Speak English or Die

This is the record from which the word crossover, for the join between thrash and hardcore, came into general use. It was recorded between 2 and 5 July 1985 at Pyramid Sound Studios in Ithaca, New York, produced by Alex Perialas and Scott Ian, and released by Megaforce Records. It was made in studio time left over after Anthrax finished their own sessions, and the whole thing — learning the songs and recording them — took about a week. The line-up is Billy Milano singing, Scott Ian on guitar, Dan Lilker on bass and Charlie Benante on drums. Twenty-one tracks in a little over thirty minutes, several of them under ten seconds, is hardcore's grammar rather than metal's. Benante's playing on "Milk" is named again and again as an early instance of the blast beat in metal. It has sold more than a million copies worldwide. The running order here is the 1985 original's as printed; Spotify has no plainly-named entity for it, so the player on this page is the 30th anniversary edition.