Teutonic thrash, from the outside in. Each step is a genre and the single record this encyclopedia would put on first. Play them in this order and the last one should sound like a next step rather than a wall.
- 1 The way in
Heavy metal 1970
It split off from hard rock and blues rock when Black Sabbath tuned down and wrote riffs on the tritone. Volume, riff and a code of its own - every branch below starts here.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
Black Sabbath - the song Black Sabbath. The first thirty seconds are the genre's birth certificate.
Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath (1970) - 2 Then
Thrash metal 1983
NWOBHM plus hardcore punk: palm-muted riffs, brutal tempos and lyrics about war and society. The first truly extreme branch.
Shouted. Barked or chanted, and you can still make out the words.
Put on
Slayer - Reign in Blood. Twenty-nine minutes that redefined the word extreme.
Slayer, Reign in Blood (1986) - 3 What you asked about
Teutonic thrash 1984
The German version: dirtier, faster and much closer to what would become death and black metal.
Shouted. Barked or chanted, and you can still make out the words.
Put on
Kreator - Pleasure to Kill. The point where thrash becomes death metal without announcing it.
Kreator, Pleasure to Kill (1986) - 4 Where to go next
Second wave 1991
The Norwegian scene that fixed the definitive sound: thin guitars, demo-tape production as an ideal, corpse paint.
Growled or shrieked. Unintelligible without a lyric sheet. The thing most newcomers bounce off.
Put on
Immortal - Pure Holocaust. The scene's best album without the troubling baggage.
Immortal, Pure Holocaust (1993)
Assembled from the tree: every genre Teutonic thrash descends from, in order. Teutonic thrash has no subgenres, so the last step is the genre that rates closest to it by sound.