Galloping Blasphemy

Talk about an album that reviews itself! Galloping Blasphemy, the inaugural ceremony from furtive heavy metal duo Satan's Wrath, brazenly indulges in all manner of occult necromancy, while musically worshiping at the altar of the mid-'80s extreme metal explosion — aka "the time before subgenres." In other words, are they thrash, black, or death metal? Who knows and, more importantly, who cares? All misanthropic heavy metal influences are equal in Satan's Wrath's eyes, as the largely rhetorical song-by-song drill-down that follows will confirm. Just for a sampling: amusingly named opener "Leonard Rising Night of the Whip" borrows its haunting intro from Slayer; "Hail Tritone, Hail Lucifer" from the torrential downpour of "Raining Blood"; the light-speed thrash of "Between Belial and Satan" reminds us of how wild and violent Metallica's "Whiplash" (the song's obvious forefather) sounded back in 1983. What's more, the overall rancid blend of blackened thrash, proto-death growls, and, yes, galloping rhythms that characterize ensuing songs like "One Thousand Goats in Sodom," "Death Possessed," and the title cut (many of them featuring more deliberate riff passages and musical guitar solos than you may expect) essentially revive the seminal mid-'80s savagery perpetrated by everyone from Sodom to Destruction, Hellhammer to Bathory, Autopsy to Possessed, Messiah to Vulcano. You get the picture. If not, then just let additional self-explanatory song titles such as "Slaves of the Inverted Cross" and the namesake "Satan's Wrath" transport you straight into the fiery (or ice-cold — results may vary) depths of hell. Word is there'll be cake and s****y! In all seriousness, Satan's Wrath are clearly not reinventing the wheel here — just spinning it 'til the spokes fly off and pierce eager eardrums with the stew of extreme sounds that once boiled inside heavy metal's demonically obsessed 1980s cauldron. As said above: Galloping Blasphemy pretty much reviews itself.