Dissimulator - Lower Form Resistance and the limits of thrash revivalism

by Snyde on Mon, Feb 5, 2024

"The conscious present is an awareness of the past (...) which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show." - T.S. Eliot

“Thrash metal” as a scene died in 1991, its coup de grâce coming in the form of a little black square from the San Francisco Bay Area. In less than a decade, the genre’s customs, tropes and taboos were codified, calcified and cast aside. As a natural off-shoot, technical thrash metal met its demise soon after the main branch had withered. Of course, a scant few bands held fast to their stylistic roots in the ensuing years but, in general terms, any thrash metal album released after 1993 (but especially after 2000, when the dust had settled on mainstream music’s identity crisis) can be called ‘revivalist’.