10 Essential Thrash Metal Bands You Need To Listen To
6. Viking
Blink and you'll miss it, Viking lit the thrash world up in the late '80s but had disbanded by 1990. While they did reunite in 2011, it's safe to say most will remember them best for 1989's hyperactive 'Man of Straw'.
There's a fondness for double kick drums throughout Viking's brief and volatile '80s heyday. Mix it in with the frenetic guitars and frontman Ron Eriksen's commendable multi-tasking as producer and you have the kind of helter skelter, brutally angry recipe for thrash catastrophe.
With charmingly awful titles like 'Abortuary' and 'Hell is for Children' on the playing list, one can leave any sense of good taste at the door when listening to this lot. Instead, they're an ambitiously quick and technically dangerous group who were, at the time, experimenting with a more progressive sound similar to legends such as Dark Angel.
The cult favourites have an intriguing reunion album to enjoy in 2015's 'No Child Left Behind'. Released a whopping 26 years after 'Man of Straw', the LP almost serves as a kind of time capsule to what the band could've become. While the considerably longer in the tooth crew don't quite pack the same punch here, there's still a certain tenacity and straightforward aggression that ticks the right boxes.