There are certainly plenty of classic thrash albums that are massively popular – Master Of Puppets, Rust In Peace, and Reign In Blood immediately come to mind – but they're not among Max Cavalera's favorites. In an interview with Sobre La Dosis, Cavalera went a little deeper in his picks and came up with three less-talked-about thrash classics. As an added bonus, he also throws in a pretty gross Nuclear Assault story, because why not?
"I went a little bit old school," said Cavalera. "The first one is from Canada, Sacrifice's Forward To Termination. Amazing record. I played it so much when I was a teenager in Brazil. Also Nuclear Assault's Survive. Danny Lilker, the man. Yes! Danny on the bass. Nuclear Assault was amazing. They played with us in Brazil. It was great. The singer, John Connelly, had to borrow my guitar, and he played, and it was full of blood. And he gave it back to me. And the whole guitar was full of blood. But I loved the show. And it was cool to have his blood on my guitar.
"And the last one is Dark Angel with Darkness Descends. It's the perfect death/thrash record, but it's more on the thrash side of things. Very, very amazing drums from Gene Hoglan. And I love Dark Angel; I love the power and the brutality of the riffs." Cavalera later added "Those are three inspirational thrash records that helped shape all my stuff I did from that era."
You might know Dark Angel's Darkness Descends as the one whose title track Metallica borrowed a rhythm from for their 1988 single "One." Dark Angel drummer Gene Hoglan has publicly acknowledged this, saying in an interview "I got so many phone calls going, 'You know those guys are ripping you off'" and later acknowledging that "Everybody's stolen Metallica riffs" anyway.
