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Top 10 Thrash Albums


dennis1077

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I recently put together a list of my favorite Thrash albums. I purposely excluded the Big 4, not because they aren't valid, but because there are SO MANY amazing bands that flew under the radar. The list includes:

EXODUS - BONDED BY BLOOD

NUCLEAR ASSAULT - SURVIVE

FORBIDDEN - TWISTED INTO FORM

METAL CHURCH - BLESSING IN DISGUISE

WRATHCHILD AMERICA - CLIMBIN' THE WALLS

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM - NO PLACE FOR DISGRACE

D.R.I. - THRASH ZONE

SACRED REICH - SURF NICARAGUA

TESTAMENT - THE NEW ORDER

OVERKILL - THE YEARS OF DECAY

 

I did a little write-up for each album on my blog and posted a bunch of vintage pictures.

http://greenandblackmusic.com/2016/02/13/top-10-thrash-albums/

 

What do you guys think? What albums would make your top 10 list?

 

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Hmm... Metal Church wasn't really thrash anymore by the time Mike Howe joined, and while I would have picked different albums for most of the band's you listed, none of these bands would occupy my Top 10 thrash list at all. Off the top of my head, mine would probably look like this:

Coroner - Punishment for Decadence

Dark Angel - Darkness Descends

Realm - Endless War

Voivod - Killing Technology

Razor - Violent Restitution

Vektor - Black Future

Holy Moses - Finished With the Dogs

Znöwhite - Act of God

Morbid Saint - Spectrum of Death

Sabbat - Dreamweaver

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On 18/05/2016 at 8:26 PM, BlutAusNerd said:

Hmm... Metal Church wasn't really thrash anymore by the time Mike Howe joined, and while I would have picked different albums for most of the band's you listed, none of these bands would occupy my Top 10 thrash list at all. Off the top of my head, mine would probably look like this:

Coroner - Punishment for Decadence

Dark Angel - Darkness Descends

Realm - Endless War

Voivod - Killing Technology

Razor - Violent Restitution

Vektor - Black Future

Holy Moses - Finished With the Dogs

Znöwhite - Act of God

Morbid Saint - Spectrum of Death

Sabbat - Dreamweaver

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  • 2 months later...

Honestly I don't know that any of those albums would make my top 10. Let's find out shall we?

 

In no particular order here are

RelentlessOblivion's Top 10 Thrash Metal albums

Coroner - No More Colours

Vektor - Black Future

Dark Angel - Darkness Descends

Morbid Saint - Spectrum Of Death

Artillery - By Inheritance

Hobb's Angel Of Death - Hobb's Angel Of Death

Sabbat - Dreamweaver

Sepultura - Schizophrenia

Demolition Hammer - Epidemic Of Violence

Razor - Evil Invaders

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  • 4 weeks later...
I don't want to seem like an elitist asshole but wow you're missing about oh I dunno 10 amazing albums here. I like some of those, I really do, but nothing there makes my top 25 let alone top 10.

I'll echo that sentiment. There's a wide world of thrash out there, I myself am still finding a ton of great stuff that I've been missing for years, some of which has cracked my top 10 list. There's nothing wrong with what was posted above, though I can't help but feel that many of these top 10 lists would look different with more exposure.

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I was about 9 years old when I discovered thrash (1989ish), and there wasn't any internet back then so my knowledge of the scene as a whole was somewhat limited. That's probably why my top ten choices are a bit, well, obvious - those were the albums that really hit me during that 89-91 period. Towards the end of it I bought Nevermind by Nirvana, and pretty much went off down that road for a while like so many other people. Got quite into death metal for a while too, and black metal, but definitely lots of non-metal music as well.  It was only around 2009 that I really got back into thrash, much as I'd never stopped paying attention completely. And we obviously do have the internet now, so I've spent the past 7ish years investigating the genre fairly extensively. What's great is that I'm still discovering good bands from back in the day, and there are no doubt plenty more to discover. But whether anything I come across now is going to cut as deeply as the albums I loved back then is another matter. And I do kind of stand by my choices - they're classic albums for a reason. :)

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Fair enough some of those made a serious impression on me when I was getting into metal so I understand where you're coming from. Having said that there are many albums which I used to love and now consider inferior to much of what I listen to despite the nostalgia factor. I wasn't around at the time though so maybe that plays a part.

 

@True Belief I haven't heard that album yet so Dreamweaver gets the nod.

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2 hours ago, Thrashman said:

I was about 9 years old when I discovered thrash (1989ish), and there wasn't any internet back then so my knowledge of the scene as a whole was somewhat limited. That's probably why my top ten choices are a bit, well, obvious - those were the albums that really hit me during that 89-91 period. Towards the end of it I bought Nevermind by Nirvana, and pretty much went off down that road for a while like so many other people. Got quite into death metal for a while too, and black metal, but definitely lots of non-metal music as well.  It was only around 2009 that I really got back into thrash, much as I'd never stopped paying attention completely. And we obviously do have the internet now, so I've spent the past 7ish years investigating the genre fairly extensively. What's great is that I'm still discovering good bands from back in the day, and there are no doubt plenty more to discover. But whether anything I come across now is going to cut as deeply as the albums I loved back then is another matter. And I do kind of stand by my choices - they're classic albums for a reason. :)

We're around the same age. This is close to my experience, though with different albums. Thrash didn't really stick for me past my early 20s - I've always been more of a DM guy. But growing up, we had what was available at the record store, what friends had bought, and if we were lucky we'd read about something cool that the store could actually order. Trusted recommendations were king, because checking out a new album meant dropping fifteen bucks. There's a lot of stuff from that time period that I never saw or heard of, and I didn't even know how much I was at the mercy of market forces. Easy to forget now, when you can have the entire history of a scene laid bare on a screen in under a second. As far as classics go, it took a lot of listening before I found new stuff I liked and opened up to stuff I didn't, but DM has given us an embarrassment of riches the past few years, and I think there are new classics being made even now.

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Am I the only one who rates Sabbat "History of a Time to Come" ahead of "Dreamweaver"?

Both are excellent, but Dreamweaver gets the nod from me. I have heard others say History is better, and I can't really argue that.

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I was about 9 years old when I discovered thrash (1989ish), and there wasn't any internet back then so my knowledge of the scene as a whole was somewhat limited. That's probably why my top ten choices are a bit, well, obvious - those were the albums that really hit me during that 89-91 period. Towards the end of it I bought Nevermind by Nirvana, and pretty much went off down that road for a while like so many other people. Got quite into death metal for a while too, and black metal, but definitely lots of non-metal music as well.  It was only around 2009 that I really got back into thrash, much as I'd never stopped paying attention completely. And we obviously do have the internet now, so I've spent the past 7ish years investigating the genre fairly extensively. What's great is that I'm still discovering good bands from back in the day, and there are no doubt plenty more to discover. But whether anything I come across now is going to cut as deeply as the albums I loved back then is another matter. And I do kind of stand by my choices - they're classic albums for a reason. [emoji4]

That's understandable. A lot of albums have nostalgic value that is hard to replace. I was 2 years old in 1989, so I discovered all of these albums as a teenager in the 00's. I loved what I was hearing in various genres and could never get enough, so I never stopped looking. The internet helped, but I was limited to a 56k modem and still had to special order everything I wanted through record stores before I got a PayPal account to be able to use eBay. I ended up working for a couple of record stores and would often buy based on the recommendations of friends and trusted sources on the internet without having heard the albums in question, and I still don't download anything.

I guess my point would be that some of the albums do hold nostalgic value for me, but other albums with a lot of nostalgic value don't hold up for my ears these days. I can remember good times of playing Metallica when I was younger, but when I play them now, I'm mostly wishing to put something else on that I like more. It weighs on people in different ways I suppose.

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1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

We're around the same age. This is close to my experience, though with different albums. Thrash didn't really stick for me past my early 20s - I've always been more of a DM guy. But growing up, we had what was available at the record store, what friends had bought, and if we were lucky we'd read about something cool that the store could actually order. Trusted recommendations were king, because checking out a new album meant dropping fifteen bucks. There's a lot of stuff from that time period that I never saw or heard of, and I didn't even know how much I was at the mercy of market forces. Easy to forget now, when you can have the entire history of a scene laid bare on a screen in under a second. As far as classics go, it took a lot of listening before I found new stuff I liked and opened up to stuff I didn't, but DM has given us an embarrassment of riches the past few years, and I think there are new classics being made even now.

Internet makes life easier for sure but you still have to know what you're looking for. That's where forus are a fantastic resource. Maybe I would have found some of the bands I listen to on my own eventually (most likely on the thrash side of things) but as I said elsewhere I didn't know doom was a thing before 2011. Probably would never have gotten into that or rekindled my interest in black and death metal without this or another forum.

 

No doubt there are modern day classics dropping with some regularity in DM (and doom for that matter). I would drop Black Harvest into that conversation but then people might think I'm blowing smoke. Well that and I like Ingrate more then Abject which really has nothing to do with anything...

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'Cause you at no point said or implied death metal classics...

 

Hmm now that I think about it maybe that says more about the overall lack of quality with just a few gems standing out...plus the odd better then average record. So tell me mister Alabaster am I blowing smoke now?

 

ps I jest but BH is in every way inferior to SEO I'm sorry to tell you...and don't even get me started on AOYG. If you don't know what I'm talking about you're not kvlt enough :D

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I can relate to Thrashman's experience, so it makes total sense to me why he'd stick with his top ten list - and even more so in thrash, which admittedly isn't my favorite thing to begin with, but hasn't seemed to be awash in creative productivity in the way recent DM has. I've enjoyed more 80s and 90s thrash in the last three days than I have in the past couple years. Taste is a funny thing, wouldn't have predicted that mood.

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11 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I can relate to Thrashman's experience, so it makes total sense to me why he'd stick with his top ten list - and even more so in thrash, which admittedly isn't my favorite thing to begin with, but hasn't seemed to be awash in creative productivity in the way recent DM has. I've enjoyed more 80s and 90s thrash in the last three days than I have in the past couple years. Taste is a funny thing, wouldn't have predicted that mood.

Absolutely and ultimately these sorts of lists are always subjective. It's all about the albums you think are best and there will always be differences of opinion.

 

You're also spot on in assessing thrash. There's next to nothing coming out these days worth bothering with. What is has been covered already in other threads and Vektor are the only modern thrash band that really excite me.

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  • 3 months later...

1. Exodus- "Bonded by Blood"

2. Sepultura- "Beneath the Remains"

3. Dark Angel- "Darkness Descends"

4. Sadus- "Chemical Exposure"

5. Flotsam and Jetsam- "Doomsday for the Deceiver"

6. Megadeth- "Killing is my Business... and Business is Good"

7. Kreator- "Endless Pain"

8. Testament- "The Legacy"

9. Slayer- "Haunting the Chapel" (I know it's an EP, but I put it above all of their full-lengths)

10. Voivod- "War and Pain"

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Ride The Lightning or Kill Em All

Peace Sells

Master of Puppets

Killing is my Business

So far so good

Rust in Peace

Countdown to extinctin

Justice for all

does garage days count?

I've only listened to really one exodus song so far ( i know i know, ima fucker but dude, toxic waltz is fucking awesome) and I'm really fuckin drunk and need my comfort metal a la: fight fire with FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  • 1 month later...
On 30/8/2016 at 0:45 PM, True Belief said:

Am I the only one who rates Sabbat "History of a Time to Come" ahead of "Dreamweaver"?

I also do! :)

UK thrash is so underrated!

I have hard time coming up with a thrash top 10 list, but I will share my top 3 UK thrash list:

1- Onslaught - "The Force"

2- Deathwish - "At the Edge of Damnation" ("Demon Preacher" would have been better if it didn't have a Sabbath cover and too many instrumentals)

3- Sabbat - "History of a Time to Come"

These three records are very EVIL and DEMONIC thrash. Gotta love them.

I really like Xentrix's first two records, but those are a completely different kind of thrash (generic Metalliclones, which is still good, because Xentrix did that before Metallica sold out... well, actually Xentrix did it also AFTER Metallica sold out, with "KiN", but who cares for "KIN"?").

 

 

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On 30/8/2016 at 0:45 PM, True Belief said: Am I the only one who rates Sabbat "History of a Time to Come" ahead of "Dreamweaver"?

I also do! [emoji4]

UK thrash is so underrated!

I have hard time coming up with a thrash top 10 list, but I will share my top 3 UK thrash list:

1- Onslaught - "The Force"

2- Deathwish - "At the Edge of Damnation" ("Demon Preacher" would have been better if it didn't have a Sabbath cover and too many instrumentals)

3- Sabbat - "History of a Time to Come"

These three records are very EVIL and DEMONIC thrash. Gotta love them.

I really like Xentrix's first two records, but those are a completely different kind of thrash (generic Metalliclones, which is still good, because Xentrix did that before Metallica sold out... well, actually Xentrix did it also AFTER Metallica sold out, with "KiN", but who cares for "KIN"?").

 

 

 

Onslaught is alright, but I've never understood the hype surrounding them. Sabbat kills, both of those albums with Martin on vocals are brilliant, but I slightly prefer Dreamweaver for the more engrossing narrative. I don't have the first Deathwish album, but Demon Preacher is sick. The vocals are rough, but the riffs are just relentless. UK thrash is pretty underrated overall, but it's probably because it just didn't produce as many stellar bands as other scenes did.

 

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