Crossover Thrash Music: A Brief History of Crossover Thrash

Crossover thrash, or punk metal, is a hybrid of hardcore punk rock and extreme heavy metal that became popular among fans of both music styles in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s a subgenre of thrash metal and shares similar elements with other musical styles that blend punk and metal, such as thrashcore, grindcore, and crust punk. Thrash metal songs have short run times, lightning-fast tempos, and blistering guitar riffs. Thrash drummers play blast beats (single stroke rolls) on the snare drum, bass drum, and hi-hat or ride cymbal with thunderous speed and intensity to create a blast of percussion that anchors the sound.

The term “crossover” refers to the idea that bands from one genre have adopted a style of music that bleeds into one or more genres. Before folding punk elements into their music, many crossover thrash bands, such as Nuclear Assault, began as pure thrash metal acts. The reverse is also true of hardcore punk bands, like Suicidal Tendencies and D.R.I (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles), that took on technical proficiency and an aggressive tone similar to metal.

You can trace the history of crossover thrash back to the late 1970s when punk and metal bands in the United States and England blended elements of both styles in their music.

• Fans flock to the sounds of the new metal hybrid. A few bands served as early influences for crossover thrash, including the long-running UK metal act Motörhead and two hardcore bands from the US: Black Flag from Los Angeles, California, and the Bay Area’s Dead Kennedys. The ferocity of those acts drew a voracious following that sought out groups with similar intensity levels. They found them in a diverse array of punk and metal groups from across the US (skate punk groups like Venice, California’s Suicidal Tendencies, hardcore punk bands like Houston, Texas’s Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, and New York City’s Cro-Mags); thrash and speed metal bands from the West Coast (Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, and The Accused) and the East Coast (Anthrax, Agnostic Front, Prong); and even international groups like Brazil’s Ratos de Porão.
• Crossover thrash births a new variant called metalcore. Since many of these acts shared both an audience and bills at various concerts, their respective sounds would soon cross-pollinate into a new and distinct subgenre that folded the guitar attack and shouted hardcore punk vocals with longer songs, powerful riffs, and the percussion of metal known as “metalcore.” The metalcore label later came to define another punk-metal hybrid marked by breakdowns and death growl vocals. Crossover thrash eventually became an umbrella term for those that embraced the hybrid sound, which included established thrash metal and skate punk bands like the Exploited, Leeway, Beowülf, and the Boston-based Gang Green. It also fostered new groups forged by its tenets, including San Francisco’s Attitude Adjustment, New York’s Crumbsuckers, and Cryptic Slaughter from Los Angeles.
• Legacy acts help maintain the genre’s audience. Though newer metal subgenres superseded crossover thrash, the genre retains a fanbase through some of its longest-running acts, like Anthrax and self-proclaimed “beercore” rockers Wehrmacht (later Macht). A new breed of bands, including Virginia's Municipal Waste and Iron Reagan, Portland, Oregon’s Toxic Holocaust, and the Dallas, Texas-based Power Trip, continue the sound’s legacy. Crossover thrash has also influenced death metal bands and led to additional thrash/death hybrids like Mere Mortal and Opprobrium. (Originally known as Incubus, Opprobrium changed their name in the late ‘90s, just as the alternative rock band with the same moniker became popular with mainstream audiences.)

Several characteristics define the crossover thrash sound, including:

1. 1. Riffs: The heavy guitar riffing from thrash metal and hardcore punk is a natural element of crossover thrash. Speed is also a factor, but musicians attack it with an attention to technical proficiency that may be missing from some hardcore punk guitarists.
2. 2. Vocals: Vocalists shout or spit lyrics in a manner that links crossover thrash to its punk roots. The tumbling, frantic cadence of Suicidal Tendencies’s vocalist Mike Muir and Billy Milano’s tenure with Stormtroopers of Death (S.O.D.) and Method of Destruction (M.O.D.) best typify the crossover thrash vocal style.
3. 3. Songwriting and production: Record production for crossover metal focuses on capturing the intensity of the musicians over aesthetics, which echoes the DIY principle behind many hardcore punk albums. However, songs tend to run longer than punk tracks, given the slightly slower tempo favored by crossover metal.

There are many notable crossover thrash artists in the subgenre’s history. A representative sampling includes:

1. 1. Anthrax: One of the most successful acts to emerge from the crossover thrash scene, Anthrax grew from the New York thrash scene in 1981. Guitarist Scott Ian and bassist Dan Lilker, who later founded S.O.D., fronted the band. Despite numerous lineup changes and shifting tastes in metal, Anthrax remains one of the “Big Four” of US thrash metal, alongside such pioneers as Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer.
2. 2. Corrosion of Conformity: Raleigh, North Carolina’s Corrosion of Conformity was forged in a mix of classic proto-metal like Black Sabbath and early hardcore from crossover thrash forerunners Black Flag and Discharge. The group’s changing sound, which traveled from thrash to a thunderous blues-metal, helped define crossover thrash while retaining a solid fanbase. COC’s 2018 release, No Cross No Crown, broke into the Billboard Top 100 albums chart.
3. 3. Dirty Rotten Imbeciles: Texas thrash mainstays D.R.I. helped define the crossover thrash sound and gave it a name with the release of their third studio album, Crossover, in 1987. Their adoption of longer, slower songs into their skate punk ethos won them fans from both fanbases.

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