#anthax

Nasty Savage: Nasty Savage (1985)

While they rarely enter the conversation nowadays, Tampa, Florida’s Nasty Savage were legit first-generation thrashers, deserving of some credit, alongside fellow pioneers like Metallica, Slayer, Exodus, Exciter, et al, for helping the genre proliferate within the underground tape-trading community.

Led by natural-born exhibitionist and pro-wrestling enthusiast ‘Nasty’ Ronnie Galetti, the band issued a pair of demos -- 1984's “Wage of Mayhem” and “Raw Mayhem” -- before contributing a track to the Metal Massacre IV compilation and joining the Metal Blade roster.

But, by the time this self-titled debut arrived in August of 1985, Nasty Savage had been left in the dust by their fast-evolving thrash metal peers, making revamped demos like “Metal Knights,” “Dungeons of Pleasure” and “Psychopath” seem terribly simplistic, even naive, by comparison.

Mind you, musicianship wasn’t the problem, because guitarists Ben Meyer and David Austin, bassist Fred Dregischan and drummer Curtis Beeson showed ample skills on intricate workouts like “Asmodeus,” instrumental “The Morgue,” and the requisite acoustic interlude “Garden of Temptation.” 

But, when it came to speedier fare like “No Sympathy” and “Instigator” (tellingly, now a minority of the band’s repertoire), the boys almost sounded sloppy, if compared to the high-velocity precision of a Hetfield and Hammett, a Hanneman and King, or a Holt and Hunolt.

(Who knew so many thrash guitarists started with ‘H’?)

And then there was ‘Nasty’ Ronnie, whose tuneless falsetto was a real liability on more conventional head-bangers like “Gladiator” and “Fear Beyond the Vision,” while his outsized personality and shock rock theatrics (a legacy of Kiss, Alice Cooper, etc.) no longer jived with thrash’s austere, “no image” ethos, as bands abandoned any vestige of makeup and bombastic showmanship to further distance themselves from the competing hair metal poseurs.

I know what you must be saying right about now: “What a hater!”

But, as I sat here spinning this album today, I simply started rattling off the reasons why an ‘80s teenage thrash maniac like myself chose to pass on Nasty Savage, back in the day, and spent his hard earned cash on some of the other, better, bands cited overhead.

So, all I can offer ‘Nasty’ Ronnie and co. by way of apology is that they can have the last laugh, because here I am revisiting their works 35 years later to satisfy my nostalgia for the music of my youth.