AMG Top Thrash Bands (Minus Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, or Megadeth)

Oh yeah, and I'm a putz and left Pantera in. Don't vote for them either. For real.

http://www.last.fm/tag/thrash%20metal/artists

Motorhead is gonna rout this poll

i went w/voivod

Motorhead is not a thrash band. "We are Motorhead and we play rock and roll".

Destruction is of course the right answer.

my fave bands from that list would be:

bolt thrower

celtic frost

death

dri

motorhead

necros

sodom

testament

voivod

and i would only call two of them straight-up thrash bands.

destruction, kreator, and sodom are tops in my book. they did it best.

Agree with Scott about the greatness of Destruction, Kreator and Sodom, but I have a real soft spot for Suicidal Tendencies' thrash albums (basically, Join The Army through Lights, Camera, Revolution). I was listening to them just the other day.

So ST gets my vote.

Here's some serious hair-splittin. AMG (as beautiful as it is) is often way off. And this poll is meaningless. Because...

-Bathory
-Bolt Thrower
-Celtic Frost
-Death
-GWAR
-Hellhammer
-Motorhead
-Pantera
-Venom

...are definitively NOT thrash!!!

Yeah the choices are bizarre. I chose Mercyful Fate as my favorite band on that list. If all the non-thrash bands were removed from the list, I would choose S.O.D. for Speak English or Die.

Helloween -- very much not thrash. Still, the only logical choice here is Death Angel.

fucking bolt thrower. yeah, good choice, dudes. also, nuclear death are on of my favorite bands EVER. but not thrash. and so on, and so on.

voting for destruction. voivod could easily get my vote for war and pain, which is a fucking monster, but they GAME-CHANGED a couple of albums later. and rrroooaaarrr is a bit tepid.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voivod, by a mile. Well, assuming Motorhead don't really count. But even if they do, I'd take Voivod.

Honorable mentions: Celtic Frost, Necros (the latter of whom I've never thought of as thrash, at all).

Yeah, Necros are not thrash either.

Well *I* just voted for the Necros, so phooey on all of you. I almost went with Voivod or COC, but Tangled Up is just too cool.

Did DRI invent thrash? That's my vote, anyway.

This would be more interesting if German bands were also disqualified. I vote Possessed.

no mortal sin? ;)

i'm torn between death and kreator. think i'll go with kreator

Are Cro-mags really thrash?

My vote: Celtic Frost

Not a big thrash fan at all, but I will give my vote to Celtic Frost as well.

i never really thought of celtic frost as thrash. and they're easily one of my favorite bands ever, so not a diss.

they were never one thing and one thing only.

This poll is kind of ridiculous. It's less of a "best thrash band" poll than a "best random metal/hardcore band from a pretty arbitrary list" poll. I think we need to redo this.

DRI definitely did not invent thrash, though. They were pretty instrumental in the creation of crossover thrash, if I'm not mistaken (which I very well might be), but not thrash in general.

Scott should do the best thrash poll.
Also needed is a best doom poll.

Yeah - another vote for Voivod - when I'm in a thrash mood it's amazing how often my hand moves toward the 'V' section in my vinyl collection... or my CD collection (Angel Rat's been getting some play - it rules more than most care to give it a chance - wish I had it on vinyl) ... RIP Piggy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oh I didn't see this poll, but VOIVOD is the best anyway.

Who else voted for death Angel?

your mom.

I didn't vote or read all of the thread but I did know the Cro-Mags (oh, add them to my 3x thread!) and I know that they considered themselves to be a hardcore band, whether they actually were or not. They certainly played the CBs HC matinee enough times!

Also, having lived through this era and paying a bit of attention to it (though claim no special knowledge and basically don't care a whole lot either way, especially now), I remember there being a lot of controversy or at least confusion as to what was thrash and what was speed metal. I remember in general liking the stuff people called thrash quite a bit but not speed metal and usually don't like "metal" in any context. Anyway, seems that a lot of the bands that were considered speed metal in those days got tossed in here.

Forget it Jake, it's AMG...

I would have voted for Leeway, if they are indeed thrash. Who knows? I can't be fucked to go to their site but do they happen to provide a definition of "thrash"?

I never did find out the difference between Thrash and Speed Metal.

My mom doesn't like Death Angel.

Angel Rat does indeed rule. I didn't see this poll, either, but would've definitely voted for Voivod. Angel Rat and Outer Limits are probably my favorite these days, while back then it was Nothingface and Dimension Hatross.

DRI definitely did not invent thrash, though.

If not, who did?

The Dirty Rotten 7" came out in 1982, preceding Metallica, Slayer, Overkill, and Mob 47 by a year, at least. "Who Am I" was the first thrash I ever heard. I wouldn't be surprised if Bad Brains or Motorhead recorded songs as fast before DRI, but if so, what were they?

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity and ignorance, but also with the suspicion that "thrash" is now considered synonymous with "thrash metal," when it didn't used to be: It was an entirely discrete punk style/beat in the early days, though punks embraced speed-metal en masse in '84, and "speed-core" got going around the same time just to confuse things...

Okay, I give up on saying anything about music history ever again.

Don't cave so easy, man, you're probably right.

Sorry, I've been smacked down lots. According to Wikipedia, always a reliable source (/sarcasm), Metal Church had a demo in 1981, and Metallica's "Hit the Lights" was on Metal Massacre in early 1982, followed pretty closely by a couple more demos, all before DRI was even formed. So, there you have it.

Must be a culture thing. The "Hit the Lights" demo is slower than the album version, and even the album version is about a third as fast as "Who Am I"--and pretty much slower than most American hardcore between 1980-82.

In the beginning, in my experience of early-'80s punk, at least, thrash just meant cut-time hardcore--the fastest beat humanly playable. I have no idea where the term came from.

speed metal came before thrash. speed metal was originally just sped up judas priest. thrash had more punk/hardcore in it. and was faster. but speed and thrash are kinda interchangable to a lot of people. i think the actual word "thrash" just came from skateboarding. didn't it? as in Thrasher. and people would call crossover bands from the punk world thrash. but then it just became applied to bands like metallica, etc. the first i heard of thrash was the ROIR comp New York Thrash. Which was all punk bands. but you know, future cro-mags and bad brains are on it.

not that there wasn't punk in old german speed metal bands. there was. but more of a motorhead idea of punk. not a hardcore kinda punk.

all this stuff overlaps like crazy though.

oh, and the ROIR comp came out in 1982. and if you like a band you can say that they really shred. but in a skateboard way. not an eddie van halen way.

I wasn't even born when these bands started, so I defer to your expertise.

i'm just making it all up.

but peter is right too. hardcore bands were called thrash bands. before thrash metal. i'm pretty sure metallica were known as a speed metal band before they were known as a thrash metal band. but you can call them whatever you prefer. i won't mind.

hmmm, the reason i didn't vote for say the haunted or coc is because i don't really identify either of them with thrash. when i attempted to align both of these artists with the thrash genre, i was unable to recall the elements that make me fond of both of them.

Blind was kind of thrash. Especially the first track, the name of which I can't remember.

And I guess the early stuff was crossover.

i've always preferred their slower, groove-laiden stuff.

I also think this is one of those cases where history has decided what the thrash label got pinned to. I mean, whatever got called that first, it doesn't really matter now, because it's been pretty established at this point that Metallica Megadeth Slayer Anthrax Destruction Death Angel etc. are what's known as thrash to the vast majority of people who care about that sort of thing.

As do I, Charlie.

Nobody voted for Testament? That surprises me.

yeah true jeff. even though many bands could probably be linked to the genre in one way or another, it's quite difficult to apply the sound of a band that is not commonly referred to as thrash to a style that is so closely tied to a particular time and place.

yeah testament - definitely one of the higher profile acts on the list that is undisputably 'thrash'

You know who this list is missing? Hirax. Saw them a couple months ago, absolutely insane live show. The East LA thrash kids were going nuts. I'm kind of glad I was upstairs watching and not in the pit.

I've also been listening to flotsam and jetsam's Doomsday for the Deceiver reissue a whole lot recently. That is a great album.

there is a lot of stuff missing from that list!

Well, obviously. I'd say we should compile a proper list and try again, but the results would probably be the same.

Labels aside, I love Hirax!

i voted for Sodom. they tend to get overlooked.

The Dirty Rotten 7" came out in 1982, preceding Metallica, Slayer, Overkill, and Mob 47 by a year, at least. "Who Am I" was the first thrash I ever heard. I wouldn't be surprised if Bad Brains or Motorhead recorded songs as fast before DRI, but if so, what were they?