This. Hehe.

Can't argue this at all, but I will add that most of the heralded re-thrash bands (and the current trend du jour of blackened thrash and deathrash retreads) can be summed up as "we sure do like Sodom."

I don't really think this is true at all. Most of the bands from the 00s thrash revival were way more influenced by Bay Area Thrash or some of the more extreme thrash bands (i.e. Evile's pretty obvious debt to Metallica, Warbringer being influenced by Demolition Hammer etc.). The prog/tech thrash stuff mostly takes cues from Voivod and Coroner, and the blackened thrash stuff is equally informed by more contemporary bands like Destroyer 666, Absu and Witchery as they are the old Teutonic classics. Even with deathrash there's a ton of influence from bands like Sadus (especially in Chilean bands like Ripper and Mental Devastation), Demolition Hammer, Devastation, Possessed, early Sepultura and Morbid Saint. I'd say the only bands that really go heavy on the Sodom influence are Toxic Holocaust and some Norwegian thrash bands like Deathhammer.

while on one hand, this is right, and probably the big downfall of pizza-thrash, that's not really what i mean. i've said for a while that this style of thrash was really fun in the late 2000s when it was big, there was the collective realization in the early 2010s that this was all these bands had, and it quickly fell apart. it was a scene of bands worshipping a specific era of thrash metal without acknowledging the eras that came before or after. basically, a whole wave of bands stuck in 1987 without allowing themselves to progress to the sounds bands developed in the late 80s and early 90s: that is to say, a maturing of sound, songwriting, and melody.

but all of that isn't strictly necessary. as we've said in this thread, Municipal Waste has made a career of that sound and a refusal to get brainier in their material. but their songwriting is strong enough to make it work. i'm fine with bands sticking to a specific, limited, generic sound if they can do it well. but most of those bands weren't even able to make that happen. it was all riffing and 80s vibes with no songwriting to prop it up. again, this was fine when the novelty of thrash returning was fresh, but as these bands became established they needed to at least meet a bare minimum. i know this is like the third time i've bigged up Gama Bomb in this thread, but they provide such a good example:



this song is total pizza-thrash. it's dumb and silly, but it's WELL WRITTEN! it has an actual chorus that is melodic and catchy. i'm literally talking about the bare minimum of composition here. there's something specific about pizza-thrash that made the percentage of "boring, totally non-captivating riffing with nothing to prop it up" much higher than the more serious thrash bands. the metal scene is so varied and fragmented that these days you can really get away with writing whatever you want without worrying about the broader scene. you don't NEED to be serious thrash with a heavy focus on fresh songwriting and mixing in new ideas because there's totally a niche for mid-80s brain-dead riffing. i just want that brain-dead riffing to also be paired with hooks, choruses, and the basics of songwriting. if the Frontiers "generic, by the books power metal" shit can exist, so can "mid 80s ST and Anthrax worship".

Gama Bomb is a cut above because they're much better songwriters and riffwriters than most of their peers, they actually are funny from time to time, and they can also be totally serious and make it convincing (they have some surprisingly effective anti-fascist tracks, for example). Phil Byrne is honestly a big part of it, his range is nothing special but he's unique, charismatic, and has a knack for memorable phrasing.

Outside of Municipal Waste, there isn’t a single “pizza thrash” band that’s stuck with me. But the thing is, with MW, their songwriting and overall sound is good enough to make them enjoyable even without the humor (which works, I think). There’s plenty of new bands in thrash worth listening to, but none under the “pizza” banner outside of the aforementioned group.

Yep. I don't get as bent out of shape about it as I used to, but people lumping us in with the pizza bands used to bug me a lot more- there's a huuuuge underground cache of food-based silly thrash bands that don't give a crap about anything including riffs, and that's where I draw the line. Lyrical content can be silly, whatever, it doesn't matter. The riffs need to want me dead or it's not worthwhile. Just my take though.

I was a big fan of the first few Municipal Waste records, and I fucking love Iron Reagan. I think the genre backlash is something you can see in every genre, especially metal which often relies a lot on worshipping the classic sounds. The whole New Wave of Trad Metal stuff can have some amazing gems but also a lot of derivation. I think it just comes down to the listener. If you're super keen on that style then you'll be forgiving of stuff that's not as original.

as opposed to all the slayers and metallicas that people only enjoy sober?

I pretty much stop at the Waste. Gama Bomb are fun and fucking fast, and I dug the first Violator album when it came out, but yeah, the whole scene quickly lost interest for me.

I believe the correct term is “Radioactive Pizza Thrash”.

It's really a terrible 80s meme worship subgenre. There are lots of dumb lyrical bents about how cool the 80s were and aping riffs from good bands as kind of a wink and nudge to people who will listen to anything as long as it's "thrash." Outside of a rare example, most of these bands have no personality to their songwriting, generic and painfully boring vocal approaches, and just a general feeling of cheap imitation designer clothes.

Yeah, I'm not a fan.

I've never really understood the hate for newer thrash bands. So what if the bands sound just like the 80's bands? Metal bands have been copying each other since time immemorial. So many modern death metal bands all sound like one another and they all ape Incantation and the Finnish scene and nobody has a problem with any of that, but if a band has riffs inspired by Exodus? Holy shit! What unoriginal garbage! Give me a break guys. If you don't like thrash just say so but "it's derivative" is a pretty dumb thing to say about a metal band in general. To some extent all metal bands are derivative in some way.

Coincidentally both of the other two you mention are among those few "pizza" thrash bands I've seen live, but none of them did much for me. However, Violator spent so much time complaining about how Bolsonaro makes their lives hard that they might be too politically engaged to qualify for this thread.



To be honest, I am not sure which one I'd choose between generic and painfully boring, and painfully unique yet barely listenable vocal approaches (the latter being quite common among the golden era bands).

There are also all of their politically fueled lyrics. I'm not sure why anybody would refer to them as "pizza thrash" to begin with.

Yeah, it's certainly ubiquitous in the metal scene, I even complained about it in the unpopular opinions thread at one point. Alcoholica and all. Yet, these bands really take it up a level, like featuring a fucking kegger.





Yep, there's relatively little that's actually new in metal, most of the main ideas had already been experimented with by the 90s. Mostly it's just about whether you like each style and band's particular mixture of the ingredients. It's actually kind of a derivative take to just pan something as "derivative", a rather lazy way of argumentation.

Oh I've seen Gama Bomb twice and they weren't very good (mainly due to the vocalist) but 'Citizen brain' is a cool album. If Violator got political that's fine with me and a good reason to check them out again.

I loathe pizza thrash. These bands took thrash and stripped away everything that made it great. However, I think it's important to note that the blame can't solely be put on Municipal Waste and their elk, as even when you go back to the tail end of thrash's hayday in the late 80s/early 90s, there's a bunch of crap 3rd rate bands like Evildead or Gothic Slam that if they didn't existed back when true thrash was happening, you'd mistake for a generic mid-2000s band.

100% agreed there. You can't just label all thrash bands formed after the year 2000 as "pizza thrash". Violator has barely anything in common with the bands that the people in this thread are complaining about.

The takes honestly just keep getting worse

Evildead is an outstanding band - easily one of the best thrash bands ever. The songwriting on Annihilation of Civilization is some of the most unique in thrash metal.

I really like Iron Reagan, but I do not consider them a pizza thrash band.

I mostly just assumed based on the Municipal Waste connection.

FWIW, I'd always heard, and used, the term "party thrash" for stuff like Municipal Waste. It's still a better way to describe that kind of thrash, which is overtly high energy and leans more into the "we're all fucked anyway so let's have fun" slant of nihilism. It really wasn't until the early 2010s, when party thrash was overstating its welcome for a bit too long (seriously, guys, most of us have work in the morning) that I heard "pizza thrash" being used.

For anyone interested in some REAL pizza thrash: https://pizzadeathband666.bandcamp.com/ ... e-of-death

The problem with a lot of this kind of stuff is this:

Those of us who were there, see these bands as but a pale imitation of what came out in the mid/late 1980s. Or, at best, a decent, entertaining parody of that style.

And those who weren't around in the mid/late 1980s, hear these bands and think, "Yeah, this sounds okay, but the black metal bands are faster and the death metal bands are heavier, and more technical, so what's the point here?"

The original bands who influenced "Party Pizza Thrash" as it's called, played at a time when pop culture was defined by the likes of Whitney Houston, Rick Astley, and bubblegum keyboard pop (e.g. Mr. Mister, A-Ha) and "Metal" was Bon-Jovi and Motley Crue. Along came Exodus and Slayer and it was like a swift kick in the face to all that plastic pastel-shaded 80's pop culture. These new bands don't exist in that world, so of course they aren't going to make the same impression.

You need great, kick ass riffs, heavy production, great songwriting, and energy, same with any style of music really, and simply trying too hard to pay tribute to a certain sound from a certain bygone era is only going to get you so far.

Well they played on a split called 'Fast food thash metal' and their first album was all 'United for thrash', 'Addicted to mosh', 'Ordered to thrash'. . . Don't see much difference with Gama Bomb there... Not saying it's bad mind you, I dig both bands.
Re. Oxenkiller, I think you nailed it. I was very surprised to see people on here saying "thrash sucks", but as you say, it's a generational thing. I don't really like Possessed or 'Pleasure to kill', but older friends of mine swear by them, along with Venom. I can imagine the impact they all had when they came out, we are definitely spoiled for choice and ease of access nowadays...

That's fucking brilliant! 'Rise of the anchovy' and 'Excruciating painapple', new fan right here

I remember in another thread I accused GWAR of being a band that's too obsessed with image and other superficial things. Now this thread is giving me a better idea on who to recognize as such.

Wait, you mean the band that dresses up like aliens and uses b-movie props on stage is focused on their image?!?!?!

It's hardly unique to this scene though. Plenty of image-obsessed black metal bands, and scattered other bands in various subgenres.

Yeah I suppose some of the subject matter is similar, but even the old guard have songs about how great metal and thrash in particular is. Metallica with the song "Whiplash", for example. I think thrash has always been cheesy but for some reason people think it's just the new bands who are? And like you I like most thrash that I hear and don't really understand the hate for it nowadays.

I've been spinning this for the past two days. Insanely fun and catchy. So good I think it would have made my list.

This band sucks, but they be spitting fax doe.

I actually quite like this!

And that album cover is one of the greatest ones I've ever seen. xD

1. Metallica wrote good songs, these bands don't.
2. Metallica also had other tones and moods besides "YEAH THRASH IS GREAT", these bands don't.


imagine if Kill Em All was only songs like Whiplash, and also Whiplash was much worse as a song. no The Four Horsemen, no Seek and Destroy, no Phantom Lord, just Whiplash. now imagine that rather that following that up with Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, they release Whiplash: the Album again 4 more times. that should put you in the right headspace.

Which band is only writing songs about pizza? Gama Bomb has songs about global warming, history, cops, etc. Lich King - while not being overly serious in any song, still has tons of diversity in what they sing about: sci-fi movies, how fans treat them, kids being annoying, how pointless work is, etc.

Violator, the original band in question, has gone super political with their second album, but even their debut has the same level of lyrical mastery that bands like Exodus had with their first album.

The quality of the music is obviously a separate issue, but there's no doubt in my mind that people pick a side before they even hear the music.

Neo party pizza thrash bands???

*Liz Lemon Masterpiece eyeroll*

Of course, "not taking yourself too seriously" isn't an excuse to write shit music. So yeah, if the music is bad it's bad. But I'm not about to dismiss bands from the get go just because the guitarist wears a TMNT t-shirt or because some of the lyrics are about partying.

I didn't previously make the connection that Lich_King on the forums here was part of the band Lich_King. I'll go revisit some of your material for sure

You should check out their cover of Agents of Steel, it's fucking brilliant.

It annoys me way more than it should that this is actually pretty fucking good