Music: Gimme Five: Great thrash albums not by Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer or Anthrax

As I’ve been blasting the new song from Testament for the last few days, I’ve been thinking about a few of the other thrash acts that never quite grabbed the glory of those guys that you know.

Pretty much everyone, metal fan or not, is familiar with the “Big Four” of 1980s thrash Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax. They’ve all had a bit of a resurgence of late thanks in part to the few Big Four shows they’ve done at festivals around the world, and in the case of Metallica, they’ve gone from scaring parents to being classic rock staples.
But thrash was a wide genre, and there are great, pioneering bands like Overkill and Exodus that rarely get recognition in the wider music world.
You’ll note that I’m leaving Pantera out of this, too, though I consider Cowboys from Hell a thrash classic, because they were huge in their own right with the groove metal thing. And, sorry to my German brethren because their big thrash bands like Kreator and Sodom missed the cut, but my tastes have always run toward the American form. And, finally, for any fellow metalheads reading this and saying these are all familiar albums and I should have gone more obscure, the list isn’t for you. Sorry.
So, without further ado, here are five great thrash albums not by those guys …

No. 5–
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM – DRIFT (1995)