10 Greatest Thrash Metal Albums Of All Time
8. Megadeth: Peace Sells... But Who’s Buying? (1986)
When Dave Mustaine was asked why Metallica kicked him out, he explained it was due to his being “a bad-ass on guitar who liked to fight and drink”. In response to his firing, he founded and fronted Megadeth in the hopes of gaining some success and some revenge.
Megadeth’s sophomore effort captures Mustaine, and the band as a whole, at their crankiest. Opening track Wake Up Dead is so on edge and high-intensity that it sounds legitimately angry about it. It all gets heavier from there with each track spiralling into further venomous delirium. Recorded in a bloody haze of drink, drugs and brawls, Peace Sells... turned 4 of the meanest mugs in the thrash scene into superstars over night.
Struggling financially and with all members in the throes of heroin addiction, Peace Sells... saw the thrashers with their backs up against the wall. Mustaine might have started Megadeth as a middle finger to Metallica but, by this point, it was his and the rest of the band’s lifeline. Often living out of their recording studio between bouts of homelessness, the searing quality of Peace Sells... solidified them as thrash’s finest.