A big week for 80s thrash metal
I have listened to so much 80s thrash metal in the last week that I've turned into this guy:
That's a detail from the cover of Evildead's 1989 album Annihilation of Civilization, by artist Ed Repka, whose style you might recognise from literally every thrash album ever made. Slight exaggeration, but he's done a lot.
When I was a kid, thrash was essentially synonymous with metal, but by the time I hit my teens in the early 90s it was passé, along with a lot of other established styles of metal. (The excellent metal review site Angry Metal Guy has a series called 90s Metal Weirdness that revisits the old guard's identity crisis during that decade.) The first metal I got into, aside from golden oldies like Sabbath, was stuff like Pantera, Sepultura, and Fear Factory, so it was a natural step to move onto influential thrash masters like Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Testament, and the other big guns.
If I had to rank the metal subgenres I'm into these days, thrash would probably be some way down the list. But the classic records still hit hard, and the thrash revival has thrown up a surprising number of quality releases. Maybe I ought to write up a list.