 |
| BLACK |
  |
BY WILLIAM RESTREPO | |
 |
||
 HISTORY OF TRASH METAL | ||
| ||
 Before
the peak of speed metal had even begun Alief, TX,
hardcore crossover band Dirty Rotten Imbeciles were
busy inventing the Sabbathified hyper-punk fusion that wouldproject their extreme views and emotions upon a fragile audience. Deliberately low-fi and abrasive, DRI's first two albums featured an unheard of brevity (18-25 second songs) and trenchant criticisms of modern society. This earned them fame in both metal and hardcore scenes as they injected needed energy into both genres. Also of note were micro-riffing shredthrashers Corrosion of Conformity, who blasted out several albums of curt songs destroying social control with metaphorically divisive structural deconstruction in a musical inheritance from hardcore and early death metal. Cryptic Slaughter and MDC  (an
acronym of varying significances) followed with even more acerbic
anthems of distrust and anarchy; Cryptic Slaughter are
especially interesting for their basic death metal on the latter
side of 1985's Convicted. Despite innovation in both
genres, speed metal was destined to collide with corporate
megaculture and thrash was to burn out its intensity as audiences
moved away from the extreme to the more commercial in both hardcore
and metal genres. The fomenting anger of the metal scene, as well as
the increasing destruction of the planet and world superpower
fascism, prompted retaliation with the negation of speed metal's
"heavy metal" vocabulary of consonance through the most
nihilistic form of musical expression to date: death metal. |
||
