In the 1980s, you could easily mark four bands as the dominant names in what we know as speed or thrash metal. Strangely, they all survived the period.
- Anthrax
- Megadeth
- Metallica
- Slayer
It’s not that nobody else made it through, but it seems somehow striking that these four did.
To the other, I couldn’t tell you, without looking up their wiki entries, about any number of bands. But Nuclear Assault, The Forbidden, Panic, D.R.I. …. I’d like to think that the fact that so many of the bands I adored in my teenage angst lived to tell the tale says something about my artistic taste, but at the same time, so many of them didn’t. Agony Column? (Six six six guns … for Satan!) What is Flotsam and Jetsam doing these days? Apparently, any number of these bands turn up on the club circuit, but I’ve managed to see the big four at arena shows in recent years, and perhaps it is a pervading sense of nostalgia, but I’m not sure how many of them actually expected to see the twenty-first century.
No, there isn’t any real point. Maudlin nostalgia, I guess.
This Is 