Best Thrash band

[Giggles]

Regarding Sodom, I'm only really familiar with their M-16 album which has 4 amazing songs back to back:

M-16
Lead Injection
Cannon Fodder
Marines

Followed by the album finale of a Surfing Bird cover 

Other great songs on the album too, but that run from track 7 to track 10 is absolute banger territory. Especially the drums on Lead Injection.

[open face surgery]

Destruction? Just another b-tier (it we're being generous) generic AF thrash band.

I don't think you can be called "generic" if you're the first 

Infernal Overkill is a beast. No interest after that.

Slayer are the obvious choice for me.

[livingabortion]

I think this pole could be very much in 2 halves, 80's and modern. Like many I started off with Metallica, and heard Sepultura before the rest of the Big 4.
I haven't enjoyed main 4 in years and bands who haven't been part of it have proved to be have better consistency and put out better Thrash Metal albums,
Metallica and Anthrax have been shite for decades, Megadeth hit and miss and Slayer's last few didn't do much for me. I think Testament, Sodom and Kreator had fared better.


80's - Metallica
Post 00's - Kreator

[Juggz]

There hasn't been a thrash album worth a pint of cold piss since the very early 90's. By 1990, all the good thrash bands of the 80's had moved on to something else, not playing the thrash beat anymore. What has come since, especially those trying to be thrash after a long break playing hard rock and collecting money, has been utterly lamentable.

AJFA, for example, is not a thrash album. They're not thrash songs. RIP, not thrash. Great albums, but not thrash albums. Thrash was a spent force by the early 90's and should have stayed dead. It was glorious at the time and said everything it had to say and disappeared. What Testament are doing these days isn't thrash at all. Slayer and Kreator, arguably yes but no-one will miss anything they put out in the last 25 years. Vektor have a big thrash influence but I wouldn't call them a thrash band at all, they're operating through a much wider scope.

[Ducky]

Destruction? Just another b-tier (it we're being generous) generic AF thrash band.

I don't think you can be called "generic" if you're the first 

Were they the first? This I did not know...

They're still remarkably pants, not a patch on a lot of other bands... although better than Anthrax at least 

[open face surgery]

Destruction - Sentence of Death was '84.

[Pedrito]

There hasn't been a thrash album worth a pint of cold piss since the very early 90's. By 1990, all the good thrash bands of the 80's had moved on to something else, not playing the thrash beat anymore. What has come since, especially those trying to be thrash after a long break playing hard rock and collecting money, has been utterly lamentable.

AJFA, for example, is not a thrash album. They're not thrash songs. RIP, not thrash. Great albums, but not thrash albums. Thrash was a spent force by the early 90's and should have stayed dead. It was glorious at the time and said everything it had to say and disappeared. What Testament are doing these days isn't thrash at all. Slayer and Kreator, arguably yes but no-one will miss anything they put out in the last 25 years. Vektor have a big thrash influence but I wouldn't call them a thrash band at all, they're operating through a much wider scope.

This sums it up very well. Forbidden and Holy Terror should be in the list too. Dark Angel also.

[Kurt Cocaine]

Can't believe that Uncle Slam didn't make it on the poll option list. Shameful altogether... 

https://youtu.be/LYXvnCJQUB4

[Bogmetaller]

There hasn't been a thrash album worth a pint of cold piss since the very early 90's. By 1990, all the good thrash bands of the 80's had moved on to something else, not playing the thrash beat anymore. What has come since, especially those trying to be thrash after a long break playing hard rock and collecting money, has been utterly lamentable.

Can't agree with that to be honest - plenty of good thrash albums post early 1990s- the first haunted album, divine intervention, Violent Revolution , shovel headed kill machine just off the top of my head. Granted they all had a different slant on pure 1980s thrash but they are thrash albums all the same.

[Carnage]

Pessimist (the German band) are putting out consistently good thrash albums, and even some of the established/older band put out quality thrash sporadically, so there's plenty to be heard.

Also: AJFA and Rust In Peace not thrash? How does that work? Certainly thrash, even if the last thrash album either band released.

[Trev]

Seems thrash is viewed a lot more rigidly than some other genres like black or death metal, and isn't given as much leeway to expand the core sound

Like I would absolutely call Vektor a thrash band, even if they have elements of other stuff. Death changed pretty much every album but they were always a death metal band

[TheFlyingGiraffe]

There hasn't been a thrash album worth a pint of cold piss since the very early 90's. By 1990, all the good thrash bands of the 80's had moved on to something else, not playing the thrash beat anymore. What has come since, especially those trying to be thrash after a long break playing hard rock and collecting money, has been utterly lamentable.

Hard fuckin disagree on that one man.

Even Sodom had some class output in the late 90s early 00s with Code Red, MI-6, Sodom.

Bands out here like Deathhammer, Antichrist, Nekromantheon, Condor, Division Speed, Vulture, the new Butcher album kicking shit. All these are definitely carrying the torch of the 80s classics. Fuck even Power Trip aren't the worst shit in the world.

If you're talking about the big four and all that yeah, could probably get behind it but other than that, nah fuck that.

AJFA, for example, is not a thrash album. They're not thrash songs. RIP, not thrash. Great albums, but not thrash albums. Thrash was a spent force by the early 90's and should have stayed dead. It was glorious at the time and said everything it had to say and disappeared. What Testament are doing these days isn't thrash at all. Slayer and Kreator, arguably yes but no-one will miss anything they put out in the last 25 years. Vektor have a big thrash influence but I wouldn't call them a thrash band at all, they're operating through a much wider scope.

Sure Vektor are just playing Voivod 20 years later. Neither were never my cuppa but sure one of them is just lifting shit from the other. They're progressive as fuck but sure so were Voivod after the first 2...

[Ducky]

Evile have released some derivative but amazing thrash. Five Serpent's Teeth could've been released between MoP and ...AJfA and it'd be hailed as a classic thrash record.

[Slaughterday]

For me, proper thrash needs a bit of heaviness behind it. Early Destruction and Sodom is some of the best metal ever written, but it's but not 'heavy' I'm the traditional sense. I look at that style of metal more like early black metal really.

If you're talking straightforward meathead thrash metal with very little death metal or heavy metal  influences -

Beneath The Remains
Arise
Pleasure To Kill
Darkness Descends
Reign In Blood
Bonded By Blood

Cannot be topped.

[Bogmetaller]

5 greatest thrash albums for me in no order are -
Pleasure to Kill
Rust in Peace
Beneath the Remains
Reign in Blood
Speak English or Die.

As mentioned elsewhere on the forum, if Speak English or Die had been an Anthrax album they probably wouldn't be as despised by people as they are. For what it's worth I do think Anthrax have some very good songs but they are miles behind the the other big 3 in terms of quality.