As extended its beer-stained tentacles around the world in the mid-80s, it would be easy to lay all the credit at America’s feet. And granted, the likes of , Slayer, Exodus, Anthrax and Megadeth pioneered the sound and style. But they didn’t do everything themselves.
Rewind to the early 80s. Many thousands of miles away from San Francisco’s , something faster, darker and altogether nastier than American thrash was taking shape. As any self-respecting headbanger will tell you, Germany was the place to go if you liked your music brutal, aggressive and dirty as hell.
“Back then we wanted to listen to anything but the pop stuff we listened to when we were kids,” says Mille Petrozza, vocalist and guitarist with , arguably the biggest and best of Germany’s thrash bands. “The first thing I got into was Kiss, and then I wanted something heavier and so I started listening to bands like Priest, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Raven and all these British bands. That didn’t last long, because then we listened to this band from England called Venom and that changed everything.
They had a big effect on us and that’s when we became extreme metal. We played at twice the speed, twice the intensity and tried to be just brutal. That’s when it all started.
” Metal has always had a huge, passionate and loyal audience in Germany, and as the 80s began the genre was experiencing a peak that would last for most of the decade to follow. Whether it was Priest, Maiden and Sabbath, or home-grown.