Power Trip - Nightmare Logic
The Quietus
“Into the mouth of madness”
The first howl on the new Power Trip full-length was written prophetically as the 2016 primaries battled in and around the band's homestate of Texas. Raised on a punk rock diet, in a college-town where positive hardcore bands played alongside power-violence acts without batting an eye, the outcome of the election was just a dystopian madness that they never imagined. As the album, now mixed, mastered and packaged with artwork from the ever-disturbing Paulo Girardi, filters onto the streets, that nightmare is real. Power Trip, unwittingly, have soundtracked our anger, confusion and desperation in 32 minutes of tormenting thrash metal.
Nightmare Logic builds quickly into an anguished, otherworldly rumble with unsettling, industrialised noise – perhaps the masterstroke of Prurient and Terrorism producer Arthur Rizk who moulds Nightmare Logic from just another retro thrash offering into a shape-shifting, harrowing beast. When the breakdown come in – and by breakdown we mean both musical and philosophical – frontman Riley Gale yelps in genuine pain. There is a menacing groove and fiery fury in the guitars of Blake Ibanez and Nick Stewart, while rhythmically Chris Whetzal and Ulsh pound bass and drums respectively with all the frustration of the socially displaced.
When thrash metal was born out of a collision of hardcore punk and heavy metal in the 1980s it was with a backdrop of similar political vexation. Thrash bands such as Nuclear Assault, Megadeth and Sepultura wrote songs that railed against war, injustice and corruption. As thrash made a welcome revival in the mid-2000s it took on a more lurid palette, drawing on the Troma tropes of toxic mutants and beer-bonging aliens. Power Trip are bringing back alienation, angst and terror to heavy metal at a time it needs it most. Lest not forget that Power Trip started life as a hardcore band, a hardcore band raised on Napalm Death and Metallica on either side of a TDK-60 maybe, but part of a positive outlook, DIY culture that saw them tour Europe for the first time with perky straightedge behemoths Bane. Despite debut 'Manifest Decimation's metallic leanings, and their signing to Sunn O))) overlord Greg Anderson's Southern Lord label as part of his mopping up of any new band that sounded like they could soundtrack the downfall of man, Power Trip were sorely ignored by the metal masses. Nightmare Logic looks to right that wrong. It's their revenge.
But at the heart of Nightmare Logic is not an anger at being judged too harshly, it's at home where they direct all their ire. The album is unashamedly outspoken on topics that have been distant from the centre of heavy metal – and the band are not afraid of taking their music to the core of a scene they see failing its fans when it comes to message-driven music. Whether it's a tirade against fanatical Christians on 'Soul Sacrifice' or 'Crucifixation', criticising social apathy on 'Executioner's Tax' or 'Waiting To Die' or a cry for revolt on 'Firing Squad' and 'Ruination', Gale's lyrics are a call to action, backed by relentless, crushing thrash metal. This is no retro throwback, Power Trip have poured their genuine, obsessive love of early thrash, but also Cro-Mags, Prong and Black Flag to create a boiling pot of modern metal mastery. When people look back on 2017, with all its disorientation, Nightmare Logic will be remembered for being both its salve and its solution.
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Wed Mar 08 12:01:27 GMT 2017Pitchfork 84
No one throws a party like Power Trip. In the years since their 2008 inception, the Dallas crossover quintet has come to embody the platonic ideal of heavy metal escapism, in person and on record. Genre boundaries get blown to smithereens during their rambunctious, pretension-free concerts; they’ll play with anyone who’s willing to get noisy, be it New Orleans bounce queen Big Freedia, moody post-punk outfit Merchandise, or black metal darlings Deafheaven. Power Trip’s excellent debut album, 2013’s Manifest Decimation, further solidified this reputation by translating their live ferocity to wax. One album on, nine years in, Power Trip have mastered the rager. They now turn their focus to widespread revelry with Nightmare Logic—a mission that goes off with a big, beautiful bang.
Nightmare Logic doesn’t find Power Trip making any significant shifts to the no-holds-barred approach they showcased so powerfully on their debut. It’s an LP crafted in its predecessor’s literal spitting image, from the proliferative gang vocals and thrash beatdowns right down to the eight-track runtime and gory old-school artwork. Frontman Riley Gale still huffs, puffs, and howls like a rabid wolf, a feral intermediary through which the band issues blistering, occasionally loony indictments of corrupt politicians (“Ruination”) and greedy, polluting CEOs (“If Not Us Then Who”). Gale’s bandmates match these screeds with litanies of their own: particularly guitarist Blake Ibanez, a hardcore titan (and occasional shoegazer) whose slithering riffs incessantly run amok. Even the audience can’t escape Power Trip’s leaden censure. On “Waiting Around to Die,” Gale delivers this sputtering, incendiary pep talk with a rage so palpable you can almost feel it shaking you by the shoulders: “You’re waiting around to die, how can you live with it?/Just waiting around to die, AND I CAN’T FUCKING STAND IT!!!”
Thrash has always been a goofy genre with a morbid sense of humor: a direct consequence of the genre’s primordial days in the Reagan era, when trolling the silent majority doubled as a pre-eminent past-time and a form of protest. Like their peers Iron Reagan and Skeletonwitch, Power Trip view the impending apocalypse as a cause for celebration, powered by schadenfreude. Evangelical Christians are treated to particularly hilarious roastings. “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe),” the album’s best song, sees Gale calling the bluff of all those Bible-Belters who’d so passionately pleaded for the arrival of the man upstairs, only to come face-to-face with the titular killer-for-hire when the End of Days finally arrives. “You’ve prayed for so long, and now you have your chance/The executioner’s here, and he’s sharpening his axe!”
Power Trip’s new attention to detail pushes Nightmare Logic over the edge. It’s abundantly clear that they’ve spent hours at the dissection table with Manifest Decimation, amplifying—but not recycling—its best hooks and theatrics, trimming off the static scar tissue. They’ve chopped a few seconds of extraneous riffing here, a repeated breakdown there; it’s an impressive operation, considering their debut was plenty lean and mean. The nit-picking pays off, as Nightmare Logic outmatches the preceding LP across all verticals, from cohesion and catchiness to impact and atmosphere.
The band’s secret weapon remains producer and Sumerlands guitarist Arthur Rizk, or as I like to call him, the Ariel Rechtshaid of heavy music; Code Orange’s Forever and Prurient’s Frozen Niagara Falls are just two of the bevy of ambitious records he’s worked on. A master of dynamic contrast and sonic feints, Rizk’s the textbook definition of a board-wizard. Under his command, Ibanez’s already-huge tremolo riffs on “Executioner’s Tax”, “Firing Squad,” and the title track become hulking, like a stampede of hellish racehorses against the thundering backbeat. Meanwhile, in the back of the mix, the rhythm section ebbs and flows to accommodate the axework, ensuring sustained impact and easy passage from one ripper to the next. Rizk again runs Gale’s yelps through a heap of effects, rendering every syllable an echo-laden boom from on high. And in spite of its sheer heft, Rizk makes Nightmare Logic a crisp, nuanced listen; like the band themselves, he strikes a rare balance between modern intricacy and old-school aggression, nodding to tradition without over-relying on tropes.
You don’t need to be a metalhead to have a blast with Nightmare Logic. Screamed sardonics, persistent chug, and apocalyptic melodrama are all acquired tastes, sure. But Power Trip’s fist-pumping choruses, ricocheting grooves, and ample charm are so animated that they leave us with something addictive and, well, fun. Just like Metallica, the Texans pitch a big tent, where the only prerequisite for entry is a willingness to splash around in the bloodbath for half an hour. With Nightmare Logic, there’s a good chance you’ll stick around for a good, long soak.
Wed Mar 01 06:00:00 GMT 2017