Satan’s Wrath – Galloping Blasphemy Review

Satan’s Wrath // Galloping Blasphemy
Rating: 3.5/5.0 — NECROMETAAAL!!
Label: Metal Blade Records
Websites: Refusing web presence in the name of evil (and kvltness)
Release Dates: EU: 2012.09.21 US: 09.25.2012

So what the hell do you do in those early hours of the morning when Satan’s just the right amount of pissed off and your 13 satanic covens are all self-organizing? It’s obvious, right? You form an abhorrent band, you don your leather, spikes and bullets and you hammer out an album of nine blackened, thrashy, necrometal tracks dripping with sacrificial blood, hailing Lucifer… dah! In sticking to the spirit of ‘true black metal’ Satan’s Wrath refuse to patronize any social media, so very little is known about them other than what I could gleam through detective work. They’re a German band that formed sometime in 2011, consisting of two members – Tas handling vocals, drums and bass and Stamos K on guitars… oh and they may or may not eat babies and other lesser creatures [I hate German food!Steel Druhm]. Seeing Metal Blade Records listed as their label gave me some serious expectations for this album, since they’re home to the likes of Behemoth, Cannibal Corpse, Goatwhore and Vomitory to name just a few. That’s some big company to keep! Well, Satan’s Wrath holds their own as they deliver a melodic, aggressive, thrashy, blackened style of metal that’s reminiscent of the 80’s when death, black and thrash were considered to be one in the same.

“Leonard Rising – Night of the Whip” kicks the album off with a deliciously sick and ominous tone, and for the first minute or so you’re welcomed by the symphonic death throes of a woman while some ominous chanting takes place, no doubt all a part of summoning the Master. According to Satan’s Wrath, the Master has risen and he’s breathing blasphemy and might. Bring it on! From the get go, you notice that Tas has a crushingly heavy, throaty, mightily pleasing hypnotic vocal sound similar to a combination of Tom Gabriel Fischer (Celtic Frost/Triptykon) and Mortuus of Marduk. Musically, Galloping Blasphemy has elements that reminded me of Absu’s Abzu and Zombiefication’s Reaper’s Consecration with just a mere hint of Naglfar’s Sheol thrown in for good measure (wicked combo, right?).

From start to finish the album is a crazy-ass journey of catchy-as-hell, fast-tempo, guitar-driven tracks that consume you just like the red-hot fires of Hell from whence they came. My favorite tracks ended up being “Death to Life” and “Hail Tritone, Hail Lucifer”. “Death to Life” just works on so many levels – the galloping guitar rhythm, the heaviness brought by the interplay between guitar, drums and bass, and just before the untimely end of the track a great guitar riff leaves you wanting mooooore! Besides being a beast of a track, “Hail Tritone, Hail Lucifer” attracted me for a whole different reason – for those that don’t know, the Tritone was once known as the restless interval and was frequently avoided because of its dissonant quality. This dissonance eventually earned the Tritone the nickname diabolus or ‘diabolus in musica’, or ‘the Devil in music’ later this was referenced as ‘mi against fa’ or ‘Satan in music’ – a damn clever track name when you look at it that way! [Madam X teaches music history in a graveyard at midnightSteel Druhm]

The tracks on Galloping Blasphemy flow perfectly from one to the next and there isn’t a single cut out-of-place. I do, however, have a few complaints with regards to the album. The cover art lacks any real imagination and while I get that Satan’s Wrath were going for an album reminiscent of the 80’s, I still think the ‘hey I drew this on my pencil-case’ stereotypical inverted cross and red on black could have amounted to so much more. Also, when put against the likes of Behemoth or Naglfar with their similar lyrical content, the words penned by Satan’s Wrath lack some of the polish, and shall we say, poetic beauty of the aforementioned.

Galloping Blasphemy has viciously clawed its way onto my playlist, and I can see trying to remove it now will just leave a gaping, festering wound in its wake. If you’re a fan of necrometal, Lucifer, or you just want to make any priests in the immediate area ‘vomit in agony,’ buy the damn (damned) album, it’s good, what more do you need to know.

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