I'd liked rock music for a short while having bought albums by Bon Jovi and Def Leppard, but it was hearing Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water for the first time at a school disco just before Christmas 1990 that really switched me on to metal. I thought the main riff was immense and it stuck in my head for days, which led to me purchasing a greatest hits album a week or so later. I raced back from town with my new LP full of excitement to step into the world of heavy metal properly for my first time. The whole album blew me away. It was jammed full of fantastic riffs and complicated solos and I knew that metal was the only way for me from then on.
Hungry for more and having listened to the Purps' (I think it might only be my mother who calls them that) album about 20 times in just a couple of days, I raced down to Darlington's premier record shop, Squalid Sounds. Once there, I perused the Heavy Metal section with keen interest and saw hundreds of excitingly-packaged albums by a huge number of bands that were relatively or completely unknown to me. Iron Maiden's No Prayer For The Dying stood out as I'd seen them perform Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter on Top Of The Pops a few weeks previously. It also helped that a guy at school who I thought of as cool and mysterious had a denim jacket with a Maiden backpatch (the enigmatic Mike Death as he came to be known). I arrived home full of expectation and once again I was not disappointed. The riffs and complicated solos I had come to love on the Deep Purple record were here in abundance, but there was an additional intensity that somehow made this even better. I listened to it again and again and taped it so I could listen to it on my breeze block-esque Walkman while I did my paper round each morning. It's safe to say that from this point on, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard were dead to me (although I admit I still have a fondness for Def Leppard's 1983 offering Pyromania).
Buying more records and discovering more of this fantastic music were now the most important things in the world to me and I'm pretty sure most of my friends thought I'd "gone weird," but I didn't care. I became almost a regular fixture in Squalid Sounds as I ventured there each week with money from my paper round and part-time job at Woolworth's. The next album I bought was Megadeth's Rust In Peace purely because I thought the cover looked cool. As soon as I started listen to the record, it was apparent that I'd stumbled upon something even better than Deep Purple or Iron Maiden. I sat wide-eyed and open-mouthed for 45 minutes as I tried to comprehend how it was possible to play so fast. I listened to it again and was equally blown away. I didn't know at that point that this was thrash; to me it was all still just heavy metal.
Stephen, who I worked with at Woolworth's, had long hair and I knew he liked rock music. I told him I'd recently discovered Megadeth, he looked impressed and told me that there were loads of bands with loads of albums full of this exciting type of music. That's when I first heard the term 'thrash metal'. Next week at work, he handed me a carrier bag full of cassettes. "You need to hear these," he said. When I got home I started listening to the tapes: Metallica, Anthrax, Exodus, Overkill and more Megadeth. There must have been 20 hours' worth of music on the tapes and all of it was fantastic! I formed a friendship with Mike Death around this time and he introduced me to Slayer who were the heaviest and darkest band I'd ever heard at that point.
Everything now was all about thrash metal: I bought lots of records, posters and t-shirts and every magazine dedicated to thrash and heavy metal that I could get my hands on. I felt like I was mining from an inexhaustible musical seam and new albums were purchased on a weekly basis.
In the summer of 1991, Metallica were to release a new album. Metallica had fast become one of my favourites and I knew their first four albums like the back of my hand, so this was a very exciting time indeed. I was at Squalid Sounds the minute they opened that day along with several other metalheads eager to get my hands on the most highly anticipated new thrash release for several years. I couldn't get home fast enough with the record with the all-black sleeve. Enter Sandman I'd already heard and thought it was just ok, not as good as their earlier material, but still good nonetheless. I was a little disappointed with the album, to be honest. It was rock music, it was heavy metal, but I wasn't convinced it was thrash. It turned out to be their most successful album ever and earned them airplay on Radio One and other "pop" radio stations. I was angry that they'd sold out and betrayed their thrash roots and that their music had become mainstream - thrash was for me and other devout metallers, not for those who recorded the charts every Sunday in their bedrooms (I realise now how stupid this was, but in my defence, I was only 16 at the time).
Over the course of the next 3 years, a great deal of my beloved thrash metal bands would release new albums. Unfortunately for me, Exodus, Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, Overkill and even Megadeth all released records that I deemed to be "less thrashy." It seemed that after Metallica had achieved commercial success with the Black Album, all the other bands on the scene were trying to do the same and who could blame them? Increased popularity would make a great deal of difference to bands who would ordinarily have considered 200,000 worldwide sales of an album a success. They were, after all, trying to make a living doing this.
This trend continued for several more years as thrash bands released album after album of sub-par music. Suddenly, around 2007, everything began to change for the better. New bands appeared playing old school thrash metal. Bands like Municipal Waste, Evile and Bonded By Blood (named after Exodus' debut album) were putting thrash back on the map (if it was ever on the map in the first place, or if music actually has a place on a map). I don't know if some of the older bands took notice, but it was like someone suddenly flicked a switch because they suddenly began making thrash records again. Metallica's Death Magnetic was their most thrash album since 1988's ...And Justice For All, Slayer's World Painted Blood is their best for years and Megadeth's Endgame signalled a return to form for the heroes of my youth.
I'm happy to say I still really enjoy listening to thrash metal, both new and old and I hope bands continue to release great albums.
Timcore's thrash recommendations:
Old School
Megadeth: Rust In Peace
Anthrax: Among The Living
Metallica: Kill 'Em All
Nuclear Assault: Handle With Care
Exodus: Impact Is Imminent
New School
Municipal Waste: The Art Of Partying
Evile: Enter The Grave
Gama Bomb: Citizen Brain
Havok: Time Is Up
Baptized In Blood: Baptized In Blood
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