Overkill- The Years of Decay
This is the record that made me want to pick up a bass. The pummeling drums, flawless guitars, pissed-off vocal sputtering, and of course, the rubbery, hyper-picked bass work make this a near-flawless thrash metal platter. Start to finish, there are no weak tracks.
Kreator- Coma of Souls
Pure Germanic death metal perfection. The best mix of blatant melody, unbridled aggression, demonic snarling, and drums that can’t be beaten. A damn scary cover, too. If The Years of Decay made me wanna pick up a bass, Coma… made me want to scream rhythmically. There’s a lot of truly disturbing social commentary on top of everything else.
Dark Angel- Leave Scars
Absolutely the most fucking obnoxious, angriest, fastest thrash record ever recorded. A rolling juggernaut of brutality, and that’s just Gene Hoglan playing his three-hundred-mile-an-hour drums. Take some of the most dangerously chaotic guitar playing and the fastest intelligible vocal delivery short of Twista, and you’ve got what everyone fondly remembers as the L.A. Caffeine Machine’s finest fiftyish minutes.
Pestilence- Consuming Impulse
Utterly gut-wrenching Dutch death metal with quite possibly the sickest vocals by Martin van Drunen. The man sounds like he’s coughing up blood while the noose cinches tighter around his neck. Chugging guitars, waterfalls of double-kick drums, and well-placed horror movie keyboards make for one deranged, classic death metal exercise.
-K. R. Cook, 2007
Dead Renaissance 