Deathrow were founded in 1984 by Milo, Thomas Priebe, Sven Flügge and Markus Hahn in Dusseldorf under the name Samhain . The four young musicians met through advertisements in various music magazines. In 1985, the quartet recorded its first demo entitled 'The Lord of the Dead' in 1986 followed 'Eternal Death' , the first the band recorded in a professional recording studio. They made friends with Mille Petrozza from Kreator after playing with them and he passed their demos to German independent label Noise Records and Karl Walterbach signed the band to his label. First, the band renamed itself, urged by the record company to Deathrow because of Glenn Danzig's band, also called Samhain . Their debut album was released in 1986 as Satan's Gift but was renamed a short while after to Riders Of Doom with an alternative cover (the one the band originally wanted) due to concerns about the US market. Riders Of Doom set them on a path as one of the first bands to take off in the burgeoning German thrash metal scene. European tours with the likes of Possessed, Voivod and Kreator cemented them into the fabric of the scene, leading up to the release of their second album 'Raging Steel' which was another slab of furious thrash, where the band up their game in the song writing stakes.

Further touring with bands like Sodom, Destruction and Tankard fuelled their popularity in the thrash scene and gained them legions of loyal thrash fans. Not long after the release of Raging Steel, founder member Thomas Priebe quit the band and was replaced by Uwe Osterlehner. Uwe's technical guitar work and song writing skills, provided for a more technical and progressive direction for their third album Deception Ignored , which was released in 1989. The album was the band's most successful yet and their last for Noise Records. After further tours with Sabbat and Tankard they parted ways with the label in 1990 but the three album they released on the label are cult classics to this day.

https://www.noiserecords.net/