Simon RushworthIf 2024 was the year when a slew of thrash metal legends sat it out then there was still plenty of head banging brilliance to put our necks to the test. Check out whether your favourite thrashers made our Best Of list…
10. Morbid Saint – Swallowed By Hell (High Roller Records)
Morbid Saint’s 1990 debut, Spectrum Of Death, was released just a little too late for the band to ride the first thrash wave. Like many outfits outside the genre’s Premier League, they fell by the wayside, seemingly consigned to cult status among scene fanatics.
But they’ve since blasted back… and Swallowed By Hell was a real statement of intent from the revived thrashers.
Taught, rapidfire cuts such as Burn Pit, Bleed Them Dry and Rise From The Ashes proved there was plenty of life left in the Saint, 40 years after they first burst out of Wisconsin. Richard Holmes
9. Infrared — Manifestation (Self Released)
Canada appears to have a stranglehold on the new breed of cutting edge thrash metal these days and Infrared lit up a buoyant scene this year.
Whether it was the fist-pumping pantomime of Parasite Patrol or the damn near perfect Demon’s Blood, there was much to marvel at where Manifestation was concerned.
If 2021’s From The Black Swamp showcased a band clearly keen to get the creative juices flowing then this flamboyant follow-up was awash with fresh ideas.
Armin Kamal is clearly an A-grade student of old school thrash — the vocalist’s measured vitriol was reminiscent of Metal Church and Sacred Reich at their bludgeoning best.
Wrapping up with the deeply foreboding Then The Earth Goes Black, Infrared shone a light on heavy music’s huge potential. Simon Rushworth
8. Wraith – Fueled By Fear (Prosthetic Records)
With Fueled by Fear, Wraith stuck to the formula they’d employed on Absolute Power and Undo the Chains, hitting a sweet spot somewhere between Exodus, Kreator and Venom.
It worked beautifully.
The Indiana crew’s switchblade thrash sliced through skin and bone, and songs like Heathen’s Touch, Code Red and the raging title track seethed with underworld menace.
The pace barely dropped as Mike Szymendera’s high velocity kitwork propelled the band onward, and only the brooding Shame in Suffering and The Breaking Wheel’s chug offered any respite.
This was a fearsome opus, from one of thrash’s brightest hopes. RH
Check out the full review here.
7. Exhorder — Defectum Omnium (Nuclear Blast)
Groove and thrash aren’t always the most comfortable of bedfellows.
But New Orleans’ noisiest metal heads fused the two styles with typically devilish aplomb to deliver one of the albums of 2024.
For as long as Kyle Thomas’ crunching vocals drive Exhorder there’ll always be more than a nod to the band’s colourful past.
But Defectum Omnium was as much about a brave new era as it was leaning on a cherished legacy.
Horns aloft single Year Of The Goat and the epic Three Stages Of Truth/Lacing The Well reinforced Thomas’s reputation for celebrating the robust and the rousing. SR
6. Vulture – Sentinels (Metal Blade)
“A headbanger’s delight” is how we labelled Sentinels back in April.
And with good reason.
The Germans’ songwriting soared higher on their fourth album, as their frantic Teutonic thrash circled around a core of NWOBHM and early 80s metal. Think Mercyful Fate mixing it with an adolescent Kreator and an embryonic Exodus, and you’d be in the right Fußballstadien.
L. Steeler’s stratospheric vocals pierced through the anthemic Where There’s A Whip (There Is A Way), Oathbreaker was a lesson in infernal thrash dynamics and if you wanted Denner and Shermann-style fretwork, Duel delivered.
On Sentinels’ predecessor, Dealin’ Death Vulture spread their wings – but this gripped you in its talons. RH
Check out our full take on Sentinels here.
5. Suicidal Angels — Profane Prayer (Nuclear Blast)
Birthed by the same metal gods that gave us Slayer, Exodus and Kreator, super sinister Suicidal Angels rained down shards of piercing thrash in 2024.
It was a Greek tragedy that the Hellenic heroes didn’t make more of a noise with the furiously unapologetic follow-up to Years Of Agression.
And it felt like every song here was a rallying call to Europe’s battle jacket-clad masses to go to war on bland mediocrity.
Profane Prayer bled through the very fabric of thrash: at times thought-provoking (Plato, Nietzsche and Socrates were namechecked by songwriter Nick Melissourgos) and at times thuggish in its delivery, this was a record of glorious juxtapositions.
When The Lions Die and Virtues Of Destruction said it best of all where this brilliant band was concerned. SR
4. Hemotoxin — When Time Becomes Loss (Pulverized Records)
When Time Become Loss wasn’t so much an album as a tear in reality, a portal into a mutating landscape bathed in cosmic radiation, a swirling maelstrom of bioluminescence.
Getting back to Earth for a moment, it was also the pinnacle of Hemotoxin’s career to date, more subtle and organic than its predecessors, yet still built around that pulsing prog thrash reactor.
Influenced by death metal pioneers like Death and Cynic, the Californians used their fourth opus to drop some genuinely jaw-dropping moments of melodic intricacy: Conscious Descent and Call From The Abyss were just two examples of their quartet’s astonishing prowess. There were many more. RH
3. Flotsam & Jetsam — I Am The Weapon (AFM)
Can it really be 15 albums since Flotsam & Jetsam first made their play for thrash metal immortality?
The Arizona quintet never quite hit the big time but I Am The Weapon provided further proof that you can’t keep a good band down.
Savagely on point and punishingly brutal, there were plenty of echoes of 1988’s iconic No Place For Disgrace and stunning follow-up When The Storm Comes Down.
But I Am The Weapon was a shot in the arm for thrash metal’s enduring ability to reinvent the wheel.
A.K. Knutson never sounded better as he belted out Burned My Bridges and Beneath The Shadows. SR
2. Jasta — …And Jasta For All (Perseverance Media Group)
Yep, Jamey Jasta loves thrash.
Of course, the frontman made his name in metallic hardcore outfit Hatebreed, and waded into the sludge with Kingdom of Sorrow. But you only have to listen to Hatebreed’s covers of Ghosts of War and Escape to know he has a real passion for thrash.
And that passion sizzled on his fourth solo effort, as he brought the likes of Phil Demmel, Scott Ian and Steve ‘Zetro’ Souza along for the ride.
Opener They See Us As Prey saw Jasta going deep into the Bay Area, Armor Your Mind brought the HC bounce, No Dream is Free was a slayerized heatseeker, and the incendiary Create the Now gave its chorus willingly to Testament titan Chuck Billy.
In truth, there wasn’t a dud in sight as Jasta went for the jugular. RH
1. Kerry King — From Hell I Rise (Reigning Phoenix)
The thrash metal supergroup the world’s been waiting for? Kerry King could well have pulled it off.
Joining forces with Paul Bostaph (Slayer), Kyle Sanders (Hellyeah), Phil Demmel (ex-Machine Head) and Mark Osegueda (Death Angel), the King reigned supreme.
From Hell I Rise was a potent mix of brain melting riffage and kneecap narratives — good enough to keep us guessing but always staying true to thrash metal’s unflinching ethos.
Osegueda was a revelation on Toxic: the Rushonrock Red Hot Track Of The Week may have been the pick of a supremely powerful bunch but this was a record soaked in venomous intent.
King’s crowning glory? Maybe. SR
