Beats and yelling: Demoniac and the not renaissance of thrash

Demoniac: Nube Negra
Out 1st September on Edged Circle Productions

Even the name “thrash” metal causes a problem. In its earliest phase, it was simply a stylistic divergence from heavy metal referred to as speed metal. Before commentators – not unreasonably – saw fit to delineate further this new trend (a Slayer from a Helloween for example) by marking out the aggressive moves of the Americans from the continuity metal of the European (who were essentially a form of juiced up heavy metal in all but name). But the real world implications of the “thrash” genre tag – appropriated from early hardcore punk from which it takes cues – has had a profound effect on the perception and direction of the genre itself.

Despite thrash metal’s transitory location within the chronology of metal – a bridge between mature heavy metal and germinal extreme metal – it is perhaps not as contested as neighbouring subgenres. In sharing the same space of generic social commentary, impotent single issue sloganeering, and liberally borrowing its vocabulary, it nurtured an easy coexistence with punk that other populations in metal failed to achieve. Equally, its founding fathers maintained an easy proximity with heavy metal virtuosity, and as a result thrash is just as happy indulging in high energy mega jams of outrageous showmanship and bloated compositional forms as it is a grounded, blue-collar realism.

Despite all this, considered hindsight has located the form in a halfway house, both in terms of the timeline of metal and the highly contested genre hierarchy. It has produced some of metal’s most recognisable iconography, yet to be over zealous in praise for thrash is regarded with suspicion. It’s seen as betraying a lack of intimacy with more sophisticated metal forms i.e., thrash is for those that don’t know better. In a sense, it was never allowed the time to establish an agreed form in the strictest sense because codified thrash is essentially early death metal, which finally severing the lasting attachment to rock in composition and outlook.

By formalising, evolving, and ultimately transcending the final traces of feelgood rockism, death metal rendered thrash all but obsolete save as a historical curiosity. Equally, thrash’s lack of distinct genre form – being defined more by technique, delivery, and a hastily assembled riff basket blended from formative punk and metal – left it open to abuse. Since the 90s and beyond, the devolution into power ballad sentimentalism at one end, and empty adrenaline runs at the other (later dubbed pizza thrash in one of the most inspired moments of genre classification in metal history) was all but inevitable.

The ephemeral location of thrash has rather paradoxically left it frozen in time. Brushes with commercial interests proved existential (see the psychodramas of the old guard). Attempts to progress the genre, whilst briefly fruitful, either devolved into alt rock fatalism (Voivod) or found a pure thrash template too limiting for what they wanted to express, inevitably moving musicians into more evolved offspring in the form of progressive death metal (Atheist, Nocturnus).

As a result, thrash has been forever consigned to a glorious heyday from which it cannot escape. Despite the nostalgia turn of the late 2000s still dominating the airwaves, other genres exhibit signs of contemporary life. Demonstrable by the mere fact that bands must make a conscious choice to market their style as retroist in contrast to some “present” form of a genre (i.e. OSDM implies the existence of new school DM). Thrash however (and to some extent heavy metal), is defined by nostalgia, to play thrash at all is to express a yearning for that brief period of creative explosion in the mid to late 80s. This leaves it exponentially more vulnerable to clownish novelty (Municipal Waste), in the case of older acts a lingering perception of geriatrics playing kids music (Nuclear Assault), or a generic amped up rock template onto which legacy acts can “rediscover” their roots and reassert an imagined relevancy (Teutonic thrash).

---

It is into this context that Chile’s Demoniac release their third album ‘Nube Negra’. An album and artist that triggered much of the above rumination, Demoniac are notable for clearly communicating in the language of thrash whilst managing to sound utterly contemporary. Unlike other thrash bands who attempt a modernist turn through prog metal signifiers but end up sounding like Obliveon or DBC tributes, Demoniac take their prog sensibilities seriously, imbuing them with a pronounced sense of fun. An explicit push for experimentation within their music takes them well beyond metal territory whilst retaining a firm footing in the locality, lending the music a surrealism that makes one forget context for a few measures and enjoy the moment for its own sake. This in turn is supplemented by a vicious cocktail of pin sharp composition, outrageous bombast and virtuousity, and a refocusing of the latent energy and aggression of thrash into compositional formality. This takes thrash away from a mere recital of vocabulary as many acts – even the self-identifying progressive ones –are wont to do, whilst simultaneously retaining a terminal addiction to frenetic energy (sans the base will-to-party impetus). 

Their debut ‘Intemperance’ (2017) delivered a tight package of energetic thrash, updating the format with an intensity and density that allowed it to slot in contemporaneously with the sensibilities of a modern audience well versed in the overwhelming soundscapes of modern extreme metal. Although a pronounced character was already established, the neoclassical flare was marginalised to interludes and tangential breakdowns, failing to fully integrate into the architecture of the music.

That changed with the release of ‘So it Goes’ in 2020. A darker album that saw thrash exchange its primary DNA of riff exchanges for longform melodic motivation. As if to emphasise this shift, a bracing, virtuoso backbone of bombastic guitar leads was deployed to accentuate and extend the neoclassicist-cum-progressive intentions of Demoniac. The result was a near perfect melding of traditional heavy metal narrative ambitions with the violence, darkness, and esoterica of post ‘85 extreme metal. Perhaps more daringly, this created room for brushes with much maligned avant-garde metal territory, with tracks like ‘Extraviado’ exhibiting a loose jazz framework and indulging the detestable saxophone in an extreme metal setting. But again, the character and identity of Demoniac as musicians was defined enough to motivate this as a genuine expansion of musical boundaries and not a desperate need to appear quirky.

‘Nube Negra’ extends this integration further. The tracks are shorter by virtue of an efficiency born of greater self-knowledge. Elements borrowed from flamenco, classical guitar, progressive rock, and classical music flourish in a metallic setting under the strict mediation of sophisticated melodic thrash. Sharp compositional discipline allows these tracks to wander into unexpected territory, but without the lawless and ultimately futile posturing of so much extreme metal purporting to be avant-garde in nature. The backbone of bracing, motivational thrash metal locks this album in place both artistically and stylistically, allowing scholars to comfortably locate it within the landscape of extreme metal whilst boasting a degree of difference and compositional density that refuses to succumb to analysis, however learned or thorough.

The topography of modern thrash is such that Demoniac are immediately identifiable as anomalous to current trends. They present a continuity with the past, expanding on the marked ambitions of heavy metal, the frenetic energy of thrash, and the denser impetus of extreme metal, adding to the vocabulary of each tradition as they go. But this is thrash that refuses to buckle to empty gestures of remembrance or impotent party music. It gathers the most convincing elements of older formulas, removes the brackets and dead-end clauses, and in the process begins writing new equations and possibilities atop the old. This, in an era of extreme metal where an intellectual creed has long since abandoned thrash to a more superficial breed of metalheads whose interest extends no further than how it can serve their identity, create space for online posturing, or adorn their day to day activities with an “edgy” soundtrack.