Mutual Assured Destruction

Notes about the Relationship between Thrash Metal and the Cold War during the Decade of the Eighties

Abstract

In music, there has been expressed frequently individual and collective concerns of the historical moment. The last two centuries have been eyewitnesses of the complexity of the human spirit: in the midst of many contradictions, in the Twentieth Century were developed as never before major scientific and technological advances towards society, however that century would also become the framework of civil wars and international conflicts, of crushing dictatorships, massacres unprecedented extermination of entire populations and colonization of peripheral countries. Given these circumstances as a frame of reference, it is possible to explain how music from the second half of the Twentieth Century, became increasingly radical break with traditional statutes. Rock as a reference identity of young people in the last century, many musical styles ensued emerging heavy metal in its various meanings as a way of questioning the socially established rules. Thrash metal as a variant of the primal currents of metal, responds to concerns shared by the inhabitants of the planet on the effects of the Cold War during the eighties of the last century dealt with the mutual assured destruction.