Speed/ Thrash Metal

Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music, one of the extreme metal subgenres, that is characterised by its high speed and aggression. more...

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The origins of thrash metal are generally traced to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a number of bands began incorporating the sound of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with elements of hardcore punk (in particular its drum tempos), creating a new genre and developing into a separate movement from punk. This genre is much more aggressive compared to its relative, speed metal.

Beyond this, thrash metal has proven somewhat difficult to categorise. Some fans and musicians have a firm concept of genre and subgenre, but others reject such categorisation as limiting or useless. There is often significant crossover from one metal category to another, and the influence of non-metal genres, including classical music and jazz, is not uncommon.

Musical traits

Thrash metal is probably one of the most technically complex hard rock/heavy metal subgenres, along with death metal. The subgenre often contains a somewhat progressive musical structure as well. As a result many thrash bands, such as Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Testament, and Watchtower have frequently overlapped into progressive metal territory. The canadian band Voivod really got into progressive metal in the final 80's, something like a thrash/progressive metal. In addition, prog metal bands such as Dream Theater have frequently cited a few of the aforementioned bands as influences.

The genre relies on extremely-fast tempos, and low-register, fast or complex guitar riffs, sometimes layered with high-register guitar solos, often in combination with palm muting to create a "chugging" sound. Thrash guitar solos are almost exclusively played at high speed, as they are usually characterised as shredding, and use techniques such as sweep picking, legato phrasing, alternate picking, string skipping, and two-hand tapping. Most thrash lead guitarist are rooted in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement, but with more influence from progressive rock and speed metal. Many thrash guitarists are influenced by outside musical genres too, such as jazz fusion and classical music (some guitarists, such as Marty Friedman and Alex Skolnick, have lead styles that could be grouped in the neoclassical shred genre).

The speed and pacing of the songs is usually what defines basic thrash metal. The music tends to have a visceral, propellant feel to it due to the often intense drumming, most commonly utilizing the snare drum on the 1/2 beat, or the 2nd and 4th beats of the measure. Frantic bass drum use is also common. Thrash drummers use two foot-pedaled bass drums, known as "double bass" or a "double kick" almost exclusively. Many thrash drummers, such as Dave Lombardo and Charlie Benante, are revered as some of the best drummers in rock music, due to their ability with the double bass as well as adequetly keeping time.

Read more at Wikipedia.org