Nasty Savage - Psycho Psycho (2004)

With the enhanced re-issue of Wage of Mayhem and some live dates under their belts, it was only a matter of time before Nasty Savage would grease the elbows and head into the studio for a new attempt at full-length album glory. The result was the 13 track opus Psycho Psycho, which stylistically sticks as closely as possible to the prior few albums, albeit with a darker modern style. All of the hallmarks return: schizophrenic thrash metal with its roots clearly laid out in the sphere of American speed/power, Nasty Ronnie's scatterbrained vocal delivery, and lyrics that delve into the psychological, sexual and society at large.

While Psycho Psycho is not one of those trailblazing, inspirational comeback albums that arrives once in a blue moon, it has enough choice moments to at least keep it hovering above the pit of endless suck that so many reforged acts sink into. A few of the songs here rub me the wrong way, through either the vocal patterns or the riffing sag it tends to take towards the middle, but others truly capture the spirit of their 80s material, and one cannot feel any disconnect as far as the band's intent to remain loyal to themselves and what their mostly diminished fan base would expect of them. But I definitely get the vibe here that the songs could have used another comb over before sending the masters off to press.

I'll start with a few of the better songs. "Hell Unleashed", once it clears its opening vocal sample, becomes a pretty raging speed/thrasher. I'm not entirely in line with the vocals, as they seem to lack some of the energy and dual split range of prior attacks, but I do think the delay he's added to them slightly compensates, assisting with the impact here. The solo section is standard thrash rhythm over which a bluesy lead wails out with determination, and there is no hidden, amazing riff anywhere in the track, but it's solid and reminds me of Indulgence. "Merciless Truths" is wedged in at the end of the album, but it's a solid mid-paced track with some of the band's signature thrash arcs that you can totally square off to. Once more, the vocals don't completely blow me away, but the leads are cool, and I enjoyed the melodic finale as it faded out. "Anguish" is another of these slower fist-bangers, and the title track "Psycho Psycho" is a solid lead-in to the album, though the refrain in the first verse of 'slave of passion with a cerebral erection' felt a little lazy, like an impatient 13 year old lyricist.

For the rest, well few of the songs had any impact at all. "Human Factor" and "Terminus Maximus" try and coddle you with big, manly, obvious vocals, and the latter has a kind of morbid haze to it, but when they pick up the riffs are simply not so interesting. "Dementia 13" is not a cover of the sneering (and in my opinion, underrated) Whiplash tune, but a pretty average thrasher with a lot of bass in the intro and no major payload. "Step Up to the Plate" has a strong opening section and some demented verse rhythms, with a pretty brutal chorus, but I just could not get into Ronnie's vocals. "Triumphal Entry" and "Betrayal System" each feature at least one decent riff, but overall they feel rushed and very easy to skip. The band also includes a rehashed version of "Savage Desire", from the Wage of Mayhem demo, but the old school Diamond Head, Venom feel to the central riff feels out of place with the rest of the album. Almost like they're including a cover song, even if its one of their own.

I wish I could stack some more praise upon this effort, but even the better songs I mentioned earlier in the review do not compare to the material found on Indulgence, Penetration Point or the Abstract Reality EP. A Chris Jericho guest spot can't really save the album from its ultimate feel of mediocrity. However, the band deserves some credit for not attempting some radical shift in style, and trying to get back to the basics which made them one of the better thrash acts of the South in the 80s. It's already been six years since this album was released, and there has yet to be a follow-up. But I do hope, that if they are to enter the studio again, they'll take with them the same passion and emerge with a better set of songs.

Highlights: Hell Unleashed, Merciless Truths, Anguish

Verdict: Indifference [6/10] (Christ-like in blue jeans)

http://www.nastysavage.com/

Nasty Savage - Wage of Mayhem EP (2003)

Penetration Point was not only my favorite Nasty Savage album and the high point of their career, but it was also their 'last' album, at least until a few reunion shows in the late 90s encouraged the band to give it a go once more. Considering some of the members' output (puns in t-minus...) like the scatological, shitty metal band Gardy-Loo or the fairly weak death metal of Lowbrow, this was probably a wise decision. So come 2002, Nasty Savage had returned, with the same lineup as they left at the end of the 80s. The following year, they dropped this new EP, which featured a pair of new tracks and a re-issue of the band's Wage of Mayhem demo from 1984. In a way this was a clever tactic, because if the band's newer material didn't live up to their legacy, at least fans would be suckerpunched by having the demo in their possession, at long last.

And it turns out a necessary tactic here, because while the style of the new tracks is not a far cry from Penetration Point, the songs seem very light on the frenetic riffing that marked the band's signature sound 14 years prior. Nasty Ronnie is still spitting out both his highs and lows, and the guitars can rock a solid solo, but all the riffs leading up to this in "Sardonic Mosaic" leave much to be desires. The guitar tones give the material a somewhat darker feel, which they'd carry forward to the Psycho Psycho album the following year, but it really doesn't matter when so much of the writing is weak. "Wage of Mayhem" is the stronger of the new cuts as far as the riffing, but the vocals in the verse seem a little awkward, even for Ronnie, who is like the king of awkward. It doesn't help that the lyrics are a sort of stream of consciousness down through the band's past...it's probably enough just that the band have included their old demo.

Alas, since both of the new compositions have failed to deliver by some means or another, it falls upon the original Wage of Mayhem demo to carry the currency out of the fan's wallet, and it does sound pretty sweet! Two of the tracks here have appeared on the bands albums, in a more aggressive form: "Unchained Angel" was on the Abstract Reality EP, and "XXX" was on the Indulgence album. But it's nice to hear these versions, which possess a little more of the classic metal fire that dominated the s/t debut. "Savage Desire" opens with one of those very familiar riffs to "Am I Evil" or about half of Venom's old songs, but it's still one of the better songs on the EP (they'll later redo this track and tack it on Psycho Psycho). "Witches' Sabbath" is a moody NWOBHM-flavored rocker which gets by on its absolutely hilarious lyrics like:

Witches are sluts,
They should be burned at the stake!
They deserve their fate!

And that's all she wrote for the Wage of Mayhem EP. Basically, it's a means to own the original demo with a few shoddy new tracks tossed on there as evidence that the boys are back in town, and that there's no stopping them! Only the new songs were relatively weak when you compare them to the material from Penetration Point, Abstract Reality or Indulgence, and things weren't looking all that good for their reunion. So when the pressure is turned up, and the band has to deliver an entire new album, how will it stand up to the past? We shall see. Unless you're one of this band's most ardent fans (and one who doesn't have a copy of the 1984 demo), I cannot in good faith recommend buying this.

Verdict: Indifference [5/10] (so let this be the post script)

http://www.nastysavage.com/

Nasty Savage - Penetration Point (1989)

Nasty Savage's third full-length effort Penetration Point poses somewhat of a quandary in the band's catalog. Musically, it's the natural evolution of the previous releases Indulgence and Abstract Reality, a slab of semi-tech thrash metal which, while not ahead of many of the band's European or US peers, was still quite fairly standout for 1989 among a sea of weaker US thrash acts that sounded like bad Anthrax or S.O.D. clones. However, some of the lyrics and song titles seemed like the band had brought back a little of the humor of their waking years, albeit cast in a more urban, late 80s schtick rather than a reversion back to the metal knights and pleasure dungeons of the debut. But don't be fooled, because there's generally a method to the madness.

The album opener is a good example of what I mean. "Welcome Wagon" opens and closes in a very brief vocal sample which seems like a bad joke, but the riffs are purely wild thrash metal in the spirit of the band's previous album Indulgence. The lyrics, while presenting a pastiche of strange pop references and cliches, and delivered in a number of schizophrenic vocal passages which seem like Nasty Ronnie is rekindling the joker inside him, are actually pretty serious. "Irrational" commences with a pretty yet clinical sequence of clean guitars, with new bassist Richard Bateman (the 4th in four releases) making his presence felt, before the bouncing thrash rhythms that feel like a tour through the local asylum. "Ritual Submission" becomes even more clinical, with a nice tech rhythm somewhere between the first Pestilence album and Deathrow's later 80s transition, flowing into some solid speed/thrash with a tight solo segment. It is "Powerslam", however, which serves as one of the album's more memorable tracks, with its sense for mid-paced momentum that should have seen it up among the 'Toxic Waltzes' that were all the rage among the average thrash fan. And what's more, the song is actually a tribute to professional wrestling...

Clothesline, forearm smash
Squared circle, deathmatch
A piledriver on the floor
Non-stop action
No holds barred

I don't know whether to run screaming or admire the band for this, but hell, if Mickey Rourke can validate the entire profession with a killer film in 2008, why not Nasty Savage with a great tech thrash tune almost 20 years before? Structurally, it's one of my favorites of their career. And at this point, the album really picks up steam which will last it until the very end, beginning with the frenzied "Sin Eater", with its lunacy inducing verse smothered in almost free-form, barking poetry that disperses for the excursions into the underside of sanity that are the raging, busy guitars. "Penetration Point" spirals us directly back into the madhouse with a slew of psychopath riffing, and this is another of the album's highlights (and the band's career highlights), as it shows the advanced level this band were at compared to numerous American acts lagging far behind.

"Puzzled" rambles forth at a similar pace to "Powerslam", but injects a wonderful, smarmy groove in around :20 that precedes Ronnie's suburban splatter. This is followed by "Horizertical", a rather excessive instrumental track clocking around 5:30 minutes of the band's more adventurous rhythmic whims. It's certainly not bad, but for the most part the riffs are of the variety that might have been served with some of Ronnie's vocals, though they do flare up into a more anthemic sequence reminiscent of some instrumental guitar rock & metal of this time. "Family Circus" ends the album on a high note, with pumping thrash and scurrilous speed metal infusions, and lyrics that parallel both the long-term popular comic strip and a more sinister, suburban implication of disenchantment.

As silly as some of the vocals may seem in their delivery, or in the lyrical component, they're fairly meaningful, some even relevant today. Combined with the best riffing of the band's more inspired thrash phase, Penetration Point remains my favorite Nasty Savage album, edging out Indulgence and the s/t, and honestly the last one worth hearing. The band's later reunion album Psycho Psycho isn't bad, and in fact the darker production gives it a more brutal edge than any of the band's 80s work, but there is simply some magic missing there that can likely be attributed to the passage of time, and the riffs don't really compare in my opinion. It's the 1985-89 period of this band that best represents their contribution to the US power/thrash dynasty, and Penetration Point is the jewel which sparkles brightest atop their crown.

Highlights: Ritual Submission, Powerslam, Puzzled, Family Circus

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (it's where the fun begins)

http://www.nastysavage.com/

Nasty Savage - Abstract Reality EP (1988)

With Nasty Savage's sophomore album Indulgence, the band had made a positive shift in direction towards the technical, schizophrenic thrash metal that was dominating both sides of the Atlantic by the late 80s. And if anything, the followup EP Abstract Reality was ample proof that the band had no intentions of turning back to their corny, showy metal roots any time soon. With four of the most proficient and no nonsense tracks of the band's career, and a new bassist in step (this is the only recording Chris Moorhouse would appear on with the band) they asserted themselves firmly into the tight wedge that comprised the more sophisticated end of the metal spectrum, without losing the sporadic insanity of Nasty Ronnie's Jr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde/steamroller meets siren vocal presence.

As far as the shortplay release goes, Abstract Reality isn't all that cheap with your purse. You get four new tracks that last almost 20 minutes, an interesting continuity through the use of the same abstract cover artist as Indulgence. But chances are if you own either that CD or the original CD release of the debut, you've got this tacked on there, and you'll notice the obvious 'drift' between the bands roots and their late 80s direction. It works best as a bridge between Indulgence and Penetration Point, of course, since that's the geography of its origin, and the very tight performances are like a sharpening of the proverbial vorpal sword, to prepare the fan for the steadily hacking force of the 3rd album. Savage continue their predisposition towards pseudo-intellectual themes with song titles like "Abstract Reality" and "Eromantic Vertigo", but they've got the musical complexity to back it up.

First is the title track, which barrels along like a meatier, but less bloodied chunk of Rigor Mortis type murder-thrash. The riffs are solid though average, and the prize here goes to Nasty Ronnie, who is giving one of his most controlled, but powerful performances. The bridge and solo are likewise quite good, with a structured schizoid thrash rhythm that dares to peer into the padded cell of the band's psychotic imagery. "Unchained Angel" is a slightly dirtier groove that heralds a female apocalypse, with strangely seductive lyrics considering their cataclysmic ramifications. Once again, it's the vocals and solo break that carry the song. The riffing provides enough thrust to get the pit swirling and heads banging, but they're not highly memorable. "Eromantic Vertigo" has some of the better guitars here, with circular, madness-inducing patterns that flow in a rather clinical response to the vocals that rush right down the middle like a crafty receiver being flanked by walls of epileptic linemen. "You Snooze, You Lose" seems like a rather tired cliche for a song title here, but the music itself is monstrous, and I'd have to say it is the most impressive due to the violent orgasmic riffing. The chorus is obvious, and ignorable as the music moves with such barbaric certainty.

On the strength of Indulgence and Abstract Reality, it is rather perplexing how Nasty Savage would not rise to the ranks of the better known thrash alumni. But to be honest, the more technical, progressive leanings of the genre went widely ignored by all but the closest of listeners, thus you had brilliant, first rate albums like Coroner's No More Color, Artillery's By Inheritance and Deathrow's Deception Ignored, each with stronger, more complex and interesting riffing than a dozen of today's stacked hyper tech death metal bands, known to but a few. And those were European bands, hailing from countries of arguably far better taste than our own. Snug in their Florida dwellings, where death metal was swiftly becoming the next big thing, Nasty Ronnie and company must have seemed sadly doomed, though they were one of the few interesting thrash bands ever to hail from the South.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (and she chose the fire)

http://www.nastysavage.com

Nasty Savage - Indulgence (1986)

1986 was a year in which thrash metal finally made its presence known: loudly. Bands like Megadeth, Slayer and Metallica were churning out some of their best work (as it would turn out, some of the best work in the genre to date), and a wealth of newer bands were unleashing previously unheard, violent and energetic sounds. Seeing that Florida's Nasty Savage were already half arrived at this style on the s/t debut in 1985, it wasn't a huge leap for the band to shift their focus towards an overall harsher follow-up. This transition occurred through three notable alterations.

The first is through the increased thrashing of the guitars, which brought them in line with the standards of Anthrax, Exodus and Nuclear Assault while abandoning most of the classic/power metal overtones of the debut. The second transition is the vocals of Nasty Ronnie, which seem far more reigned in. He still visits the shrill heights from time to time, but most often works in his 'nasty', aggressive middle rage. And he's not often fucking around here (except near the 'climax' of "XXX"). Which leads us to the third mutation of Nasty Savage: the lyrics. The band have gone from tales of "Metal Knights" and the "Dungeon of Pleasure" to more serious fare here (song titles "Incursion Dementia" and "Distorted Fanatic"), and topics that deal in the day's big ticket thrash lyrics issues, rather than sex slave fantasies or the walking dead. Add to this the very bizarre choice of an abstract landscape for cover art, and you've got a more mature band. Like many metal bands of this period, Nasty Savage had grown up, which is most often (but not always) a positive thing.

At times, it can become difficult to determine which of the first two 'incarnations' of Nasty Savage that I liked more. The innocent, well measured fuckery of the debut, or this more emotionally tense and scarring thrash band that approached their art with a renewed affection, the determination of a ballistic missile as it sights its one target? In the long term I've grown fonder of this album and Penetration Point than the debut...the tunes are simply that much more crushing and resonant. And there is no buildup to this. No warning. The band break into "Stabbed in the Back" almost immediately and you can hear the transformation and sense of purpose here, a swift kick in the pants for the band's Bay Area or New York peers to signify that the rest of the country was not far behind when it came down to the thrashing. The song maintains the good, clear production of the last album; the flurries of guitar melody and loud and present bass tone. But the writing shows an advanced complexity, and the riffs have a cruel spike to them which I'm guessing kept every local gator well clear of this band's practice space.

If I'm painting too grim a portrait of Indulgence, let me assure you that the band is still fun through the sheer pomp and violence of their ministrations. "Divination" is a peppy, mid paced rager with more bounce than a pair of unstrapped breasts on a roller coaster, Ronnie taking the opportunity to create a ghostly shriek before the bridge similar to King Diamond (or Realm, who would come later). "XXX" is even more raunchy, a lament, or rather, a celebration for all the innocent lost to smut through their adolescence. Yeah, Nasty Savage still commit their dirty thoughts to the music, but here there is a purpose. A 'cautionary' tale. Title track "Indulgence" is vibrant and acrobatic thrash/speed metal with Ronnie's vocals exploring both their lesser and upper ranges, and some of the band's best lyrics yet:

There's a cyclone in your mind, it's throbbing at the end of a lie
But here and now, life is a great indulgence
Hell is paved with good intentions, but this is our time of joy
Play with fire, love the flame, this is our time of joy

"Inferno" is a WWII thrash piece with some sick, serpentine twists to the leads and melodies that seethe over the blitzkrieg of the hammering riffs (some of which would later be dubbed 'death metal'). "Hypnotic Trance" is another of these power thrash hymns, with some excellent drumming and leads, while "Incursion Dementia" throws a little nod back to the roots power metal of the band's waking years, one of the best and most bad-ass tracks on this album. "Distorted Fanatic" is also quite good, thanks to its evil Slayer-like opening melodies and the tightly spun, engaging thrash dynamics of the verse guitars. The album ends with an untitled 9th instrumental track in which the musicians take a few more liberties, but it's hardly the escapist shredder; the band could very well have included vocals here.

While I'm completely on board with the progressions the band has made from the debut to Indulgence, I'd have to say the album remains level to that in terms of its overall, lasting quality. Like Nasty Savage, it still sounds quite fresh today, though many other thrash and death metal bands have released superior product since. This was by no means a first class thrash metal album for 1986. The architecture is not as brilliantly structured as a Master of Puppets, and it's not nearly as wild or aggressive as a Reign in Blood or Darkness Descends. But once you get past that refreshing foam on top of the glass, to the bulk of the beer within, Indulgence would represent one of those first, fulfilling gulps you take on your plummet towards vomiting and unconsciousness.

Highlights: Divination, Inferno, Incursion Dementia, Distorted Fanatic

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (beyond the threshold of pain)

http://www.nastysavage.com/

Nasty Savage - Nasty Savage (1985)

Although they've not produced anything worthwhile in over 20 years now, Florida's Nasty Savage were once an anomaly in the American metal landscape: a highly polished hybrid of thrash and classic heavy metal aesthetics with one of the more charismatic vocalists on the job at the time. Yes, the band is largely known for the wild vocals of 'Nasty Ronnie', who would spiral from primal power/thrash shrieking to an edged middle range, and then become even stranger as he'd insert some deeper testosterone. It was a little off-putting when I was younger, as I half felt he was making fun of the very music he was fronting. But over the years, I've come to appreciate the guy's charisma, and for the most part it's not too distracting here.

Nasty Savage was released through Metal Blade in 1985, a year after the band produced a pair of demos in Raw Mayhem and Wage of Mayhem, and it was quite a striking album due to its high level of production quality, which was rare outside of the bigger names of the period. The tones are clean and powerful, the leads burning, the vocals (despite their insanity) never leeching out the life of the songs, and overall it was one of the better sounding albums on the earlier Metal Blade roster. The band's mix of emergent styles was also harder to define than many of their peers, so they were almost instantly recognizable for embracing the current of thrashing aggression without abandoning many of the metal cliches in their lyrics and vocal delivery. I'm not going to lie, tracks like "Metal Knights" and "Gladiator" are hilarious, but considering how many bands make careers out of this crap today (the awful 3 Inches of Blood, for example), shouldn't we just break out our Nasty Savage debut instead? To paraphrase a famous film super villain, they're not monsters...they were just ahead of the curve.

The album burns a hole right into your curiosity from the first, brooding synths that inaugurate "No Sympathy", which make you feel like you've been cast into the middle of some desolate 80s horror flick. Then the guitars rattle out some excellent riffs, which exhibit a slight leaning towards both technicality and mystique, consuming a number of memorable melodies. The band plays it a little straighter in the verse, with a mid-paced chugging quality ala classic power metal. "Gladiator" functions around a lazy but gut busting thrash rhythm as Ronnie delivers some hilarious and awesome lyrics in both a manly hymn and a few off the hook falsetto shrieks. He also deserves some credit for throwing the words 'metal gear' into the first verse. I like the lead break-downs, with a nice thick bass tone and some fine shredding over a decent thrash riff. "Fear Beyond the Vision" is actually one of the more distinct tracks on the debut, with a grisly, ghastly vocal delivery in the verse and a somewhat catchy chorus that has Ronnie wailing away like a Southern King Diamond.

"Metal Knights" is a riot due to its lyrics, but the power of its grooving, molten metal rhythms is impossible to deny, and the way some of the lyrics like 'too many rockers' strike in the verse is the kind of entertainment 1,000 bands full of ironic 18 year olds in 2010 could not combine to muster. "Garden of Temptation" is a gracious interlude with a dueling pair of acoustic guitars, which took me by surprise and shows the depth and sophistication that Nasty Savage were always capable of producing in the 80s when they backed away from their strictly metal persona, while "Asmodeus" is a kickass, viral tribute to one of the greatest fictional lords of Hell, with some great drumming that carries the weight of the bomber bass lines and wicked riffing.

"Dungeon of Pleasure" provides you with the perfect soundtrack for a 'night in' with your sweetie, complete with cock rings, whips and chains to suspend one another from the basement ceiling, in addition to the killer bass and guitars and one of Ronnie's more subdued (but still funny) performances on the record. He then narrates over the eerie, clean guitars that open "The Morgue", which offers an air of doom before rising to a mid-paced melodic thrash. "Instigator" is like a wilder take on a band like Helstar, where the main similarity is the vocals but the riffs actually flow at quite the same consistency of rage and neo-classical riffing structure. Quite a good track, followed by "Psycopath" which also lives up to this album's high standard for hard riffing and melody. "End of Time" opening in a 'one two fuck you' cadence might lead some to believe its some punk douche rocker to close the album, but it quickly transforms into another of the band's burning leather seducer anthems that whispers at you from the shadows where it lurks in a campy mail-order executioner's mask.

Criticism leveled against such a weathered beast as this album becomes rubber in place of glue, because nothing really sticks. The vocals are an acquired taste, and I remember them as an immediate barrier to entry for many of my friends that I tried to persuade onto their sound. But bad? No. Nasty Ronnie had the range, he just liked to 'play around' in it. The album still sounds amazing after 25 years, with production that holds up to or exceeds most of the modern wave of retro heavy metal bands that have begun to spring up. The awful logo-art is a legitimate complaint here, especially when placed alongside the more curious abstraction of the following album (and subsequent EP), but as long as you don't judge this book by its cover, you're in for a welcome surprise. Still one of the band's best recordings.

Highlights: No Sympathy, Fear Beyond the Vision, Metal Knights, Dungeon of Pleasure, Instigator

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (turn up the mayhem)

http://www.nastysavage.com/