Nasty Savage

Tampa, Florida’s Nasty Savage belonged to the initial wave of American thrash metal acts that, together with Metallica, Anthrax, and Slayer, secured the genre’s earliest underground footholds without ever coming close to matching those bands’ commercial ascent. The group was assembled in 1983 by “Nasty” Ronnie Galetti, a born showman and wrestling devotee whose vision steered Nasty Savage through two 1984 demo tapes—Wage of Mayhem and Raw Mayhem—that circulated widely among tape traders of the period. Those recordings were followed by three-and-a-half melodic thrash releases: the self-titled Nasty Savage in 1985, Indulgence in 1987, the Abstract Reality EP in 1988, and Penetration Point in 1989, after which the band dissolved at decade’s end.

Vocals remained in Galetti’s hands, guitars stayed with Ben Meyer and David Austin, and drums stayed with Curtis Beeson, giving the core quartet unusual continuity, yet the bassist’s chair proved chronically unstable. Fred Dregischan, who played on the debut, departed after a hand injury; Dezso Istvan Bartha, his replacement on the second album, opted for a substantial inheritance over continued membership; Chris Moorhouse, bassist for the EP, later perished in a 1991 automobile accident; and Richard Bateman, who recorded the 1989 swan-song album, suffered the misfortune of appearing on that final release. A decade afterward, the five musicians from that last lineup reconvened for a German festival set, an appearance that prompted the 2004 studio album Psycho Psycho.