Galloping Blasphemy

Photographer: Oster Zegarra.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,