Thrash can be a funny one. In one respect it was a harder, faster, heavier version of its heavy metal forbears. The lyrics covered heavier subjects. References to love and relationships were ditched. This urgent music stood on a soap box and assumed the coming apocalypse was nigh. A certain level of musicianship was demanded... Continue Reading →

By the late 1980s the homogenous blob that was known as extreme metal was slowly coming apart, with journalists and commentators forming and moulding the separate camps that were to define the following decades. There were artists however, that still resisted this trend, and played a form of hard thrash still lacking certain features that... Continue Reading →

Thrash is probably one of the heaviest forms of music to penetrate the mainstream psyche in any significant way. But this has so coloured the history of thrash that it tends to overstate the significance of artists like Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and yes, even Slayer at times. The lesser known Teutonic scene defined by the... Continue Reading →

In order to build something new, sometimes it is necessary to destroy that which is old. If black metal destroyed the mores of production values, song structures, crumbs of appeal for the listener, then the work of Ildjarn was undoubtedly the logical conclusion to this project. Talentless hack to some, misunderstood genius to others (me),... Continue Reading →

In the 1980s heavy metal in all its weird and wonderful forms morphed into a genuinely international phenomenon. This was true of artists making inroads into mainstream charts and hearts, and of the underground movement, which propagated itself through tape-trading and word of mouth. Sarcofago, a little known metal outfit from Brazil were to gain... Continue Reading →

By the mid-1980s thrash metal had captured the hearts and minds of the metal community, it had established itself as a legitimate musical variation on heavy guitar music with many of the originators achieving legitimate mainstream success. The lyrics were typically obsessed with justice, comments on the threat of nuclear war and the coming apocalypse,... Continue Reading →

Disparate artists across Europe and the Americas, growing up on a strict diet of Motorhead, punk, NWOBHM, and even some classical music, were in turn picking up guitars themselves (often for the first time) to emulate these musicians and hopefully surpass them, pushing the boundaries of just how noisy guitar music could be. This abrasive... Continue Reading →

With most histories tracing the line from Black Sabbath through to the extreme metal of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it’s easy to forget those artists that held on to one of the original credos of old school heavy metal, the slow droning powerchords and apocalyptic lyrics that led to what would be known... Continue Reading →