I feel like I’m repeating myself when I’m saying that I love Thrash Metal but it’s the honest to Satan’s truth.
This is the third edition of Thrash ’til Death, where I’m basically listing my favorite thrash bands. Four bands a time, each led by a genuine Big Four band, you should know the deal by now. Make the jump to read on.
Thrash ’til Death – Big Four times four Part 1, Part 2
There’s not much to say about Megadeth, that hasn’t been said yet by pretty much every metal blog out there. Everyone knows that Dave Mustaine once was in Metallica and started Megadeth as an outfit to be faster and heavier than ‘tallica and then grew to be one of the most influential metal bands of all time.
The thing I love about Megadeth is that they played a wide array of music over their career. Be it their early Speed Metal material, their melodic mid-career output, their one Rock album (‘Risk’) or their recent back-to-the-roots Thrash album (‘Endgame’), which ultimately is my favorite recent Thrash Metal album.
My favorite Megadeth song is the titletrack of ‘Countdown to Extinction’.
Overkill kill. One of the most successful and influential thrash bands from the East Coast, alongside Anthrax, Overkill, who started in 1980, had ups and downs but you could never kill Overkill.
Frontman Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth even suffered a stroke in the middle of an Overkill show in 2002 and then jokingly said this afterwards “Wouldn’t it be something to die in the middle of an Overkill show?”.
In 2011, Overkill are still going strong. They released their 15th studio album ‘Ironbound’ last year and are still touring the fuck out of it.
My favorite Overkill song comes off their 1997 album ‘From The Underground And Below’ and is called ‘Genocya’.
Exodus, who formed in 1980, went through a lot of line-up changes and, maybe it’s just me but, their current line-up is their strongest, in my opinion.
Prior to his engagement with Exodus, their current vocalist Rob Dukes was fired from a band and then went on a 11,000 mile trip from New York to California with his motorcycle, which took him 5 months. Dukes had no idea what he wanted to do their as far as a career goes, he said “I just wanted to surf and live at the beach” but he then landed the gig with Exodus shortly after Steve Souza left them. Talk about lots of luck.
With Rob Dukes, Exodus released four albums so far, with their latest being ‘Exhibit B: The Human Condition,’ which also features my favorite song of theirs, their latest single ‘Downfall’.
Destruction’s song ‘Thrash ’til Death’ off ‘The Antichrist’ actually inspired the name of this and the past two week’s posts. Sure, it’s an old slogan, so to speak, but I was listening to the song while I was brainstorming for titles. So thank you, I guess?
Destruction are one of the big three Teutonic (German) Thrash Metal bands, alongside Kreator, who were part of last week’s Thrash ’til Death, and Sodom. Heavy and fast seems to be a German thing when it comes to Thrash because all three of these bands had a huge influence on early Death Metal.
Another thing that Destruction shares with Kreator is my love for their recent output, which I prefer to their early works. My favorite Destruction song comes off their latest album called ‘D.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N.’ and is called… wait for it… ‘D.evolution’.
So that’s it again for this week’s Thrash ’til Death. Don’t forget to check out next week’s edition, the last one in this four week feature und until then blast some Thrash Metal!
