Oldie But Goldie: Thrash lives!

Handle with Care (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been checking out some new bands recently who are doing a great job of keeping the traditional thrash sound alive. I’ll have a couple of them up in their own “New Band of the Day” posts over the next week or so.

In the meantime, it made me go back and raid the CD cabinet for some of the classics who kicked the sound off in the first place. Rather than focus on those that are still doing pretty well for themselves, I found myself hankering for some of the also-rans. The bands that were damn good, but never quite reached the heights of the Slayers and Metallicas.

Nuclear Assault, for instance. What a band. I finally caught them live a few years ago at Graspop and they were worth the wait. Brilliant live set, classic choice of tracks. They’ve got a great collection of older stuff and one fairly recent album (Third World Genocide, released in 2005).

As well as being fairly political and environmental in their lyrics, they were also one of the few groups to really go all out and express what they thought of Vince Neil and the fact that he – quite literally – got away with murder in the form of financial recompense and some public service work (the song “Butt Fuck” is dedicated to him).

Here’s a sample of one of their longer tracks. If you’ve never given Nuclear Assault a try, then dig through the YouTube archives and see if you can’t still get hold of some of their stuff on CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7wntm7QVXQ