Slayer thoughts...

[DBB]

My sense that the move came from the press and the labels has to do with the earliest evidence I've seen of the term. In the 85 zines I have, "thrash metal" appears more in the ads than anywhere else (along with "black metal" and "death metal" being applied pretty much without any rhyme or reason). At best, of course, this is anecdotal evidence, most of what I've got are old British rags, and not much in the way of the more fanzine type stuff.

That is what I thought. No evidence at all really. Power metal was the term most commonly used in ads in 1985 to describe what could be classified as speed or thrash, but that is something which cannot really be proven without resorting to scanners. What I have really found interesting is the almost absolute absence of ads in metal magazines from all different points of the compass (ranging from Kerranng's polished and "professional"Mega Metal to the rough around the edges digest fanzine Headbanger when compared to magazines today. It is really startling.

You are too far gone for me to be able to say anything to change your mind. Calling South of Heaven a "conventional speed metal" album (newsflash: They intentionally slowed down the pace on this album) is crazy and is an indication of how tenaciously you will hang on to these misconceptions.

In the end, it is not worth it. That thrash was something bands adopted and was not welcomed with the open arms by many (initially mind you and if you indeed have "British rags" from 1985 this should be as plain as the nose on your face) is something that has become apparent to me beyond a doubt as I've been reading many metal magazines from 1983-1986 of late. The term thrash originated from metalheads on the ground (playing in bands, listening to records, going to shows) is also more than clear. There is a reason why Dave Carlo vowed to be "Thrashing until he was 103"--it is because thrash had a meaning more profound than you will ever be willing to attribute to it, even if confronted with indisputable evidence.

(along with "black metal" and "death metal" being applied pretty much without any rhyme or reason).

I disagree. It certainly seems that there was no reasoning behind it. For awhile, I just thought these people were crazy and just throwing around terms in a willy-nilly fashion, but as I read more and more it became clear that people were using an entirely different method of employing these terms than they do today. Everything osssified in a sense (not totally, but damn close) in the late '80s early '90s to produce the accepted definitions of death, black, thrash. power etc. etc. that we use now. Take to long to explain, and I'm holding in reserve for something else and do not want to ruin any surprises.

In fact, I could even tell you about an individual (even where he worked, which is important--not in the industry) rarely mentioned who was greatly responsible for popularizing the adjective and noun "death" used with metal, but these are all stories for different days so some pieces of the big picture emerge instead of a triumphing in a game of message board trivial pursuit.

 

[My Man Mahmoud]

1. You can't automatically conflate "thrash" (a genre tag) and "thrashing" (a verb). The latter is on par with "killing" and "slaying" and other similarly violent verbs used to describe what happens when bands play metal, and wasn't being used as a genre tag until after the same phrase had already been applied to a movement that sprang out of hardcore. Regardless of who first thought to coin 'thrash metal,' the term was mediated to the scene and popularized by the people in the business of selling rather than making music - journalists and label marketing departments.

In a sense, this is always the case. Looking for the person or group who 'originated' the use a given term in a given context is always something of a snipe hunt (see all the ink spilled over the origin of 'heavy metal'...or 'rock 'n roll,' for that matter), what is more important is how terms are mediated and popularized to wider audience, and the answer there is almost always (particularly if you're looking for something in the pre-internet era) media and advertising (as these are the only vectors with global rather than local reach).

To some degree, it doesn't really matter - you know what I mean when I say 'speed metal,' and I certainly know what you're referring to when you say 'thrash metal.' My bigger beef is that when we use the term 'thrash metal' to mean 'speed metal' and 'crossover' or 'thrashcore' (the more popular terms in the metal scene), we're implying something that simply isn't true, namely that DRI et. al are in some way derivative of and secondary to 'thrash metal,' when, in fact, they represent a wholly seperate movement that arose simultaneously and independently.

2. Slayer backing off the tempos is part and parcel of moving toward a more 'conventional' sound. Slayer's previous two albums - and especially Reign in Blood - had been wholly groundbreaking in technique, riff construction, structure and the degree to which the band pushed the tempos. Everything about South of Heaven, from it's more controlled vocal attack, to its more traditional rhythmic and tonal patterns represents a reorientation toward a more conventional posture (this would become even more apparent with Seasons in the Abyss).

3. 'Ossification' isn't a fair term - what was going on prior to 1988 or so was that there was no real agreement on what certain terms delineated - in a sense, things like 'black metal' and 'death metal' meant everything and nothing. The period after 1988 saw, not 'ossification,' but rather delineation, as genre tags began to have meaning outside of circumstance. That is, you could say 'death metal' and everyone would know essentially what you were talking about, as opposed to the situation in 1985, where the literature might apply five or six different tags to a band like Mercyful Fate (death metal, black metal, speed metal, heavy metal, power metal and thrash metal). Obviously, such a state of flux makes the nomenclature pretty much useless. In that sense, what you call 'ossification' was an enormously productive and almost entirely positive exercise.

 

[DBB]

Speed and thrash were basically synonyms and became such very quickly.

November 1984 cover of Kerrang

This "Thrash Metal Round-Up" was also considered to be a feature on speed metal.

 

[My Man Mahmoud]

This is a really stupid argument.

I am willing to concede that at the very least it's fairly ambiguous where and how the term caught on. I continue to maintain that it makes sense to differentiate between "speed metal" and "thrash" as this is the best way of acknowledging these are seperate genres that originated independently.