Not even joking. **** you.






Not as pissed off as their earlier work, this was quite possibly the greatest technical/progressive thrash album of all time, due to its ability to combine aggression, accessibility, and interesting songwriting. I didn't quite appreciate songs like "Hangar 18" back in the day (and I still don't particularly like "Holy Wars... The Punishment Due" ), but these days it is one of my most beloved Megadeth songs of all time, and pure thrash tunes like "Take No Prisoners" and "Five Magics" beat almost as much ass as anything in their back catalog, while making up for any slight lack off aggression with speed metal melody.

And songs like "Tornado of Souls" and "Rust In Peace... Polaris" are even catchier than 95% of their pop metal flirtations from the rest of the 90s.

It's been said by a certain member of this site that when a genre starts incorporating prog into its sound that it is in decline, but this album defies this accusation (though I generally do agree). I wouldn't call this a pure thrash album, as technicality has largely neutered the hardcore influence that made thrash so immediate in the past, but the speed metal energy makes this largely irrelevant.

A thrash/speed/prog/heavy metal milestone.






First Slayer song I ever heard was "Die By the Sword", and its evilness blew me the **** away, but immediately after that was "Angel of Death". Holy **** did that annihilate what was left of my mind. I will forever go back and forth between Reign in Blood and Hell Awaits, but both are landmarks in my thrash metal education, and Reign in Blood was the first Slayer album I ever actually listened to, and so it defined what I thought of as Slayer's sound.

This album is simply twenty-nine minutes of pure, sonic violence. Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman's guitar blitzkrieg, Tom Araya's vocal hatefest, Dave Lombardo's drum lobotomy, and THE SATAN killed whatever remained of my love for any radio metal I had previously harbored. I mean, this is Reign in Blood for Azazel's sake. This is the thrash Bible, and anything else is desperately grasping for thrash second place.

"Angel of Death" is brutality personified -- death metal or no death metal -- "Raining Blood" is The Evil, and then there's the rest of the album... just, OMG. How could anyone ever think that Killswitch Engage or Bring Me the Horizon are bringing the genre forward when such an album is so clearly overshadowing anything that they have ever done? There comes a point when progression has to make way for the admission that what is currently happening simply can not touch what has come before.

"Rancid, angel of death, flying free!!!"






I've heard Anthrax described as "the thinking man's thrash band", and while I imagine the only person who would say that probably isn't "a thinking man", I can kind of see where someone like that is coming from. They had some ideas beyond the wannabe punk bitching of bands going on about nuclear war and shallow, liberal politics, but still... come the **** on! "Medusa" and "I Am the Law" for ****'s sake!

But who the **** cares when Spreading the Disease rules so god damn much? This will be Anthrax's only entry, since I wasn't as big of a fan of their more hardcore influenced later albums, or their wannabe prog flirtations on Persistence of Time, but god damn do I love everything about this album. I only wish I'd listened more to their debut, or else that would probably feature here as well, as it is everything about the cheesy, thrash/proto-thrash movement of the early/mid-80s that I love so dearly.

Alas.

But **** it, down to business. Never again would Joey Belladonna have such free reign with his vocals, and he comes across as a tongue-in-cheek Bruce Dickinson, with all of the massive fun that that implies, and while Scott Ian's rhythm guitar is kind of in its primitive phase, it still hits plenty hard, and sets the album apart from the hopeless NWOBHM worship of so many proto-power metal bands of their era, perfectly set off by the even-then moderately brutal drumming of Charlie Benante (seriously, if the band had disbanded and Scott and Charlie had given their full attention to SOD, I think they could have been even more than the bottom rung of the Big Four).

But what really makes this one of my favorite thrash albums of all time is just how much fun it is. It has the headbanging quality of thrash, while having the melodic fun of melodic heavy metal. I can throw up the devil horns at the same time I am ironically singing the lyrics to "A.I.R.", "Medusa", and "Armed and Dangerous" at the top of my lungs.

Spreading the Disease may not be as consistent or well-realized as Among the Living, but it makes up for it by being one of the most god damn fun metal albums ever recorded. It's just so much god damn mother****ing fun!!!

**** anyone who says differently. Yes, that means you, WPNFire.






I was seriously debating with myself what the tenth position would be, but then I saw Metal Church on RYM, and was like, dude, **** YEAH METAL CHURCH!!! I mean, I was lukewarm toward half the tracks on this album as a teenager, but loved the others, then loved the entire album after a few years, and now I really can't think of an album that had as big an impact on me at the time (weirdly enough). And it's also an excuse to shove an obscure album into the end of this post.

But seriously, I suppose this is an odd album to post here. It's as much heavy metal and early power metal as it is thrash metal, but as far as I'm concerned it's part of the same movement, even if it's too early and divorced from the "right" influences (being from Seattle) to "benefit" from the bigger thrash movement.

Songs like "Battalions" are obviously too power metal to qualify, but "(My Favorite) Nightmare" is pure proto-thrash, which goes too far to be classified as anything else, even if it's just thrash-adjacent, and most of the rest of the album is close enough for government work.

Whatevs, though, the entire album is pure proto-thrash awesomeness. If "Hitman" and "Into the Blood" are the closest thing to filler on the album, then **** me this is a stone cold classic. Even if you don't really dig thrash, but love you some NWOBHM, then you owe it to yourself to listen to this album, and if you dig thrash, but aren't into thrash, then you should still listen to it.

It's just in that perfect sweet spot between the two movements. But if you don't dig cheesy 80s singing, then you might want to skip this. Metal Church doesn't have any hair band vocals, but... they're definitely a cheesy 80s metal band.

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