Deathwish

Britain's Deathwish came together in 1983, yet the quartet still arrived late to the decade's thrash-metal surge when their first full-length effort, At the Edge of Damnation, finally appeared on the independent Metalworks imprint in 1987. The lineup featured the colorfully monikered Jon Van Doom on vocals, Dave Deathwish on guitar, Stuart Ranger on bass, and Brad Sims behind the drums; the following year the same musicians returned with the Demon Preacher EP. Neither that release nor the material that preceded it managed to set the band apart from countless contemporaries, however, because the songs remained too conventional. Deathwish continued long enough to bring bassist Ben Rumble into the fold in 1989, but the group never entered the studio again.