Power Trip - Conditioned To Death

2:33 mark.

For about 6 years now, this Dallas, TX band has been slugging and kicking, fighting their way up the pile of mid 2000's thrash revival bands. With the release of 2013's Manifest Decimation, they have finally made it to the top of the mountain. Drawing comparisons ranging from Best Wishes era Cro-Mags to the lightning speed riffing of Vio-lence's Eternal Nightmare, Power Trip have left a trail of mosh pit casualties and broken necks in their wake with this record.

The album contains everything you need to make a true juggernaut of a crossover record. They manage to cram enough  mosh parts and divebombs into 30 minutes that even Eddie Sutton or Kurt Brecht would be begging for mercy.

This riff is a straight up punch to the stomach, taking the air directly from your lungs. If the band ever embarked on a stadium tour, you would see nothing but an ocean of hard moshing and spin kicks to the jaw. Cities would begin to boycott the tour due to budget concerns with area emergency rooms and a shortage of ambulance staff to treat the multitude of injuries. Soon Power Trip casts, slings and crutches will be sold at their merch table, not as a gimmick, but out of absolute necessity and genuine humanitarian concern.

Check them out this summer with fucking Foreseen and wear appropriate protective gear.

Stream "Manifest Decimation" on Bandcamp

Stormtroopers of Death - Kill Yourself

1:13 mark.

As I sit here with the sound of Scott Ian's most recent dad rock offering, Motor Sister, reverberating through my ear canal, I am left with that all too familiar feeling that one gets when one of your favorite musicians puts out something truly embarrassing. Granted it could be worse, everyone seems to have forgotten the existence of The Damned Things which featured Mr. Ian and 2 members each from Fall Out Boy and Everytime I Die and sounded like Maylene and The Sons of Disaster.

Rather than subject myself to this drivel, I am reminded of a time when a Scott Ian side project actually broke new ground in metal and hardcore. Recorded on spare studio time during Anthrax' Spreading The Disease sessions, Speak English or Die is a tour de force of crossover thrash genius that happened at just the right time. Released 5 months after D.R.I.'s Dealing With It and 2 months before Corrosion of Conformity's Animosity, the record became a corner stone of the crossover thrash sub-genre that blended the speed of thrash metal with the politically charged lyrics and churning mosh parts of hardcore.

The band also pioneered the less than 10 second song, several years before "You Suffer" was written, their debut record featured 4 tracks shorter than 8 seconds, one of which clocks in at 2 seconds. These tracks are referred to on wikipedia with the ridiculous revisionist history genre name of "blipcore", a term I promise was never used by anyone prior to the widespread usage of the internet by music nerds.

Speak English or Die has sold over a million copies worldwide which not only makes it pretty much the most successful release of its genre, it is also equally impressive considering the offensive lyrics the band employed to piss people off. Misogyny, xenophobia and general toilet humor are the bread and butter on this release, although the band goes to great lengths to assure the public that they are purely satirical.

It's my general opinion that the invention of crossover was the best thing that could have happened to thrash metal in the 80's as it helped stave off stagnation for a few more years and it also helped hardcore by helping to force the 1980-1985 sound which had run its course to move to the side and make way for the youth crew movement of the mid to late 80's.

S.O.D. did not play a lot of shows, as Scott Ian and Charlie Benante were comitted to Anthrax and Dan Lilker to Nuclear Assault. Singer Billy Milano started M.O.D. and carried on in a similar style. Sporadic reunions and releases would continue until 2003 when Milano and Ian's relationship soured and the two decided not to work together anymore. 

Sacred Reich - A Question

0:18 mark.

One might expect a track from Ignorance or the obvious choice of Surf Nicaragua, but instead I will take you to an obscure 3 track EP released in between The American Way and Independent. 1990 was a complicated time, thrash metal had hit it's peak, most of the best records the genre had to offer had already been released and many musicians were left wondering where to go from here.

Some decide to stick to their guns and blaze away at full speed, while others try a different approach and slow things down a bit. There is a fine line here, for bands of this era it eventually came time to sink (Testament's The Ritual and Overkill's I Hear Black) or swim (Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction and Anthrax' Sound of White Noise). Sacred Reich slowed things down a bit sooner than most, electing to adopt a groovier stomp more akin to Exhorder and Pantera, the latter of whom they would spend a considerable amount of time on tour with. 

A Question is a perfect example of this sound beginning to take shape. Phil Rind's lyrics here are mostly phrased in the form that the title would suggest as he runs through the gamut of life's most challenging queries, The cover itself even features Auguste Rodin's The Thinker. The riffs are meatier than the band's previous body of work, plodding along methodically with enough weight behind them to flatten...well...Auguste Rodin's The Thinker!

The rest of the EP is lackluster, the b-sides being a cover of FEAR's Let's Have a War and Who's To Blame, a track from the previous full length. The FEAR cover brings to mind a Ted Nugent interview that I read once where he referred to Pantera's cover of Cat Scratch Fever as "extremely caucasian". I don't know what that means exactly, because frankly Ted Nugent is psychotic, but I feel like its appropriate here. Uninspired and by the books may be better terms to describe it, but they aren't as amusing.

Listen to "A Question" on YouTube

Listen to "Surf Nicaragua" on YouTube

Listen to "The American Way" on YouTube

Dark Angel - The Burning of Sodom

0:00 mark.

A lot of 1980's thrash bands would like to make the claim that they were the fastest metal band on the planet, but unless they were named Dark Angel they were full of shit. From the release of We Have Arrived in 1985, the band announced their presence with authority. Becoming known by fans and peers alike as the "L.A. Caffeine Machine" for their lightning fast chainsaw riffing and Gene Hoglan's (who joined just after the debut album was released) maniacal drumming, the band were on the brink of their masterpiece.

1986's Darkness Descends is the fastest thrash metal album ever recorded, 7 songs in 35 minutes. Normally when you think fast, you think short tracks, but this record runs until the wheels fall off on every song, with no track shorter than 3 minutes and one track even reaching 8 and a half minutes. Vocalist Don Doty's growl punctuated with a shriek vocal delivery tackles the standard subject matter of Nostradamus, Judge Dredd and potential nuclear holocaust.

The Burning of Sodom is potentially the fastest song of that era, doing so without the help of a single blast beat. Hoglan writes the lyrics and Doty tacks each word onto the next in a frantically cryptic run on sentence, condensing 6 verses and 3 chorus' into an absolute blur, a Soviet ICBM screaming towards the ground and bringing about utter annihilation.

Bonus Riff! 2:11 mark.

Stream "Darkness Descends" on YouTube

Municipal Waste - Unleash The Bastards

0:00 mark.

Everyone hits a point in their life when their musical taste stagnates, for me it was the apex of metalcore and the breaking point came towards the middle of 2006. Enter the band that changes your life, for me that band is Municipal Waste, Unleash The Bastards is the first song I heard by this band that would completely change the game as far as I was concerned. The band has the opening slot for the Sounds of the Underground tour at the Merriweather Post Pavilion. The sparse crowd gathers on the floor on an early July morning, awaiting the impending day of sweat soaked entertainment. Suddenly, the relatively unknown band takes the stage with a whine of feedback and they roar into the first song.

Magically, as though appearing out of thin air, a group of 15 to 20 punkers swirl into a frenzy. The circle pit consumes the entire floor as the band gives all they have into a speed metal freight train that runs the audience members with the sense enough to arrive early over like so many maidens tied to the tracks by mustached villains. 

And then as quickly as they appeared, they are gone. The band finishes the last song and the punkers vanish into the ether. Tony Foresta leaves the stage with the closing remark of "have fun listening to to breakdowns for the rest of the day". Many bands with a larger following give the band kudos throughout the day including The Black Dahlia Murder and GWAR. Their set lasted but 20 minutes, but it forever changed my perspective of intensity. 

"Unleash The Bastards" live in Richmond

Foreseen - Both Sides Lose

1:10 mark.

Helsinki, Finland is not usually considered a hotbed of crossover thrash, but Foreseen are rearranging that landscape rapidly.

Coming from a record that sounds like it was literally assembled from broken Cause For Alarm and Life of Dreams LP's and held together by melted cassette copies of Bonded By Blood, Both Sides Lose is the musical equivalent of the last two soldiers on earth shooting each other simultaneously.

Sporting churning riffs that would incite a circle pit wide enough to change the earth's orbit and divebombs that crash to the ground at the speed of light, this song is a Simo Häyhä bullet right through your eye. 

This is the music that Jeff Hanneman's ghost would listen to while using a power sander to remove the tribal tattoos from Kerry King's head while he sleeps at night.

Stream "Helsinki Savagery" from 20 Buck Spin

All other Foreseen releases are available on Bandcamp

D.R.I. - Beneath The Wheel

0:44 mark.

Picture this, it is 1989 and you are in middle school. Every day for the last few months you have been harassed/beaten up by the same two neanderthal's at the bus stop. "Hey nerd" this and "Give me your lunch money" that. You are in no real position to stop them, you weigh 70 pounds soaking wet and you're lucky they haven't smashed your glasses yet.

One morning you are getting ready for school, a look of anxiety and yesterdays shiner on your face. Your old brother coming down the stairs, notices this and tells you to hold on a minute. He returns minutes later with his walkman and a beat up tin He-man lunch box. You give him a puzzled look as he bends down and whispers in your ear. A slight smirk slowly appears in the corner of your mouth as you process the information that your sibling is bestowing upon you.

As you make your way to the bus stop, headphones around your neck and lunchbox in tow, you make a pit-stop at a neighbors driveway and scoop copious amounts of gravel into the He-man lunch box. Later, as the two hulking jocks approach, you place the headphones over your ears and press play. 

Already positioned at track two, the buzzsaw of Spike Cassidy's guitar signals your warcry as you feel a hand gasp your shoulder. Whirling around with quickness, you swing the lunch box with all your might as it crashes into the waiting, drooling jaw of your aggressor. Blood and gravel fly through the air as you connect with a second swing to the back of his comrades head. Seconds later you stand exhausted and triumphant, gravel and goons spread across the sidewalk and Kurt Brecht bellowing in your ear. The bus arrives as a smile washes over your face and the riff consumes you once again.

D.R.I. - Thrash Zone (full album)

Anthrax - I Am The Law

1:00 mark

CHUGGA CHUGGA CHUGGA CHUGGA CHUGGA KNOCK KNOCK

Joey Belladonna just knocked at your door, he wanted to know if you knew about the good word of Judge Dredd
He didn't wait for you to answer so he just started singing it to you anyway

While you were listening to him be an awesome vocalist, that garden gnome Scott Ian snuck into your bathroom and collected all the beard shavings around your sink, more on that later

OH MY FUCK IS THAT A BASS IN THE MIX, Jason Newsted just was like, "hey yo waitamin"

You sullen because all the Captain Crunch is missing from your kitchen? Check the guitar amps. CAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNCHHHHHHH

Scott Ian's goatee is massive now thanks to your shaving scum contribution