POWER TRIP are a five piece band from Dallas, Texas that perfectly blend the glory days of the crossover thrash scene with searing hardcore and have made a name for themselves through their excellent releases as well as building prominence from their intense live shows. Their first full-length for Southern Lord Records is eight tracks of intense circle-pitting thrash with some heavy hardcore leanings.
The album starts off with the maelstrom “Manifest Decimation” full of feedback and effects, creating a nerve wracking preview of the rest of the album. The song kicks in fast and frantic, with vocalist Riley Gale’s angry vocals. “Heretic’s Fork” follows, serving as a perfect and thrashy second track for the album with the unrelenting attack not letting up. “Conditioned To Death” starts out slow, before offering more of their blend of insanity. “Murderer’s Row” continues the attack, offering a brutal mid-tempo assault and a simple yet killer solo that was fantastic.
From the opening track, the production is an immediate standout, with anger soaked vocals and instruments that serve as a perfect pairing of the madness the band perfectly executes on this album. The eight songs on this release are massive pieces of intense music, filled with catchy riffs, ripping solos, booming, bitter sounding vocals, thick bass and punishing drumming that will stay stuck in your head for days after one listen.
“Crossbreaker” kicks off the latter half of the album with a song that sounds like it was recorded in ‘80s and has gang vocals over music that sounds like classic thrash bands and will get you head banging like crazy. “Drown” lands somewhere within that territory as well, with a slow and churning intro leading into the band’s trademark circle pit fury. “Power Trip”, definitely shows the band’s crossover roots as it just pummels everything that stands in its path and would have got me skateboarding like a madman back in high school. The longest song on the album at six and a half minutes, “The Hammer Of Doubt”, starts with some interesting guitar coupled with a movie sample by M. Emmet Walsh from 1984’s BLOOD SIMPLE, and then breaks right into a raging song without mercy and fades out into a quiet finish of relaxing keyboards.
This record takes no prisoners and will have you reaching for the repeat button, assuming you can stop head banging, moshing, skating or whatever you do long enough to accomplish that. It's a standout record that is more than worthy of the still building hype that it continues to accumulate. Grab this, turn it up and go berserk, it’s worth every note that they recorded.
--HarleyTexas
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