Before Manifest Decimation, Power Trip were one of those groups people said you needed to see live to understand. This isn’t to take away from the EPs and singles they released before this LP, because they contained good songs. It’s just that they were still eclipsed by frontman Riley Gale and company’s whirling dervish stage presence. There’s a reason they’ve toured plenty with their west coast pals, Trash Talk: They play bridge shows, they make liberal use of gang vocals, their fans are very into circle pits, and, hell, they shout out straightedge hardcore bands on their Facebook page. But this debut eight-song collection, their first release for Southern Lord, is such a strong record that you could never see Power Trip live and still understand what makes them special.
The Dallas, Texas, quintet play crossover, i.e., thrash that draws from hardcore punk. The guitars, placed up front, are clean, dexterous, and fast; the vocals and drums, in the back, are draped in sludge and reverb. Those elements will, at times, remind you of the darker side of the old-school thrash spectrum (Slayer), but the spirit of this stuff pulls more from the hardcore scene, like their Astoria forebears Leeway or, on the burlier side, Cro-Mags. Unlike other contemporary thrash bands, Power Trip create a legitimately violent atmosphere, and don’t go around wearing sleeveless jean jackets with the front of their baseball caps turned up. They sound less like they’re here to party, and more like they want to kick your ass.
You could safely say Power Trip are a punk band. Their whiplash fight song, “Power Trip,” includes the lines “We ride as one/We’re ruled by none,” and you believe them. Manifest closer, “The Hammer of Doubt,” was originally out, in different form, on a 2010 compilation called America’s Hardcore. They’ve covered Prong. They could easily cover Black Flag. They remind me of my early days in high school when I was coming out of a steady diet of hardcore and getting into bands like Metallica, D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies, and Anthrax.
The music on Manifest Decimation is bleak, dirty, heavy. It’s also very catchy. At any given moment, Gale can sound like Lemmy fronting Cro-Mags, Discharge, or Exodus. At other times, he locates a grizzlier tone that evokes guys wearing corpsepaint. There are samples about death and Texas from movies like Robocop 2 and Blood Simple. The Italian artist Paolo “Madman” Girardi offers detailed old school apocalyptic metal cover art. The lyrics deal with government and religious suppression like so: “Histories trapped in illusion, who sees through who?/For every mindless vision of who owns the truth/For every one who spoke out, thousands were slain/Torture and bloodshed in the sake of some holy name.” That’s the classic side of things, but while Manifest Decimation does sounds vintage (the chug-chug-chug, the whammy-bar abusing solos), these guys aren’t stuck in 1986.
What helps makes this album great, outside of the excellent riffs and choruses, is the way Power Trip mix in flourishes that place Manifest Decimation firmly in the present. (In that sense, you’ll also think about another Texas band, the now-defunct Iron Age.) There's nothing obvious; it’s little touches, like the weirdo echo effect on Gale’s voice throughout. The album opens with a blast of swirling feedback and ominous synth tones, something threaded throughout the album via brief, almost industrial snippets. The feeling’s picked up in some of those headier vocal effects, too—the phased pan on “Conditioned to Death” (which features some great early Metallica riffing), the disembodied backing vocals on the frantic “Murderer’s Row” (complete with some Slayer-like soloing). It adds to the urgency and intensity, and also sets them apart. That said, none of it would matter if they weren’t writing songs like the swarming title track or the Motörhead-banging “Heretic’s Fork.”
Recently, people who take metal seriously have spent some time talking about whether or not thrash is dead, or if we’re actually in the midst of a thrash revival. Power Trip have found a way to create something new by pulling from the past. In that way, it feels like they exist on both sides of the argument without giving a shit either way.
