Texan thrashers Power Trip strike again with ‘Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)’, second single from new album ‘Nightmare Logic
‘ (out February 24 through Southern Lord Records). Taking cues from Cro-Mags as much as Sepultura, Sacrilege and Discharge, Power Trip’s crossover thrash assault is as politically-charged as it is musically volatile. Louise Brown plugged herself in, spoke with the band and found ‘Nightmare Logic’ couldn’t have come at a better time…“We’re at the point where we see if this is a band that can be one of the new legacy bands,” frontman Riley Gale tells Terrorizer. “Bands like Slayer aren’t getting any younger. People are sick of hearing over-produced rap and pop music. I think guitar music is going to come back in a big way and a lot of these bands who are going to get bigger and have lasting fanbases are the bands who want to break down those boundaries.”
Coming from the Dallas underground punk scene, Power Trip grew up with hardcore ethics. Their second album is pure thrash metal, but hardcore is never far from their heart.
“Bands like Turnstile,” he says when asked which bands he means, citing the pop punk band on Roadrunner. Speaking of Roadrunner… “Code Orange is another band who does a lot for breaking down genre barriers.”
The barriers that Power Trip want to tear down are not only the ones at the heart of their political lyrics, writing songs that snipe at sexism, racism and religious intolerance, but that of acceptance within the metal scene. They are a metal band, and a punk band. ‘Nightmare Logic’ is the album that sees them bring down the wall between the two.
“We want to bring it back to the ’90s where it was okay for Sick Of It All to tour with Sepultura or have weirder tours and not be questioned about it,” says Riley. “I’ve been saying this for a few years, there was a ceiling for bands before. It felt like bands couldn’t get back a certain level, unless you were a shitty Warped tour band. But now you’ve got us getting a tour with Lamb Of God and Anthrax, you’ve got Code Orange going out with the Deftones, Iron Reagan doing their thing and these are bands that could make a career out of heavy music again. I think it’s because these bands have a message and have ideas and they’re very confident in what they want to be as a band. They’re not easily moulded. We haven’t changed ourselves for anybody and we’re not going to start now.”
The band, who promise to return to Europe as soon as they can, are gearing up to tour the US in March with Iron Reagan. Last year they toured with Napalm Death and Lamb Of God. Their first tour in Europe was with positive hardcore crew, Bane. Put Power Trip on any bill and they will tear it up.
“We’re accepted almost everywhere we go, we’ll play with everybody,” says Riley. “We did a full US tour with Title Fight and Merchandise, who are both very poppy. In the past couple of years we’ve been working toward working with more metal bands and honestly, what’s funny, is it seems, as much of a metal band as we are, the metal world is probably the least tuned into us. We have a lot of fans who are very much punk or hardcore. Doing that Lamb Of God, Anthrax and Deafheaven tour was definitely an eye-opener for us and how much we could appeal to the metal world at large. Some redneck would be, and this is a direct quote, not my choice of words ever, but ‘Real excited for Lamb Of God and Anthrax, let’s get these two f*ggot opening bands out of the way’. Then we would go up there and play and the same guy, after the set, would be waiting at our merch table and be like ‘Man, you guys were the best fucking opening act I have ever seen in my entire life’. That was when we realised we could appeal to metal fans.”
‘Nightmare Logic’, a metal album for metal fans is out on February 24. You can buy ‘Nightmare Logic’ here
You can follow Power Trip on Facebook.
The post Texas Thrashers Power Trip speak with Terrorizer… appeared first on Terrorizer.
