By David E. Gehlke FORBIDDEN had the best pure singer in Russ Anderson of all the Bay Area thrash bands, but it never translated to the kind of success they deserved. Oddly, Anderson's vocal acrobatics somehow prevented FORBIDDEN from reaching audiences beyond the thrash scene, in spite of their leg.
Ex-Machine Head guitarist on Exodus kill poser stunts, Slayer slam dancing, Forbidden feuds, more
photograph by Scott Diussa March 16, 2021
The mid-Eighties glory days of San Francisco s Bay Area thrash scene have come and gone, but its legacy continues to grow stronger with each passing decade. Thanks to the contributions from its venerated list of alumni Metallica, Testament, Exodus, Possessed, Megadeth, to name just a few the movement is now regarded as one of the most significant eras in American metal history.
Phil Demmel then a high-school age guitarist growing up outside of Oakland, California had a front-row seat for the birth of this impactful scene. While metal fans will certainly know Demmel from his 16 years with Machine Head (2002 – 2018), it was his period with Vio-lence one of the breakout bands during the second wave of Bay Area thrash that gave the guitarist his start as a professional musician. There were definitely some strong s
Forbidden made their mark on the world of thrash just as you would expect hard and fast. The band came roaring out of the gate in 1988 with their seminal Combat debut,
Forbidden Evil, and followed it up two years later with the equally fierce, if also more techy and varied,
Twisted Into Form. And while they ve experienced starts and stops since (their most recent full-length was 2010 s
Omega Wave) Forbidden s first two albums remain primal slices of second-wave Bay Area thrash, on par with peers like Testament and Death Angel, and worthy successors to the early works of pioneers like Metallica and Exodus.
The San Francisco Bay Area is known far and wide as the epicenter of the Eighties thrash movement, and one of the bands central to the scene s second wave was Forbidden. While they may not have achieved the same widespread recognition as Bay Area forebears like Metallica and Exodus or peers like Testament and Death Angel, Forbidden left an indelible mark on the genre with two now-classic albums the 1988 debut
Forbidden Evil (which was also the band s original name) and the 1990 follow-up
Twisted Into Form.
Both efforts are packed with the sort of breakneck precision riffing, pounding drums, bark-to-a-scream vocals and all-around go-for-the-throat untamed wildness that characterized thrash in the Eighties, with