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could growl a little bit, but they could sing. And it was a mix of heavy, brutal riffing, but also these beautiful guitar solos, and double-bass drums. And the lyrics, especially in the 80s, [were about] nuclear war and corruption. I think it really [brought together] everything from the musicianship to the lyrics to a lifestyle.”
    Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth were collectively known as thrash’s big four bands. They were there at the beginning, and they’re still here, in one form or another. All but Anthrax were from Southern California. (Metallica formed there, and later moved to San Francisco.)
    “It was a great time,” recalls Hirax frontman Katon W. De Pena. “All of us grew up around each other. You had us, Metallica, Slayer, Dark Angel, bands that were more about doing something different. Because we were not too far from Hollywood, and that was the hair bands. So all of us were pissed off because we were young, and all the bands wanted to do something more extreme than that hair rock.”
    The popular image of metal dudes was (and remains) a cartoony stereotype: suburban dunces playing air guitar toVan Halen, as immortalized in
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
,
Beavis and Butthead
, and
Wayne’s World
. But thrash dudes were
harsh
, like Keanu Reeves in
River’s Edge
: They were long-haired metalheads who rode around in beat-up cars, listening to songs like “Die by the Sword” and “Whiplash.” They wore leather jackets under dismembered Levi’s jean-jackets that were turned into vests, arms hacked off and covered in a patches, band pins, and painted pentagrams.
    Over the course of the 80s, popular groups like Bon Jovi and Poison would give metal a bad name. Mainstream radio was unlistenable, a stream of Genesis and Lionel Richie. College radio broke bands like R.E.M., the Cult, and the Cure—and also helped push true metal from clubs to arenas. Thrash was the alternative to the alternative.
    “When
Hell Awaits
came out, there were half a dozen of us that listened to [Celtic] Frost and Slayer,” recalls Obituary guitarist Trevor Perez. “We were the outcast kids. We were like, ‘Fuck off, you suck, go listen to the Smiths.’”
    Metal fans form a distinct social strata. In the 80s, only a mohawk relegated you to a lower social class faster than longer hair and denim. In
The Breakfast Club
, not for nothing does prom queen Molly Ringwald mock Judd Nelson’s “heavy metal vomit parties.” Even when the hair is gone, metalheads remain bonded by music. Some metalheads are tools, but the headbanger clique is largely devoid of the kind of hipster rivalry you find in indie-rock circles. When you look around the Hi-Fi Club and see another guy mouthing the words of Maiden’s “Two Minutes to Midnight,” you recognize him as a brother.
    “It’s like you see motorcycle guys pass each other on the highway,” says
Metal on Metal
host Bill Peters. “One guy will beon a Harley, and one guy will be on a Honda, but they still put up their fist to each other when they pass each other It’s the same thing with metal guys. It’s a bond, an eternal bond.”
    Whether they were too erudite or too soft, bands like the Cult, the Cure, and Oingo Boingo didn’t speak to most metal fans—be they suburban kids with a need for speed, or blue-collar weekend warriors.
    “The college crowd had their indie music they listened to, but I never associated [thrash] with any kind of class structure,” says Nuclear Assault/S.O.D. bassist Dan Lilker. “It’s not [a movement] in an English-skinheads sense where we were saying, ‘It’s our music, for us.’ I think it just turned out that way.”
    Most A-list thrash musicians graduated from high school, skipped college, and turned their band into a small business. They built their own risers and stuffed them into Ryder trucks every weekend. In 1986, thrash broke out of the underground. By then, the big four bands had major-label deals. All would