Bay Area thrash metal (also known as Bay Area thrash) referred to a steady following of heavy metal bands in the 1980s who formed and gained international status in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Along with Central Florida, the scene was widely regarded as a starting point of American thrash metal, crossover thrash and death metal.A To Z Of Thrash Metal | Rockdetector
History
Exodus and Metallica
The earliest documented roots of the Bay Area thrash scene date back to the formation of Exodus in 1979. By the time the group recorded their full-length album four years later, five different guitarists or bassists had already passed through the lineup, with some going on to join or form bands that were equally relevant to the area's burgeoning metal scene.MusicMight :: Artists :: EXODUS In November 1982, Exodus opened a show at San Francisco's Old Waldorf venue for Metallica, a then-relatively unknown (and unsigned) band from Southern California who were recently discovered by Brian Slagel and had appeared on the first volume of his Metal Massacre compilation. Exodus (who were also unsigned at this time) had distributed an untitled demo the same year with a lineup that included guitarist Kirk Hammett.
Although Metallica had initially formed in Los Angeles, it was not until their February 1983 relocation to the East Bay area that Cliff Burton formerly from Trauma joined as bassist, sealing the band's first, formative lineup. The group (which then consisted of Burton, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Dave Mustaine) had moved into a Carlson Blvd. house in El Cerrito, near Albany Hill, which had been rented by Mark Whitaker, then-manager of Exodus. After Mustaine was removed from the lineup that same year, then-Exodus guitarist Hammett would replace him following Whitaker's recommendation; in turn, Mustaine would move back to Los Angeles to form Megadeth.
Metallica's signing to Megaforce Records, the release of their first album and the songwriting process and rehearsals for Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets had all taken place while the group resided at Whitaker's El Cerrito home.
Networking between local bands
Burton and Hammett's friendship with other local acts, notably Oakland's Exodus and Testament, and later, San Francisco's Death Angel—among others—strongly vitalized the scene, leading to intensive touring and tape trading that would cross borders and seas, and eventually graduate to record signings.[ allmusic ((( Testament > Biography )))][ allmusic ((( Exodus > Biography )))][ allmusic ((( Death Angel > Biography )))]
El Sobrante's Possessed would bring a turning point to the genre with 1985's Seven Churches, regarded as the first album to cross over from thrash metal to death metal for the largely "growling vocals" and subject matter dealing with horror and the occult.[ allmusic ((( Seven Churches > Overview )))] In addition to the inspiration of black metal, it would predate other albums, such as Los Angeles-based Slayer's Reign in Blood and Death's San Francisco Bay Area-written and rehearsed Scream Bloody Gore, which had also been regarded as influential to thrash and death metal.[ allmusic ((( Scream Bloody Gore > Overview )))][ allmusic ((( Reign in Blood > Overview )))]
Members from Possessed had also maintained a strong network with other integral musicians of the Bay Area thrash scene: vocalist Jeff Becerra and then-guitarist Larry LaLonde had played in a short-lived speed metal band called Blizzard,MusicMight :: Artists :: BLIZZARD which featured former Exodus bassist Carlton Melson and Desecration guitarist Danny Boland (then-Possessed drummer Mike Sus and former Possessed bassist Bob Yost had also played in Desecration, a Bay Area death/thrash band active between 1985 and 1989).MusicMight :: Artists :: DESECRATION Former Exodus bassist Geoff Andrews co-founded Possessed before Becerra replaced him in 1983, taking over both vocal and bass duties. Andrews went on to form the thrash band Sabertooth with Johnee McKelvey.MusicMight :: Artists :: POSSESSED
After Possessed's first disbanding, LaLonde went on to join Blind Illusion, which featured former Exodus members Evan McCaskey and Tim Agnello, then-Heathen members Marc Biedermann and Dave Godfrey, and Blizzard drummer Mike Miner.MusicMight :: Artists :: BLIND ILLUSION Blind Illusion co-founder Les Claypool (who was a high school friend of Kirk Hammett at Richmond's DeAnza High School) would unsuccessfully audition as Metallica's bassist in 1986 after Burton's bus accident death in Sweden.
Networking between bands in other scenes
Heavy metal in Southern California had spanned back to the 1970s, and in the 1980s, was the home base of Slayer and Megadeth, two of thrash's "big four". However, from the mid-1980s until the early 1990s, glam metal had been the pervading and popular subgenre within the boundaries of the Los Angeles scene.
Notwithstanding, both Slayer and Megadeth would receive recognition early in their careers by playing at Bay Area venues, including Berkeley's Ruthie's Inn with Exodus between 1984 and 1985, a time in which current Slayer guitarist Kerry King had played alongside Mustaine in Megadeth. Oakland native Jeff Hanneman was a founding Slayer member; Paul Bostaph (formerly of Forbidden, and later Exodus and Testament) had been Slayer's full-time drummer for the balance of the 1990s. Similarly, drummer Dave Lombardo played on Testament's The Gathering album before returning to Slayer in 2004.MusicMight :: Artists :: TESTAMENT
In 1987, shortly after the release of Scream Bloody Gore and Chuck Schuldiner's move back to Florida, Chris Reifert would form his own endeavor, Autopsy, which has also been regarded as an early inspiration of the death metal genre. Autopsy's 1989 debut, Severed Survival, would feature bassist Steve Di Giorgio, founder of Antioch, California thrash metal band Sadus; Schuldiner had also met DiGiorgio while living in the Bay Area, who would play bass for Death on the albums Human and Individual Thought Patterns.
Musical characteristics
According to Ken McIntyre of Metal Hammer, "Regardless of what it was called in its infancy, the sound produced by these early San Francisco bands was like nothing ever heard before. Young, fleet-fingered savages were pushing musical boundaries, playing faster and with more intricacy then seemed humanly possible."
Influences
As different thrash metal scenes developed around the world throughout the 1980s, each had their own distinct style and influence.
Several early luminaries of the Bay Area scene borrowed heavily from the new wave of British heavy metal and early punk rock: Exodus guitarist Gary Wayne Holt mentioned discovering Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head, Trauma, Angel Witch, Venom and Budgie on a KUSF radio show hosted by Ian Kallen and Ron Quintana. Hammett, Hetfield and Ulrich have also cited Venom and Budgie as important influences, in addition to punk acts like the Misfits, Charged GBH and Discharge. Albums that very much reflected this era and inspiration include Kill 'Em All and Bonded By Blood.
Other bands, such as Attitude Adjustment, took the hardcore punk influence to a greater extent, with the aforementioned group involving former musicians from Agnostic Front, D.R.I., and Murphy's Law during their lineup history,MusicMight :: Artists :: ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT in addition to show dates at 924 Gilman, a Berkeley venue more oriented to hardcore punk than heavy metal music.
Attitude Adjustment's style, "crossover thrash", a grindcore precursor, would influence many bands of the latter subgenre, including chief innovator, the British band Napalm Death, who would cover Attitude Adjustment's "Dope Fiend" and Hirax's "Hate, Fear, and Power" on an exclusive covers album (coincidentally, the Hirax track had featured Attitude Adjustment drummer Eric Brecht on the original 1986 recording). Hirax, while Orange County, California-based, had many connections to bands of the Bay Area thrash scene, as the group had played at Ruthie's Inn, and in past lineups, featured Paul Baloff (formerly of Exodus and Heathen) and Ron McGovney (Metallica's first bassist).MusicMight :: Artists :: HIRAX
Long Island-born multi-instrumentalist Joe Satriani had relocated to Berkeley, California, in 1978 to pursue a career teaching music; although he was mainly influenced by blues rock and had not specialized in heavy metal music initially, many of Satriani's students would go on to become progenital guitarists in the Bay Area metal scene, including Kirk Hammett of Metallica/Exodus, Larry LaLonde of Possessed, Alex Skolnick of Testament, Rick Hunolt of Exodus, Phil Kettner of Lȧȧz Rockit and Geoff Tyson of T-Ride. Satriani would also produce Possessed's 1987 The Eyes of Horror EP.
Jeff Becerra of Possessed cites early Exodus, Venom and Motörhead as his inspirations, calling bassist/vocalist Lemmy his greatest of influences. Although Allmusic attributed Slayer as being a musical influence for 1985's Seven Churches,[ allmusic(((Seven Churches > Overview))) ] the first Slayer album Show No Mercy had not been released until December 1983, shortly after members of Possessed were already writing material for their demo and debut album. However, former Possessed member Brian Montana explained that guitarist Mike Torrao once wanted Possessed to have a "Slayer-type outfit" (which then consisted of make-up, leather, pentagrams, and inverted crosses), something Montana rejected as being too derivative. Montana (who had played guitar on the first Possessed demo) also cited early Exodus as an influence, in addition to Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Joe Satriani.
Image, themes, philosophies and lifestyle
In regards to heavy metal and image, Sadus co-founder Steve Di Giorgio explained:
...in high school, if you were playing any kind of music that wasn't dance, or just something that was really different—you know, rock, metal or hard rock, anything like that—then you needed to look like it. You needed to look like a bad dude, and we just looked like normal dudes....It wasn't about trying to impress everybody, because we looked at those types of people as weenies trying to do that stuff ... We just wore our normal stuff and we didn't really think about it. It just kind of happened that way and I think because we were searching for an extreme style, coupled with this no image, who-cares-what-we-look-like thing, then I think we fit in to that new movement that we discovered a little ways later, the whole Bay Area thrash scene.
For logos, many bands within the Bay Area scene had a more "do it yourself"-artistic approachIGN.COM BAND LOGOS compared to the older metal bands using an already established font. Conversely, professional illustrators (most notably Ed Repka on Beyond the Gates, Eternal Nightmare, Product of Society, and Scream Bloody Gore) were sometimes utilized to design album art.
Lyrical topics generally dealt in themes like the occult, horror, death, witchcraft, warfare, destruction, violence, apocalypse, rebellion and tyranny.[ The Legacy > Overview ][ Fabulous Disaster > Overview ] However, some groups took on subjects more relevant to the day. Metallica's "Master of Puppets", from the 1986 album of the same name, deals with the issues of hard drugs, with some phrases in the song being references to cocaine use. The crack-cocaine epidemic had been an active problem at that time for many large U.S. cities, and particularly affected the San Francisco Bay Area.