Changes

''Thrash Metal'' is a sub-genre of rock that focused on an aggressive, "underground" sound. This meant heavily distorted guitars, screamed vocals, and up-tempo songs with non-stop drumming. Guitars typically played riffs, rarely playing sustained chords. Riffs took inspiration from both blues and classical compositions. Fast guitar solos were also prominent. Rather than use rich harmonies for chorus sections, thrash typically built tension using rhythm drops, vocal-guitar point-counterpoint, or tempo shifts. Song structures often took experimental routes, sometimes omitting choruses altogether. Popular thrash artists are ''Metallica'', ''Megadeth'', ''Pantera'', and ''Slayer''.

A '''pedal point''' is a note that is held constant or consistently reinforced over a passage of changing harmonic content. For thrash metal, this typically meant low E or A string palm mutes being used as the backbone of a riff, with other notes playing off this tone.

With thrash riffs often playing consecutive power chords with different root notes, some players noticed they could use alternating index/ring and middle/pinky fingers to finger the chords, achieving greater economy of motion (allowing them to play even faster) and avoiding any scratchy sounds from sliding positions up and down between chords. This is called '''spider fingering'''.