Thrash wasn’t initially a genre: it was what a band did. And in the ’80s it swarmed across the globe like a plague of locusts, from the Bay Area to Germany and beyond. Practically overnight, a new generation of shredders emerged who punched through the social and stylistic barriers dividing heavy metal from hardcore punk. The evil-obsessed headbangers produced the likes of Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax (a.k.a. the Big Four), while the Reagan-hating punks unleashed such crossover badasses as D.R.I., Agnostic Front, and Suicidal Tendencies. The frightening new intensities in speed, volume, and double bass-drum proficiency achieved by these pioneers kickstarted an extreme metal revolution that continues to this day.
As can be expected, our rundown of 30 Greatest Thrash Bands of All Time is chock-full of icons, but don’t be surprised to encounter a handful of crate-digger favorites. It’s now time to thrash or die!
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- Tankard
Tankard are legends of Teutonic thrash but, truth be told, their sound has always felt far more American. Their razor-wire guitars and flashy speed make them Bay Area devotees through and through, while their career-long obsession with lyrics extolling the joys of beer-guzzling mayhem shares more in common with crossover pranksters like the Accüsed. Three decades after dropping their riotous debut, Zombie Attack, the Germans are still thrashing away. Hopefully their livers hold up.
Key Track: “Acid Death”
- Cryptic Slaughter
Move beyond the icons of crossover thrash (Suicidal Tendencies, Agnostic Front, D.R.I., et al.), and one of the first names you’ll encounter is Cryptic Slaughter. The L.A. group are renowned for blast-beat-riddled tantrums overflowing with hate for Ronald Reagan and conservative America. Their 1987 album Money Talks comes caked in gruff filthiness reminiscent of British D-beat and crust punk. Napalm Death would acknowledge Cryptic Slaughter’s influence on grindcore with a cover of the classic “Lowlife.”
Key Track: “Money Talks”
- Power Trip
These upstart Texans deserve a spot at the table mainly due to their brazen originality. Power Trip love their vintage Vio-Lence and Cro-Mags records. But instead of mere crossover nostalgia, they bury their raspy blasts in mountains of cloudy reverb and bulldozing rumble. The resulting sound, while 110% visceral, ultimately stands out for its blurry, otherworldly feel, as if Power Trip were the stuff of dreams rather than an actual living, breathing entity.
Key Track: “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)”
- Sabbat
The U.K. may be more renowned for its doom tradition, but they coughed up several thrash legends, including the mighty Sabbat. The concept album Dreamweaver (Reflections of Our Yesterdays) has to be one of the movement’s most idiosyncratic. The playing is beastly yet also deeply erudite. With guitars squealing all around him, singer Martin Walkyier weaves epic storylines rooted in Anglo-Saxon mythology and paganism. This set Sabbat apart from thrash’s hordes of Satan-hailing scoundrels.
Key Track: “The Clerical Conspiracy”
- Razor
Razor have never cared much for variety or dynamics, and fans are all the better for it. Damn near every song unloads a gorefest of bludgeoning, hardcore tempos and riffs that sound like chainsaws hacking through bone. The Canadian thrash pioneers basically come off like a bunch of serial killers who chose to start a band. Violent Restitution is exactly the kind of record that would’ve gotten a teenager grounded for purchasing back in 1988.
Key Track: “The Marshall Arts”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gO2G21Ucqk&feature=youtu.be
- Nuclear Assault
Nuclear Assault have one speed, and it’s ludicrous. Indeed, few East Coast outfits can even match the New Yorkers’ unremittingly fast tempos. Initially, their hardcore punk roots played a starring role in their crossover. However, by the release of 1989’s Handle With Care, they were hardcore in attitude only, as their attack became straight thrash. Overkill and Anthrax sold more records, but neither ever matched the freight-train pummel of Nuclear Assault at their peak.
Key Track: “Critical Mass”
- Sadus
Sadus are proof that some of thrash’s most extreme bands never made it out of the underground. Worshipped by headbanging crate diggers (especially their Certain Death demo), these Bay Area freaks dial up the hostile shrieking and propulsion until they’re crashing the gates of black and death metal. While every instrument is handled by a maniacal technician, bassist Steve Di Giorgio deserves a shoutout for unbelievably frenetic runs that basically power Sadus’ entire sound.
Key Track: “Fight or Die”
- Voivod
Voivod’s popularity rests upon their progressive metal epics, but rewind to the Killing Technology era (1986-87) and the Canadians are sci-fi fans erecting a brainy and complex style of thrash soaked in creeping technophobia and dystopian paranoia. They rage for sure (particularly axman Denis “Piggy” D’Amour); at the same time, there are tons of knotty time changes and jazzy chord progressions. It’s safe to say no other thrash band evolved quite like Voivod.
Key Track: “Ravenous Medicine”
- Municipal Waste
Thrash’s 21st-century revival owes a massive thank you to the miscreants in Municipal Waste. The Virginia band’s ability to recreate crossover’s flailing chaos and unpredictable jumps to lightspeed are historically spot-on, yet what puts an album like The Art of Partying over the top is Municipal Waste’s obnoxious sense of humor. After all, thrash wasn’t all devils and nuclear apocalypses; a lot of it was silly and crude in a refreshingly juvenile way.
Key Track: “A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Destroyer)”
- Coroner
Coroner definitely helped put the weird in thrash. The fact that the Swiss trio were originally roadies for the legendarily eccentric Celtic Frost goes a long way to explaining the heroic doses of robo-riff geometry, dramatic prog arrangements, and spaced-out fusion haze injected into a run of challenging records that peaks with 1991’s bewildering Mental Vortex. The visionaries’ ability to marry unconventional genre-hopping to extreme sonics makes them granddaddies of the avant-metal movement.
Key Track: “Semtex Revolution”
- D.R.I.
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles are some of the first punks to embrace heavy metal. D.R.I.’s approach revolves around a marriage of hardcore’s spazzoid slop and shorter-is-better songwriting with metal’s hyper-physical drums and thumping bass. In hindsight, their ’80s recordings sound way more punk—especially when compared to metalcore juggernauts like Converge or Integrity. At the time, however, there was little else that even remotely resembled the roiling shitstorm bottled inside 1984’s Dirty Rotten LP.
Key Track: “I Don’t Need Society”
- Exhorder
If most thrash bands spit razors, Exhorder chuck bricks. These pissed-off Texans certainly partake in the genre’s devotion to whirring velocities and blaring licks, yet what ultimately makes 1990’s Slaughter in the Vatican such a classic is its abundance of blunt-force-trauma-inducing chug, greasy breakdowns, and Kyle Thomas’ face-chewing growls. It’s a sound, slower and ridiculously brutal, that played a starring role in the evolutions of groove metal and its meaner cousin, Southern sludge.
Key Track: “Desecrator”
- Annihilator
Anchored by the hugely talented singer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Waters, Annihilator are Canada’s catchiest thrash band. Even at their most ominous, they display a love of progressive melodies and techniques. They kinda-sorta sound like Megadeth—if Dave Mustaine had grown up a fan of opera and classical. After all, only Annihilator can slip falsetto cries into the title track of 1989’s Alice in Hell and get away with it.
Key Track: “Alison Hell”
- Agnostic Front
Agnostic Front didn’t invent crossover thrash, but their massive impact on the subgenre’s evolution is undeniable. At a time when headbangers and hardcore kids still reviled one another, the gritty, street-tough New Yorkers demolished the barriers between them with a titanic and relentless cacophony that is at once raw and refined. Crossover doesn’t get any more essential than the 1986 anthem “Existence of Hate,” with its volatile fusion of musclebound chug and explosive hot licks.
Key Track: “The Eliminator”
- Death Angel
While many of the bands on this list took an album or three to mature, Death Angel hatched fully formed. Barely out of their teens when recording The Ultra-Violence, these Bay Area prodigies knew exactly what they wanted: tightly sculpted thrash metal matching intricate arrangements with musicianship teetering like a high-wire act. Flash forward and the lineup that recorded 2016’s The Dream Calls for Blood is still throttling listeners with old-school rage.
Key Track: “Kill as One”
- Holy Terror
Holy Terror make our list despite having released just two records: Terror and Submission and the even better Mind Wars. The L.A. group aren’t the heaviest nor the fastest thrashers, but their crazy-refined songwriting bursts with killer hooks grounded in classic metal. Both singer Keith Deen (whom cancer claimed in 2012) and guitarist Kurt Kilfelt shift effortlessly between gnashing fury and the kind of infectiously rousing melodicism perfect for medieval battlefields.
Key Track: “Judas Reward”
- Suicidal Tendencies
When Suicidal Tendencies blew up in the mid-’80s, no other band like them existed. To begin with, they were early pioneers of crossover thrash. But there also was that attitude: Singer Mike Muir and crew carried themselves more like L.A. gangbangers than suburban punks. This vibe seeps into their athletically performed examinations of anti-social angst and emotional turmoil, giving them a real urban bite. They eventually embraced funk metal but, hey, nobody’s perfect.
Key Track: “Trip at the Brain”
- Destruction
German thrashers are generally less concerned with melody and hooks than their American counterparts, and this certainly holds true for Destruction. Like Sodom and Kreator, they made the leap from proto-black-metal hellraising to a harsh style of thrash in the mid-’80s. There’s something wonderfully rudimentary about the highly influential Eternal Devastation record. It’s even a little sloppy, as if Destruction are too concerned with expressing pure, unadulterated pessimism to care about musical precision.
Key Track: “Curse the Gods”
- S.O.D.
A lot of crossover thrash bands enjoyed pissing off society by any means necessary. For the Anthrax side project S.O.D. (a.k.a. Stormtroopers of Death), this entails devastating spasms of sound soaked in un-PC humor satirizing the vile conservatism that dominated politics in the ’80s. The lyrics on 1985’s monumental Speak English or Die sound dated, but the performances are blistering. Jump straight to “Milk” for one of the first recorded examples of a blast beat.
Key Track: “Milk”
- Dark Angel
On the mid-’80s cult classic Darkness Descends, Dark Angel are a band obsessed with out-slaying Slayer. One could even say the second-wave thrashers’ kamikaze dive-bombs, blood-curdling wails, and spiritual-like devotion to mechanized speed are carbon-copied elements. But the fact that Dark Angel actually possess the chops required to properly honor their imposing heroes speaks volumes about the quality of their jams. If aggression is what you crave in thrash, Dark Angel have it in spades.
Key Track: “Merciless Death”
- Overkill
Overkill have always been regarded as a group heavy on unchecked ruthlessness, yet skimpy on original songcraft. But that isn’t true at all. While 1988’s The Years of Decay does focus its attention on spine-snapping mosh-pit anthems, the multi-layered Horrorscope is an underrated gem rich in ominous atmosphere, rumbling syncopation and nimble pivots into lurching doom grooves. These East Coasters continue to drop solidly built thrash metal well into the 21st century.
Key Track: “Elimination”
- Sodom
At their peak in the mid-’80s, Sodom puked up thrash so single-minded in its guttural intensity, it secured their place as the vilest of Teutonic thrash’s Big Four. (And yes, Germany have their own Big Four.) On the grisly “Electrocution”, croaker and bassist Tom Angelripper pushes them into then-uncharted borderlands between thrash and proto-death metal. On the flipside, Sodom also have embraced hair metal—so, yeah, consistency has never been a strength.
Key Track: “Electrocution”
- Anthrax
Of thrash metal’s Big Four, Anthrax have always been the most explicit in their love of hardcore, both its mosh-pit aggression and cartoonish political satire. The efficiently blitzing beats, uniquely rhythmic guitar runs, and gang-chanted slogans exploding from Spreading the Disease and Among the Living made them a go-to soundtrack for East Coast skate punks in the late ’80s. And like Testament, the grizzled veterans have released some truly vital thrash in the 21st century.
Key Track: “Caught in a Mosh”
- Megadeth
People love to hate the outspoken Dave Mustaine, so much so that they downplay Megadeth’s impact on thrash. That’s a mistake. Dig into Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? and Rust in Peace, must-owns for any serious hesher, and what emerges is a profoundly personal style of thrash that’s complex yet ugly, with intelligent lyrics blurring doomsday occult speak with radical politics. Mustaine may have been booted from Metallica, but Megadeth are proof he never needed them.
Key Track: “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TXIM4Tpf3o&feature=youtu.be
- Exodus
The glaring weakness with the whole Big Four mythology is its exclusion of these Bay Area giants. Talk about a record that lays out thrash’s early blueprint: 1985’s Bonded by Blood boasts hyper-technical shredding, blazing tempos, and pain-wracked screams all stuffed inside a massive, angry sound that slams Venom-style drama into hardcore’s brutishness. Even if Exodus had never recorded another album, they would still go down as thrash giants.
Key Track: “Bonded by Blood”
- Kreator
Of Teutonic thrash metal’s Big Four, Kreator have come closest to achieving widespread fame in the U.S. The back-to-back-to-back Pleasure to Kill, Terrible Certainty, and Extreme Aggression all are beloved for their efficient, airtight, and undeniably difficult performances. Ax riffs and light-speed rhythms lock together like pentagram-shaped jigsaw pieces, while Mille Petrozza lays down virulently anti-melodic screeches that wound up influencing black metal’s wraith-style vocals. German thrashers don’t mess around.
Key Track: “Riot of Violence”
- Testament
No band more effectively bridge thrash savagery and classic metal heroics than Testament. The Bay Area greats boast a primal barker in cancer survivor Chuck Billy and an insane one-two punch in guitarists Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson, whose respective styles, earsplitting melodicism, and crushing force produce a careening tension. Testament win bonus points for resiliency: 2011’s Dark Roots of Earth is arguably one of the very best records by veteran thrashers still active in the 21st century.
Key Track: “Over the Wall”
- Sepultura
The only band that even comes close to equaling Slayer’s superhuman balance of unmitigated rage and sheer technical wizardry are their protégés in Sepultura. Before achieving global stardom as groove metal dudes, the Brazilians created dark, suffocating thrash that can downshift into death metal’s blast-beat-anchored churn at a drop of a hat. They’re probing thinkers to boot: Beneath the Remains examines politics, power, and corruption with a mix of bare-knuckled honesty and progressive morality.
Key Track: “Stronger Than Hate”
- Slayer
In terms of hellish wrath and athletic musicianship, Slayer is the measuring stick by which all other thrashers are measured. Satan himself could start a band, and it wouldn’t sound half as terrifying as Slayer during their 1985-to-1990 peak. Even in the current era, with headbangers fully acclimated to grindcore, death metal, black metal, etc., 99.9% of it can’t match the alien structures and avant-garde dissonance comprising their definitive statement, Reign in Blood. That’s vision.
Key Track: “Raining Blood”
- Metallica
Sorry Slayer fans, but Metallica own the top spot. Not only did the Bay Area gods invent thrash, they’re its most popular band—and for good reason. They redefined both heavy metal and hard rock by merging high-speed ferocity and elaborate dynamics with a once-in-a-generation genius for fist-pumping anthems that speak to the insecurities and disaffections of teenage outcasts. It’s for this reason that they’re rightfully compared to titans like Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper.
Key Track: “Master of Puppets”
