The Next 4 (of thrash metal)

Has this been done here?

We know who the big 4 are, but who would be the next four..

We were at work the other day pondering this. Those are the big 4 due to thier success in the genre on a world stage. But who do you think is right behind them. You don't need top rank em, cuz that shit is impossible to agree on, but what can we say about the next lot!?!

imo...

Testament
Exodus
Sepultura
Kreator

Most would say Overkill I'm sure, but I can't stand them.. lol

i can promise you no-one will agree whatever happens :)

Testament, Destruction, Exodus, Kreator, in my opinion.

Testament, Overkill, Exodus, Sepultura, basically

On a related subject... I recentally have been hearing this, 'Exodus, thee first thrash band'... They were doing it before everyone else just got signed after, its a hard call..

i thought possessed was the first thrash band or the first death metal band, but they were def the first something...and the dude from primus was in that band i think

Voivod should be in there.

yes Larry LaLonde from Primus was in Possessed..

Possesed is wierd cuz I guess in a evolutionary stand you might go Vemon-Slayer-Possessed-death metal, but you could go Venom-Possessed-black metal too, maybe

Voivod were a little too progressive imo to be thrash.. Prog metal with thrash tendencies maybe.. lol!

A Begrand OTM. Voivod as good as any of them but left-field, not really a "thrash band" in the same sense

Voivod weren't really prog on their first two albums, though (and maybe not their third and fourth -- or at least, no more prog than Metallica on their third and especially fourth.)

I was going to nominate Celtic Frost, but I guess they got pretty left-field pretty fast too (and arguably started out more proto-death/black-metal than thrash? I still don't know where to draw those lines.)

SeanWayne's first post, I'd venture to guess, is OTM

Honorable mentions to Forbidden & Nuclear Assault, but neither has a very consistent catalog.

I associate Possessed w/ the black/death metal continuum for sure, but their first album is easily one of the best of the era.

Oh, and Flotsam & Jetsam, but again, the consistency thing.. Doomsday for the Deceiver is all time, tho

yeah, I'd through Celtic Frost more black metal leaning...

For the record, Vio-lence my all time fav of the lot, but maybe didn't do enough to be a contender, at least in this..

Serious question, though (I honestly don't know the answer): To what extent were death and black metal actually distinguished from thrash in people's minds in the mid '80s? I get the idea that they were all basically lumped together until the '90s, or at least very late '80s, but maybe I just wasn't paying close attention to the right people. In the glossary in the back of The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal, published in '97 or so I think, Martin Popoff still seems to be acting like "thrash" and "black metal" are synonyms. So I get the idea that (just like with say "techno," or "metal" itself) the consensus definition, if there even is one, got more specific over time, in retrospect. (For what it's worth, whether they're considered "thrash" or not, Celtic Frost and Voivod are easily my favorite bands on this thread -- hell, I'd probably put them both up against anybody in the "big four," a couple of which have never sounded more to mediocre to me.)

..more than mediocre to me

For thrash, its the old school foot hold in original Hardcore and the NWOBHM... when things got a bit more techy, and the vox started to drop in pitch, it becomes Death Metal.. You go for just speed and very very feroscious playing with the deeper vox- grindcore.. that same speed but a little more 'cut and dry' w/ lyrics about the vikings and church burnings-Black Metal?(excuse my ignorance... lol)

The synonym could be attributed to the early stuff especially when you consider Venom, Cetic Frost, and Possessed, who are precursors to later stuff that would define the sub genres

For my money, Death is text book definition, death Metal..and I'd even say first proper DM in the way they Judus Priest the first proper Metal band

godamn... I can't spell.. LOL!

well, you are a drummer!! ;)

Okay, I really don't know shit about thrash outside of the big 4 + sepultura and a few others, but if I say Coroner, will I get 1,000 OTMs? I fucking hope so.

Coroner fucking rules! they were blurring the line of Death metal and Thrash for sure, and pretty techy too..

Gama Bomb
Bonded By Blood
Violator
Municipal Waste

Okay, not really.

Exodus
Testament
Overkill
Kreator

I feel like I remember in the 80s most writers were calling all of this stuff Speed Metal.

and no-one ever did explain the difference between thrash metal & speed metal

Oh my god, this guy from X Japan reminds me so much of Kirk Hammett. Can you see it?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Xjapan2010.JPG

I think it was a thing where Speed metal was ajust a term for the faster metal, but after further review and the realisation that there was more going on than just speed, thrash was more better... yes, I said more better!lol

One could aurgue that Voi-lence, Sodom, Sadus could be speed metal, simply due to there use of more blasting than slower tempos, especially Sadus-they're were easily the fastest around here...

I really need to slow down on my typing, jesus!

And yeah Kerr, I'm a drummer, thanks! lol! fucking caveman, right?

yeah i was gonna say its not your spelling is your problem, its just typing but i couldn't resist the drummer joke!

Don't fight it!! lol! Its all good, brother..
Dreads and a full beard don't help my caveman status either, btw

is its a beard from hell?

ba-dum tish

HA! Its getting there.. I'm waiting for my old lady to say, 'thats enough!'.. lol!

Speaking of bearded metal dudes, while I was walking back from lunch a tiny zip car stopped at the light while I was waiting to cross and it was four big, bearded, burly, flannel-clad, and tattoed dudes rocking out to Kylesa. It was awesome.

did you whip them a devil sign?

http://www.warheadshop.webs.com/Patch_archivos/PATCHspeedmetal.jpg

^^^.. wtf?

Exodus
Testament
Overkill
Kreator

honorable mentions: Suicidal, D.R.I., S.O.D, M.O.D., Vio-lence, Death Angel, Coroner, Forbidden, Nuclear Assault, Sacred Reich... Eh, the more I think about it, I don't really have any real idea which of those groups were the most successful in terms of sales vs. influence, though. Hindsight is 20/20, too, because groups like Nuclear Assault and Sacred Reich are pretty much unlistenable today, but seemed like they were everywhere back then.

nuclear assault was a merciless live machine

^^^.. wtf?

That's the old speed metal logo that Canada's legendary Banzai Records used on some of its early pressings.

http://www.banzai-records.duludepostprod.com/speedmetal.html

xxp: Nuclear Assault's Handle w/ Care & the first record by Forbidden are total classics which have stood the test of time along w/ any thrash album that is not MoP, RtL, RiB or RiP ImO

also: M.O.D. kinda sucked iirc

i mean, at least, comparatively

should also mention: Honestly, I think Kreator or Sepultura would be a more suitable member of the BIG FOUR than Anthrax. Not to dis on Anthrax, but they have really spanned the gamut over their career: NWOBHM copyists to speed/power-metal to thrash (A+ for AtL) to rap/metal progenitors back to thrash (one shit album, another goodish album), onto whatever they did beyond the early 90s

but then, we are not judging any of these bands beyond the early 90s, right?

my first reaction to that logo was 'wtf' too

when did the 'big four of thrash' title come about?

also: M.O.D. kinda sucked iirc

they were really popular with my friends at the time for some reason, but yeah they sucked. Speak English or Die seems to pass the test of time, though.

Still waiting for somebody to answer this, fwiw:

To what extent were death and black metal actually distinguished from thrash in people's minds in the mid '80s? I get the idea that they were all basically lumped together until the '90s....in '97 or so I think, Martin Popoff still seems to be acting like "thrash" and "black metal" are synonyms.

Again, I'm not asking what the differences between the sub-genres are in people mind's now (I'm pretty clear on that); I'm asking whether, in the '80s or even early '90s, people tended to acknowledge those differences, or ignore them.

man i wish coroner got more love in general, like my personal next big 4 would be testament kreator coroner sepultura but im pretty sure that isnt really accurate xposts

xp to xhuxk: I'm no music writer, but my own personal experience as a metalhead kid growing up in the midwest and Texas: The first time I ever heard the term "thrash" was in the mid 80s, a few guys from California referring to their own little clique as "thrashers", as in the skate magazine I guess. these guys introduced me to Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Kennedys, and super-long Hawaiian shorts. I think the next I heard the term it was being used to describe Death Angel and Exodus. I never associated Slayer, Megadeath, or Metallica with the term "thrash" until later, though Anthrax seemed to fit the bill, especially around the State of Euphoria time.

Death metal and "grindcore" (which I associated with the Grind Crusher compilation), were both terms friends and public/college radio DJs used to describe death metal in '89-'91, at least where I lived at the time (Texas). I did read a lot of metal magazines at the time, but I don't remember ever seeing death metal referenced, except in seedy-looking advertisements in their back sections.

I never heard the term "black metal" used to describe a genre until the mid/late 90's (I spent most of the 90s being obsessed with other types of music, so I wasn't really paying attention to metal). Don't know if that's what you were looking for, but it was fun to reminisce!

The first time I ever heard the term "thrash" was in the mid 80s, a few guys from California referring to their own little clique as "thrashers", as in the skate magazine I guess.

Yeah, back then I thought Thrash Metal was made exclusively by bands who wore shorts.

I was looking through my old Creem Metal clips in the late '80s, and I kept using goofy terms like "speedthrashdeathmetalcore" to describe bands. Also called Voivod and Celtic Frost "Nuke-metal", and the kind of shitty Agnostic Front/Crumbsuckers style bands that would later regularly get classified as "crossover" were mostly "heavycore" to me. (I pretty much hated anything that reminded me remotely of generic hardcore moshpit music, and since I'd been listening to bands mixing up hardcore with metal at least since 1981 or so, the idea of mixing bad hardcore with bad metal a half decade later really didn't impress me much.) Anyway, I definitely knew and used the phrase "death-metal" in the '80s (even in the Village Voice), but I don't think I saw it as any different from "speed-metal" or "thrash." They were all the same thing, to me.)

I remember thrash and hardcore being used pretty much interchangeably from the early eighties. FWIW Wikipedia tells me that Thrasher magazine was founded in 1981.

Voivod always reminded me of another overlooked band. Die Kreuzen - whose first was arguably the finest early(ish) hardcore punk album

Any of you heroes care to recommend me any bands in the weirdo Die Kreuzen/Voivod vein
Apologies if this is slightly off thread

United Mutation, YDI, maybe?