Formed from a hybrid of speed metal and hardcore punk, thrash was metal riffs in punk song structures and rhythms. Thrash songs were short, furious bursts of energy that took either political topics or a political look at everyday life, asking why it was so empty and threatening. Where speed metal put punk tempos into metal riffs, and borrowed structure from both prog and heavy metal, thrash structure was almost improvisational. It was also more literal, eschewing entirely the metaphorical (hobbits, wizards, occult) side of metal for the day-to-day life descriptions and metapolitical social critique of hardcore bands. At first, it was avoided by most metalheads and punks alike for not fitting enough to either genre, but eventually someone came up with the word "crossover" to describe it. While many metal writers tend to lump it in with speed metal, or some media creation like "thrash metal," it is a distinct genre, and foreshadowed both the metalcore of the 1990s and the abstract critique of modern mortality denial found in grindcore and death metal. However, its popularity among those who liked realistic and assertive music was such that, despite poor recording quality and songs too explosive for radio play, most thrash bands made it onto labels of a respectable size before being absorbed by either metal or hardcore in the late 1980s.
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