Black Fast (band)

Lore & Background

Guitarists Aaron Akin and Trevor Johanson first met at a gas station in Edwardsville, Illinois. Shortly after, Akin's friend Ross Burnett and Johanson's college classmate Ryan Thompson started playing together, and the band was formed in 2010. Both Johanson and Thompson graduated with music degrees in jazz guitar from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. In April 2011, they released their extended play Black Fast EP 2011. Two years later, their first full-length album, Starving Out The Light, was independently released on August 16, 2013. The band signed with eOne Music in November 2014 and released Terms of Surrender on August 7, 2015, produced by Erik Rutan. Their final studio album, Spectre of Ruin, was released on July 13, 2018, also produced by Erik Rutan. Despite some online claims, Spectre of Ruin did not appear on Metal Injection's Top 10 Albums of 2018 list.

Reader's Guide

Black Fast gained recognition in the thrash metal scene for their technical and complex song structures, blending thrash with black metal influences. Their album Terms of Surrender was ranked number 10 on Metalsucks.org's list of The 20 Best Thrash Albums Since the Turn of the Millennium, and Spectre of Ruin was named number 3 on Metal Injection's Top 10 Albums of 2018. Kerrang! Magazine ranked Black Fast #24 in their feature The 50 Best American Metal Bands From the Last Decade (2010s). Despite positive critical reception, the band unofficially dissolved after 2018 when their booking agent quit without notice, and subsequent touring difficulties, combined with drummer Ross Burnett expecting a child and the absence of bassist Ryan Thompson on tour, led to a loss of momentum. Their legacy rests on three studio albums that showcased a relentless, riff-driven style.

Did You Know?

• The band's original members met through a chance encounter at a gas station in Edwardsville, Illinois.
• Both bassist Ryan Thompson and lead guitarist Trevor Johanson earned music degrees in jazz guitar from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.
• Terms of Surrender was produced by Erik Rutan, who also produced Spectre of Ruin.
• The band's final album, Spectre of Ruin, was ranked number 3 on Metal Injection's Top 10 Albums of 2018.

Origins and Philosophical Roots

Thrash metal did not appear fully formed. Its roots stretch back to the 1970s, when early heavy metal, hard rock, and punk rock acts began producing material that carried the seeds of what would later crystallize into thrash and speed metal. The genre truly coalesced between the early and mid-1980s, as musicians deliberately blended the double-bass drumming and intricate guitar work of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with the raw speed and aggression drawn from skate punk, hardcore punk, and speed metal, while also borrowing the technical ambition of progressive rock. Philosophically, the movement served as a direct rebuttal to two forces: the political conservatism of the Reagan administration and the increasingly pop-oriented, commercially safe sound of glam metal, which was gaining mainstream traction at the same time. Bassist Dan Lilker recalled that the scene initially described itself simply as 'faster hardcore,' a nod to the thrash hardcore that preceded it. Megadeth's original bassist David Ellefson later captured the essence more precisely, calling it the attitude of punk rock married to the riffs and complexities of traditional metal.

Musical Architecture and Technical Demands

At its core, thrash metal demands speed and precision simultaneously. Rhythm guitars are driven through heavy distortion, relying on power chords and frequent palm muting to produce a tight, percussive attack, while lead guitars soar into high-register, technically demanding solos built on shredding techniques such as sweep picking, legato phrasing, alternate picking, tremolo picking, string skipping, and two-hand tapping. Drummers anchor the sound with relentless double-bass patterns, often punctuated by cymbal stops or chokes to mark transitions between riffs or signal a sudden tempo shift. Riff construction tends to favor chromatic scales and the tritone or diminished intervals rather than straightforward single-scale progressions. Vocally, the genre spans a wide range, from melodic singing to shouted or screamed delivery. Bassists must keep pace with the other instruments, many opting for a plectrum, though others like Frank Bello, Greg Christian, Steve Di Giorgio, Robert Trujillo, and Cliff Burton preferred their fingers, and several adopted a distorted bass tone popularized by Burton and Lemmy. Lyrically, the genre gravitates toward warfare, corruption, injustice, murder, suicide, isolation, addiction, and political pessimism, with humor and irony appearing only as rare exceptions.

The Big Four and the Global Underground

Thrash metal's commercial zenith spanned roughly 1985 to 1991, a period in which the genre broke through from its underground origins into mainstream visibility. The early movement had been sustained by independent labels such as Megaforce, Metal Blade, Combat, Roadrunner, and Noise, alongside a vibrant tape-trading culture that connected fans across Europe and North America. By the mid-1980s, four American acts—Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax—had become synonymous with the genre, collectively known as the 'Big Four.' They were joined in the broader landscape by Overkill, Metal Church, Nuclear Assault, Flotsam and Jetsam, and Bay Area groups like Exodus, Testament, and Death Angel, all of whom cultivated devoted followings, often through MTV's Headbangers Ball. The genre's reach extended well beyond the United States: Brazil's Sepultura, Canada's Voivod and Annihilator, Switzerland's Coroner, and England's Onslaught all carved out significant international audiences. Germany produced its own quartet of thrash titans—Kreator, Destruction, Sodom, and Tankard—ensuring the sound resonated across the entire Western metal community.

Decline, Reinvention, and the Thrash Revival

By the mid-1990s, thrash metal's commercial momentum had stalled. The explosive rise of alternative rock and grunge captured the mainstream ear, and many thrash acts either dissolved or pivoted toward adjacent styles—crossover thrash, progressive metal, groove metal, alternative metal, and eventually industrial or nu metal. For a time, the genre seemed to recede into the background of heavy music. Yet the decline proved temporary. Beginning in the late 1990s and accelerating into the early 2000s, a new wave of bands rekindled the genre's aggressive spirit. Acts such as Bonded by Blood, Evile, Hatchet, Havok, Lamb of God, Municipal Waste, and Warbringer are widely credited with spearheading what is now called the thrash metal revival. Their collective output demonstrated that the fusion of punk attitude, hardcore intensity, and traditional metal complexity that defined the original movement still possessed a powerful, uncompromising voice, drawing in a new generation of listeners who found in thrash a direct, unapologetic alternative to the polished sounds dominating the charts.