Technical thrash
Shouted. Barked or chanted, and you can still make out the words.
In short
Thrash with dissonant chords, odd meters and bass up front. The bridge between thrash and progressive metal.
How it sounds
- Dissonant chords and unusual intervals, with the bass in a contrapuntal role.
- Odd meters and structures that never repeat.
- Riffs assembled like puzzles, demanding high individual technique.
Hear what that means
- Chords with no name
Piggy built voicings out of intervals metal had no use for - tritones and unresolved shapes - which is why a 1989 record still sounds alien. A Pink Floyd cover, made strange.
Open on YouTube - Bass as fusion from 4:07
Watchtower - Control and Resistance
Metre changes inside every phrase, with a bass player thinking like a jazz musician. This sold badly in 1989 and is cited by half the technical metal on this tree.
Open on YouTube at 4:07 - Precision instead of speed
Thrash's tempo with classical phrasing and a rhythm section playing counterpoint. The pulse stays locatable through every change, which is harder than playing fast.
Open on YouTube
Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. 2 of 3 are cued to a second read from the upload's own tracklist.
The specifics
- Tempo
- 160-240 bpm
- Song length
- 4-8 min
- Tuning
- E standard, with harmony borrowed from outside metal — tritones, diminished shapes and chords with no name, voiced so they refuse to resolve.
- Production
- Clear and separated, because the arrangements demand it. These are the first thrash records mixed so a listener can follow four independent parts at once.
- Written about
- Dystopia and technology, Paranoia, Language and perception, Science fiction
What each part is doing
- Guitar Riffs that change metre and key inside a phrase, using dissonant voicings rather than power chords. Voivod's guitarist built chords out of intervals metal had no use for, which is why the records still sound alien.
- Bass An independent voice, frequently virtuosic and mixed forward. Watchtower's bass playing is closer to fusion than to thrash.
- Drums Constant metre changes played so the pulse stays locatable, which is a harder problem than playing fast.
- Vocals Shouted or sung in an unusually high register, and phrased against the riff rather than with it — the vocal is another independent line.
What it isn't
That the complexity is decoration on thrash. It is structural, and it cost these bands their audience at the time: records that do not repeat, do not resolve and cannot be shouted along to sold badly in 1989 and are now cited by half the technical metal on this tree. Voivod in particular were writing harmony nobody in metal had used, and the influence took twenty years to surface.
Told apart from
- Thrash metal Technical thrash keeps the tempo and the picking and abandons verse-chorus structure, tonality and repetition. If you cannot find the riff again, it has crossed over.
- Progressive metal Progressive metal shares the ambition with cleaner production, clean singing and longer forms. This stays fast, shouted and abrasive.
- Technical death metal Technical death metal is the direct descendant, and several of these musicians made both — Atheist appear on this list and on that one.
- Avant-garde metal Avant-garde metal treats the genre as material to dismantle. Technical thrash is still recognisably thrash, however strange the chords.
The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.
History
Voivod, from Québec, pushed thrash toward dissonance and science fiction, with a guitarist who had never learned standard chord shapes. Watchtower brought jazz fusion technique and Coroner brought Swiss virtuosity. This branch runs straight into modern progressive metal and part of technical death metal.
Descended from
Siblings on this branch
Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree
- Crossover thrash 1.0 apart by rating · no shared ancestor
- First wave 1.0 apart by rating · meets it at Heavy metal
Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.