All Out War (band)

Lore & Background

All Out War played their first show together in 1991 at a Hudson Valley skate park in Newburgh, New York, where a riot broke out and police intervened. The initial lineup included Darryl Quirk, Sam Carbone, Tom Connelly (three members from the earlier Newburgh hardcore band A.W.O.L.) and Mike Score. The band is sometimes credited with having formed in 1993, but their first full-length album, Truth in the Age of Lies, was released in 1997 on the German label Gain Ground. Later that year they signed with Victory Records and released For Those Who Were Crucified in 1998. Turmoil within the band continued after that album, with multiple members entering and leaving. The band returned to the studio in 2003 to record Condemned to Suffer, also on Victory Records. In 2004, All Out War announced they had officially broken up due to the inability of vocalist Mike Score to continue. They reunited in 2006 and released Assassins in the House of God in 2007. By early 2008 they had left Victory Records, but returned by early 2010 and released Into the Killing Fields in August 2010. In late June 2015, All Out War released a new EP, Dying Gods, on Organized Crime Records, and in early February 2023 they released a more black metal-influenced album, Celestial Rot, on Translation Loss Records. Their seventh studio album, Give Us Extinction, was released in 2018.

Reader's Guide

All Out War's significance lies in their longevity within the metalcore and hardcore scenes, despite frequent lineup changes and a breakup. Their debut album Truth in the Age of Lies and subsequent Victory Records releases helped establish them in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The band's ability to reunite and continue releasing albums—including the 2023 black metal-influenced Celestial Rot—demonstrates their adaptability. Their legacy includes a discography of eight studio albums and several EPs, and they are often cited as a persistent force in underground heavy music. The band's early riot at their first show and their multiple label shifts reflect a turbulent but enduring career.

Did You Know?

• Their first show in 1991 at a Hudson Valley skate park ended in a riot that required police intervention.
• Three of the original members—Darryl Quirk, Sam Carbone, and Tom Connelly—came from an earlier Newburgh hardcore band called A.W.O.L.

Roots in Rebellion and Speed

The thrash metal genre that defines the sonic territory of All Out War did not emerge from a vacuum. Its roots stretch back to the 1970s, when early heavy metal, hard rock, and punk rock acts began experimenting with faster tempos and more aggressive delivery. The genre crystallized between the early and mid-1980s as musicians deliberately fused the double-bass drumming and intricate guitar work of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with the raw velocity of skate punk, hardcore, and speed metal, while also borrowing technical depth from progressive rock. Philosophically, the movement was born as a pointed rejection of two forces: the political conservatism of the Reagan years and the increasingly pop-friendly, commercially safe direction that glam metal was taking. The result was a sound that prioritized speed, aggression, and technical complexity over accessibility, creating a musical language that felt both rebellious and demanding.

The Sonic Architecture

The musical DNA of thrash metal is built on a foundation of speed and precision. Rhythm guitars are driven through heavy distortion, relying on power chords and palm-muting to produce a tight, percussive attack in the low register. Lead work, by contrast, soars into high registers with technically demanding solos that employ sweep picking, legato phrasing, alternate picking, tremolo picking, string skipping, and two-hand tapping. Drummers anchor the chaos with relentless double-bass patterns, while cymbal chokes and stops serve as punctuation marks between riffs or as cues for a sudden tempo acceleration. Bass players face the challenge of keeping pace, with many opting for a plectrum, though a notable lineage of players from Cliff Burton to Frank Bello and Robert Trujillo have favored fingerstyle, and some have embraced a distorted tone. Lyrically, the genre gravitates toward warfare, corruption, injustice, alienation, addiction, and political pessimism, with humor appearing only as a rare exception rather than a rule.

The Underground Ecosystem

Before thrash metal could claim mainstream visibility, it thrived in a grassroots network of independent labels and tape-trading communities across North America and Europe. Imprints such as Megaforce, Metal Blade, Combat, Roadrunner, and Noise became the genre's lifelines, while the underground cassette culture allowed recordings to spread organically from city to city. This DIY infrastructure gave rise to a global community of bands. In the United States, the so-called Big Four — Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax — achieved the highest commercial profile between roughly 1985 and 1991, yet acts like Overkill, Metal Church, Nuclear Assault, Flotsam and Jetsam, and Bay Area groups Exodus, Testament, and Death Angel cultivated equally passionate followings, often through MTV's Headbangers Ball. Internationally, the genre found powerful voices in Brazil's Sepultura, Canada's Voivod and Annihilator, Switzerland's Coroner, England's Onslaught, and Germany's own quartet of Kreator, Destruction, Sodom, and Tankard.

Ebb, Flow, and Resurgence

By the mid-1990s, thrash metal's commercial momentum had been overtaken by the rise of grunge and alternative rock. Many bands responded by disbanding or pivoting toward punk, progressive, groove, alternative, industrial, or nu-metal influences, diluting the genre's original identity. Yet the sound never fully disappeared. Starting in the late 1990s and accelerating into the early 2000s, a new wave of acts — including Bonded by Blood, Evile, Hatchet, Havok, Lamb of God, Municipal Waste, and Warbringer — rekindled the genre's aggressive spirit and are widely credited with sparking what is now called the thrash metal revival. This resurgence demonstrated that the combination of punk-derived attitude and traditional metal complexity, a duality that Megadeth's original bassist David Ellefson captured succinctly, still resonated with a new generation of listeners hungry for speed, aggression, and uncompromising musical ambition.