Staff Infections – January 2025

Happy new year, friends. Oh, who are we kidding? It’s a shitty year already. Fuck everything. Here’s hoping you and yours aren’t burning, freezing or still trying to put the pieces together from one of 2024’s disasters. Let’s see what music has been soothing the anxiety of your Last Rites pals as the world burns and the power of the common people evaporates.

We are frighteningly low on playlist commonality this time, with only two albums appearing more than once, resulting in a tie for album of the month. Our first co-champion is Swedish traditional / power metal band Heavy Load with its 1982 album Death or Glory. Sadly the group’s appearance here is likely due to the recent death of the band’s co-founder, guitarist and vocalist, Ragne Wahlquist. I must admit a complete unfamiliarity with Heavy Load’s work, but as the group is considered to be Sweden’s first heavy metal band, I’ve certainly enjoyed the fruits the rich heavy metal legacy Heavy Load seeded in Sweden. Finally, our second winner this month is Bay-area thrash outfit Heathen, with it’s late-era thrash classic Victims of Deception. If that isn’t a timeless title, I don’t know what is.

Alright, it’s group discussion time. In honor of Heathen’s victory this month, share with us in the comments your favorite thrash album by an American act, not including the big four or Exodus and Testament. Myself, I’ll go with Overkill’s The Years of Decay. This album was Bobby Gustafson’s last with the band, and he went out with a bang. The Years is full of typical catchy, anthemic Overkill thrash tunes, but the creeping doom of “Playing with Spiders / Skullkrusher” really seals the deal for me.

That’s all for this month, folks. Have a listen to the staff-curated Spotify playlist below, and share your own playlist in the comments. Until next month, stay safe, and stay hopeful; somebody has to.

  • Zach Duvall
    ZZ Top – Eliminator
    The Allman Brothers Band – At Fillmore East
    Katharsis – VVorldVVithoutEnd
    Forbidden – Forbidden Evil
    Opeth – The Last Will and Testament
    Deadguy – Fixation on a Co-Worker
  • Andrew Edumnds
    Coroner – No More Color
    Heathen – Victims Of Deception
    Robin Trower – Bridge Of Sighs
    Saxon – Strong Arm Of The Law
    Riistetyt – Skitsofrenia
    Queen – The Game
  • Captain
    Revenant – Prophecies of a Dying World
    Revenant – The Burning Ground
    Ripping Corpse – Dreaming with the Dead
    Epidemic – Decameron
    Num Skull – Ritually Abused
    Necrodeath – Into the Macabre
  • Danhammer Obstkrieg
    Christian Mistress – Possession
    Plastikman – Musik
    Tony Williams – Life Time
    Heavy Load – Death or Glory
    Uriah Heep – Demons & Wizards
    Jon Hopkins – Music for Psychedelic Therapy
  • Lin Manuel de Guerra
    Plastic Estate – Code D’amour
    Rush – Vapor Trails (Remixed)
    Phrenelith – Ashen Womb
    Donaly Byrd – Ethiopian Knights
    Heavy Load – Death or Glory
    War Dogs – Only the Stars are Left
  • Isaac Hams
    Gillian Welch – The Harrow & The Harvest
    Amon Amarth – Versus the World
    John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
    Roc Marciano & The Alchemist – The Elephant Man’s Bones
    Artificial Brain – Labyrinth Constellation
    Afterbirth – In But Not Of
  • Lone Watie
    Gorguts – Obscura
    Spite Extreme Wing – Vltra
    Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Ragged Glory
    Zeni Geva – Freedom Bondage
    Nubya Garcia – Odyssey
    McCoy Tyner – Nights of Ballads & Blues
  • Blizzard of Jozzsh
    Rainbow – Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow
    Rainbow – Rising
    Exodus – Fabulous Disaster
    Exodus – Pleasures of the Flesh
    The Cure – Songs of a Lost World
    Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine
  • Ryan Tysinger
    Gospel of the Horns – A Call to Arms
    Black Witchery – Desecration of the Holy Kingdom
    Moonblood – Winter Falls Over the Land
    Order from Chaos – Stillbirth Machine
    Impaled Nazarene – Ugra-Karma
    Sever – At Midnight, By Torchlight
  • Jeremy Morse
    Edge of Sanity – The Spectral Sorrows
    Edge of Sanity – Crimson
    Black Sabbath – Sabotage
    Judas Priest – Invincible Shield
    Heathen – Victims of Deception
    Thanatos – Four Decades of Death

Posted by Jeremy Morse

Riffs or GTFO.

  1. hmmmm….most fav USA thrash album? I would have to go with Morbid Saint “Spectrum of Death” or Vio-lence “Eternal Nightmare”. I also love that Heathen record and a lot of other American acts. Could discuss all day!

    Reply

  2. Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja
    Sidewinder – Talons
    Pyrrhon – Exhaust
    Merycful Fate – Don’t Break the Oath
    Less Than Jake – Hello Rockview
    Mother of Graves – The Periapt of Absence

    Favorite Thrash album not by the Big 4(+2)? Easy, Corrosion of Conformity – Blind. Still one of my all-time fave albums, maybe not the ‘purest’ thrash, but enough so that it qualifies in my eyes. Any number of Overkill releases probably slot in as second place, as well.

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  3. Mono Peninsula – Metro/Pol
    Sólstafir – Hin Helga kvöl
    Zola Jesus – Arkhon
    Diskord – Degenerations
    Mork – Syv
    Luzifer – Iron Shackles

    OMG Death Angel – Time Does Not Heal!!! <3

    Reply

    1. Oh yeah, Time Does Not Heal is a great one! Good choice 🙂

      Reply

      1. Woohoo!

        And it’s also “Dark” Angel, lol.

        That’s what happens when old people post in a hurry.

        Reply

  4. Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
    The Ocean – Fluxion
    Alaric – End of Mirrors
    Ben Folds Five – Whatever and Ever Amen
    Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Murder Ballads

    As for American Thrash, if we are talking pure thrash then (outside the big 6), Power Trip – Nightmare Logic is as good as any. Though personally I’m a big fan of Ministry’s Houses of the Mole even if it’s as much industrial metal as it is thrash.

    Reply

  5. I love The Years of Decay, and consider it not only one of the all-time great thrash records, but also one of the great metal records, period. Having said that, when asked about my favorite US thrash bands/albums that have largely flown under the radar, I can never resist shouting Holy Terror’s Mind Wars from the mountaintops. I love that band and album so much, I can’t succinctly put it all in to words. From the amazing lyrics, delivered in a one-of-a-kind, masterful vocal performance by the incomparable Keith Deen (RIP), to the unorthodox, ingenious riffs and song structures played by four musicians at the peak of their powers. The leads are molten and melodic, the rhythms legendarily tight. The fact that this band couldn’t hold it together to complete a follow-up to Mind Wars, and that main songwriter/guitarist/ metal god, Kurt Colfelt, has been playing bass(!!!) in punk bands up in the Pacific Northwest for the past 30+ years, is more than a little heartbreaking to me, but so it goes. At least we have Terror & Submission and Mind Wars, two of the greatest metal albums ever fucking made. They seriously never stop revealing new treasures, like all the best music.

    Reply

    1. Holy Terror is great. That’s a good choice. Both albums are classics. I think I prefer “Mind Wars” just because it has that Christian resistance song on it and it’s fun to scream the chorus (if you could call it that lol)! 🙂

      Reply

      1. Right on. I concur, obviously!

        Reply

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