Heathen is thrash/speed metal band, and were part of the second wave of Bay Area Thrash. They released two classic albums, Breaking the Silence and Victims of Deception, before disbanding in 1993. They reformed for Thrash of the Titans, released an excellent demo in 2005, and just came out with their third studio album, The Evolution of Chaos (currently only released in Japan, IIRC).
For me, Heathen has always been a near-perfect blend of speed, melodicism, and intensity. Definitely one of my favorite thrash bands.
http://www.myspace.com/heathenmetal
Decent band. They didn't rate as high with me as they did with some of my friends. Although I like their debut album somewhat.
Heathen are one of these Bay Area acts that had so many ties to other local bands. It was always sort of a stepping stone band. Vocalist Dave Godfrey White was one of Blind Illusions vocalists prior to Heathen. Dave at one point left Heathen after their first album and briefly joined Defiance, as well as a really good local band called Laughing Dead. LD played with many of the bigger thrash bands around the late 80's. Guitarist Jim Sanguinetti would eventually leave the band to play with the band Mordred. Jim's replacement guitarist Doug Piercy was from another quite popular early 80's local act called Anvil Chorus, who used to play a lot with Metallica & Exodus in their early days. And of course Darren Minter and Lee Altus would go on to Die Krupps; as well as Altus recently filling the void left by Rick Hunolt in Exodus.
Also another Exodus tie in, two shows I'll never forget seeing them play were with Paul Baloff fronting the band; playing one show with Testament, and the other supporting Vio-Lence. Paul of course really altered the personality of the band. They were faster and more Thrash. Many of the lyrics Paul used with Heathen would wind up being Piranha (Pauls short lived project) songs.
Right after Paul died there were some of the Heathen demos w Paul available online somewhere. I actually really liked the rougher sound Paul brought to Heathen in that brief time. The stuff that followed on the second album didn't really catch my attention. I remember a guy I used to jam with played it a lot when we weren't rehearsing. Something about it reminded me a lot of newer Metallica. At that point, anything close to Metallica was the antidote for anything cool in my world. I was much more into stuff like Sepultura & some of the Florida Death Metal at that time.
I should probably track down a copy of Victims & see how I like it these days.
They opened the Clash of the Titans benefit. I remember Billy Milano giving the bass player Yaz, some shit for looking like CC Deville at that show.
I liked their debut Breaking the Silence a lot, but the Victims of Deception album took me quite a while to properly appreciate. For starter, it seemed to literally drag with over-lengthy songs and an amount of melodicism and 'prog' tendencies that I found sort of annoying and tiring. But later, I started to enjoy VoD much more than I did iniitially. Still, BtS was just a more straight-up, no-frills, no filler slab of cool speed metal that I still prefer much more to VoD. Darn, I forgot to buy the Evolution of Chaos cd. I'll order it this week-end.
I remember first hearing Heathen at the same time I was checking out Helstar for the first time. I sure liked Helstar more, though Heathen is a pretty good act that a lot of thrash/speed metal enthusiasts looking to explore deep and wide, oughta definitely give an honest try.
Probably my favorite thrash band ever. I think I prefer Victims of Deception overall as an album, but Breaking the Silence is home to the best thrash riff... heck, best anything riff I've ever heard,
Death by Hanging (observe it in its full glory right after the opening solo).