Here are the five best technical thrash metal albums, ranked in order of sheer, unadulterated excellence.

To someone unfamiliar with the subgenre, “technical thrash” might sound like an oxymoron. And yes, it’s true that when thrash metal exploded out of the Bay Area in the early ’80s, it prized hellacious speed and blunt-force aggression over everything.

Thrash in its earliest form was a fusion of classic heavy metal and hardcore punk, and many of the scene’s fresh-faced progenitors were barely old enough to drink when they began revolutionizing heavy metal. So it’s easy to forgive those young, denim-and-leather-clad headbangers for some early musical shortcomings.

Technical thrash, however, was an entirely different beast.

READ MORE: The 9 Best Thrash Metal Songs Over 9 Minutes Long

How Technical Thrash’s Influence Loomed Large in the Metal World

As the decade reached its midpoint, thrash began to mutate into something far more complex.

Austin, Texas’ Watchtower helped pioneer the technical thrash subgenre with their wildly ambitious 1985 debut album Energetic Disassembly. Soon, other bands such as Canada’s Voivod and Switzerland’s Coroner joined the fray, expanding upon thrash’s early breakneck template with progressive song structures, gnarled riffs, dizzying rhythmic interplay, and head-spinning, jazz fusion-inspired solos.

Although technical thrash remained a relatively niche subgenre, it left an undeniable imprint on the metal world at large. It helped pave the way for the technical death metal movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s, with Death bandleader Chuck Schuldiner citing Watchtower as one of his favorite bands in a 1991 interview. And as some of thrash’s earliest and biggest bands further honed their sound, they also reached all-new levels of sophistication, showing what a technical thrash band with a major-label budget could achieve.

Read on to see our list of the five best technical thrash albums, ranked from awesome to most awesome.

Now that you’ve been schooled in the finest tech-thrash, how about a quiz?

Think you’re the ultimate thrash expert? See if you can guess the thrash album from just one small piece of the album cover. We’ve got three levels of difficulty!