marshall-jcm800

Municipal waste founder Ryan Waste (left) and Nick Poulos brandish their RIP Custom and Ibanez rock machines.

Photo by Adam Malik

On their newest full-length rager, Electrified Brain, the thrash vets reference classic heavy riffs and tones while rocking their hearts out.

Municipal Waste guitarist Ryan Waste is passionate about old-school metal. “I’m as much a fan as a player,” he attests, “so I try to keep as true to the roots as possible.” His allegiance to metal’s early days is loud and clear on Electrified Brain—the band’s most recent record—a 14-track, 34-minute explosion of vintage, full-throttle thrash at its finest. Leaning heavily into the sonic template forged by albums like Metallica’s Ride the Lightningand Slayer’s Reign in Blood, Electrified Brain easily qualifies as a contemporary torchbearer for the genre and effectively associates Municipal Waste with the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal scene. By embracing the tried-and-true ’80s-era sonic stew of Marshall amps and standard-tuned guitars, and by avoiding modern production aesthetics that rely on click tracks and drop-tunings, the band has crafted an album that captures the incendiary spark of pure, unadulterated OG thrash.

Read MoreShow less
Rig Rundown: Amyl and the Sniffers' Declan Martens

Ever wonder what an Australian muscle car sounds like? Let party-punk guitarist Declan Martens provide the burning-rubber details.

Read MoreShow less

The new Corpse (left to right): guitarist Rob Barrett, bassist Alex Webster, vocalist George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, guitarist Erik Rutan, and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz.

Photo by Alex Morgan

For their 15th album, the death metal pioneers double-down on their trademark bone-crunch and add longtime producer Erik Rutan on guitar.

As extreme metal continues to splinter into infinite niche genres and thrash metal's heroes steadily mosh towards the pastures of classic rock, it's the right time to re-examine the legacy of the bands that initiated metal's big push towards the outer reaches of its sonic margins. Much of the guitar content on social media these days is comprised of young players shredding and djenting away on extended-scale guitars, and it's no exaggeration to say that none of that would exist without the influence of O.G. American death metal's bludgeoning chug and churn. And while they weren't the first on the scene, Cannibal Corpse is often considered the band that ultimately defined the subgenre's sound.

Read MoreShow less