Death-Thrash
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Death-thrash welds thrash metal's galloping tremolo riffs, palm-muted chugging and frantic 180-250 BPM blast-adjacent double-bass to the savagery of nascent death metal: vocals drop from a shouted bark into a guttural rasp or low growl, riffs turn dissonant and chromatic, and arrangements stay riff-dense and breakneck rather than groove-driven. Production is dry and trebly with a clicky kick and scooped midrange, leads are whammy-drenched and atonal, and the mood is feral, militaristic and apocalyptic. It is thrash pushed to its most extreme edge just before it tips fully into death metal.
History
Death-thrash crystallized in the late 1980s as thrash bands absorbed the brutality of emerging death and grind. In Brazil, Sepultura moved from the raw 'Schizophrenia' (1987) to the lean, internationally-produced 'Beneath the Remains' (1989) and 'Arise' (1991), both cut with Scott Burns at Morrisound in Tampa, the studio that defined the era's death-thrash sheen. Los Angeles' Dark Angel ('Darkness Descends', 1986) and the Bay Area's Sadus pushed thrash to inhuman speed, while New York's Demolition Hammer ('Tortured Existence', 1990) and Germany's Kreator and Sodom hardened their attack toward death metal. Florida's Obituary and Massacre straddled the same line from the death side. The style fed directly into 1990s death metal before being revived by retro-thrash and old-school death acts.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Metallum (Metal Archives) band/album entries
- Albert Mudrian, Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore
- AllMusic genre and artist profiles