Lawnmower Deth

Few thrash bands have been as happy to send up their own genre as Lawnmower Deth, the English act whose sense of humour was never far from the riff. Formed in Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire, in 1987 by a group of friends, they built their identity on parody, rattling through fast, shouty guitar music while their videos were shot on home cameras and edited with deliberate amateurishness. Irreverence runs through everything they did.

Their debut came as a split release with Metal Duck, and the positive response to its Mower Liberation Front side led to the full-length Ooh Crikey, It's… Lawnmower Deth. Return of the Fabulous Metal Bozo Clowns followed in 1992, by which time Kev Papworth had replaced Paddy. Their sole single, a cover of Kim Wilde's "Kids in America", came out in 1991, and Billy, a pop punk record closer to Green Day than to thrash, appeared in 1993 before poor sales and a declining audience ended the band that year. They returned in 2008 for a one-off show supporting Bullet for My Valentine at Alexandra Palace, played Download in 2009, and released Blunt Cutters in January 2022, their first studio album in 29 years.