The Prototype
Judas Priest’s Stained Class, released 10 February 1978, opens with a track called “Exciter.” Drummer Les Binks, newly hired, launches into double kick patterns within the first five seconds while K.K. Downing ad-libs a guitar solo over the top. The song sustains a tempo that traditional heavy metal had never attempted for an entire track. Many listeners now consider it the first speed metal song committed to tape. Binks brought jazz training and physical endurance to the kit; his footwork hints at the drum intro Priest would revisit twelve years later on Painkiller.
The following year, Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor received a new kit fitted with two bass drums. During a Motorhead rehearsal in Notting Hill Gate, he started hammering both pedals. Lemmy began playing in E, Eddie Clarke jumped in, and ten minutes later they had “Overkill.” The title track rides a relentless 16th-note kick pattern from start to finish. Lars Ulrich later said the double kick blew his head off and he immediately wanted to play like that. “Overkill” reached the UK Top 40, giving Motorhead their first chart hit and every future speed and thrash band a rhythmic foundation.
The British Fuel
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal provided the melodic vocabulary that speed metal accelerated. Diamond Head, from Stourbridge, self-released Lightning to the Nations in 1980 in a plain white sleeve with no title or track listing. “Am I Evil?” (its intro drawn from Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War) became a direct template for early Metallica. More than half the riff structures on Metallica’s debut trace back to Diamond Head.
Raven, the Newcastle band founded by brothers John and Mark Gallagher, pushed tempos harder than most NWOBHM peers. They dubbed their style “athletic rock” and wore sports equipment onstage. Wiped Out (1982) was fast enough to register as proto-speed metal. In 1983, Raven headlined Metallica’s first American tour, promoted as “Kill ‘em All for One.”
Canada Declares War
The genre’s centre of gravity in the early 1980s was Ontario. Three bands defined the speed metal sound before thrash absorbed it.
Exciter formed in Ottawa in 1978 as Hell Razor. Dan Beehler played drums and sang lead vocals simultaneously, screaming at full volume while maintaining double bass patterns at tempos most drummers found difficult without a microphone. He later noted he had never seen anyone else do it at his velocity. A demo reached Mike Varney at Shrapnel Records, who included one track on the 1982 compilation US Metal Volume II. The debut, Heavy Metal Maniac, recorded in August 1982 and released through Shrapnel in 1983, was later inducted into Decibel Magazine’s Hall of Fame.
Anvil, from Toronto, formed the same year. Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner built their attack on speed riffs paired with double bass drumming. Metal on Metal (1982) drew attention: fast enough to bridge NWOBHM and thrash, melodic enough to remain distinct from both. It earned Anvil a slot at the 1982 Monsters of Rock festival and the 1983 Reading Festival, where Lips played his guitar with a vibrator. Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax all cited Anvil as an influence. The band never achieved proportional commercial success, a story told in the 2008 film Anvil! The Story of Anvil.
Razor, from Guelph, formed in 1983 and released two full-length albums in 1985 alone. Evil Invaders sharpened the band’s attack into something closer to thrash but still rooted in speed metal’s preference for melody within velocity. They toured with Slayer, Venom, and Motorhead across North America.
The German Connection
Accept, from Solingen, released Restless and Wild in 1982. Its opening track, “Fast as a Shark,” begins with a sample of the folk song “Ein Heller und ein Batzen,” then detonates into double bass drumming at a pace no European metal band had matched on record. Drummer Stefan Kaufmann conceived the idea of sustaining double kick patterns through the entire track. Guitarist Wolf Hoffmann later reflected that they were simply having fun and did not think it was anything new. “Fast as a Shark” is now cited alongside Priest’s “Exciter” and Motorhead’s “Overkill” as one of the songs that codified speed metal, a full year before Metallica or Slayer released a debut.
The Technique
Speed metal occupies a specific technical space. Tempos run above 150 BPM, commonly between 160 and 200. Palm-muted downpicking on the lower strings creates a tight, percussive chug that alternate picking cannot replicate with the same attack. The picking hand rests on the strings at the bridge, damping them just enough to produce a staccato bark rather than a sustained ring. Tremolo picking, rapid alternation on a single string, fills lead passages.
Double bass patterns provide the constant 16th-note pulse beneath the riffs. Fills are short and functional; speed metal drumming prioritizes stamina and precision over showmanship. Vocals tend toward clean, high-pitched delivery: Beehler’s shriek, Udo Dirkschneider’s nasal rasp in Accept, John Cyriis’s falsetto in Agent Steel. The genre favoured expressiveness over the growls that thrash and death metal would adopt. Speed metal retains the duelling guitar harmonies inherited from NWOBHM, and solos lean toward virtuosity rather than noise.
The standard rig was a Marshall JCM800, a humbucker-equipped guitar, and little else. The tone needed enough distortion to sustain at speed but enough clarity that individual palm-muted notes remained distinct.
The Bridge
Agent Steel, formed in Los Angeles in 1984 by vocalist John Cyriis (who had briefly fronted an early Megadeth before Mustaine decided to sing himself), recorded Skeptics Apocalypse for Combat Records in early 1985. Cyriis sang in a piercing falsetto over riffs pairing Iron Maiden harmonies with frenzied speed metal rhythms. Their lyrical obsession with UFOs set them apart from every other act in the genre.
By mid-decade, the line between speed metal and thrash had blurred past recognition. Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All (1983), recorded at Music America Studios in Rochester on a $15,000 Megaforce budget, drew from Diamond Head and Motorhead while adding aggression that pushed toward thrash. Megadeth’s Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985) was tracked on $12,000 from Combat Records, a portion of which went to substances rather than studio time. Slayer’s Show No Mercy (1983) ran speed metal structures through Venom-influenced extremity. Each record owed a debt to Exciter, Anvil, and Accept, but moved decisively toward something harder and less melodic.
Speed metal did not die. It merged. Double bass drumming, palm-muted downpicking, high-velocity riffing: these became the shared vocabulary of thrash, power metal, and eventually death metal. The genre exists now as a root system, invisible beneath the surface, feeding everything above it.
Essential Listening
- Judas Priest – Stained Class (1978)
- Motorhead – Overkill (1979)
- Diamond Head – Lightning to the Nations (1980)
- Anvil – Metal on Metal (1982)
- Accept – Restless and Wild (1982)
- Raven – Wiped Out (1982)
- Exciter – Heavy Metal Maniac (1983)
- Metallica – Kill ‘Em All (1983)
- Exciter – Violence & Force (1984)
- Agent Steel – Skeptics Apocalypse (1985)
- Razor – Evil Invaders (1985)
- Megadeth – Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good! (1985)