Salvo Mea

Fancy a roundhouse kick to your jaw after being beaten about the body savagely by an assailant wearing knuckledusters? of course you do, welcome to Power Trip Opening Fire*.

This LP jumped onto my turntable this week as I heard the news that Power Trip are carrying on after the sad death of vocalist Riley Gale; that is a fact worth celebrating. So I went back to brass knuckles tacks and picked out Opening Fire, put together as a ca$h saving exercise for fans compiling Power Trip’s earliest singles and compilation appearances.

Opening Fire brings two things into sharp clarity straight away. Firstly, that Power Trip have always had that bludgeoning hardcore punk element to their sound and secondly that the band and their excellent producer Arthur Rizk refined and concentrated their sound by paring it down, release after release.

The earliest tracks here, the best of which is ‘Suffer No Fool’, sound immense right out of the gate, with a surprising depth of sound for such an indie release. You can hear the sound of Nightmare Logic in the mighty opener ‘Divine Apprehension’ and you can amuse yourself by spotting the frills the band would later learn to trim, sharpening its’ edge. All the shiny metal bits, solos, breakdown sections are here, but the beef behind it all is pure NYHC.

The breakneck Prong cover ‘Brainwave’ is a blast, but the following ‘This World’ just smashes it on home. There is a wonderfully old school metal vibe present on ‘Armageddon Blues’ with a great build into the song itself which then gets slashed to pieces by one of Blake Ibanez’ best riffs; Gale even assays a high-pitched ‘waaaaah’, very out of character! Great stuff.

It’s the bass, courtesy of Chris Whetzel, that bosses ‘Lake Of Fire’, which is the closest the band get here to true DRI-style crossover. Bang that head that doesn’t bang to this. ‘The Evil beat’ does pretty much what you’d expect, given the title. It’s just brilliant, no frills max thrills thrash metal, plenty of chugging groove and gang vocals.

The hardcore ethos is carried over into the subject matter too, no epics about Sauron, or humping orcs here, there are enough real world issues to fuel Power Trip’s (f)ire.

One of my firm favourites here is ‘Questions’, all 1:08 of it. It’s the most enigmatic track on Opening Fire and starts in an unhurried fashion, before finishing leaving you with no answers, but maybe some questions … oh, I see what they did. Normal service is resumed by the flat-out manic metallic ‘Vultures’, drummer Marcus Johnson smashing and then grooving quite masterfully.

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Opening Fire is a great listen, it hangs together really well as a cohesive LP too, with enough variation in sound so as to not to just bludgeon; it slices too.

I am impressed, Power Trip’s basic sound and influences were in place right from the off, a good 9 years before Nightmare Logic was released. There is so much fire and ability on show here, absolutely blowing away anything the big thrashers ever cut this century.

Opening Fire stands as the last instalment of a titanic triptych from the original Power Trip-pers. Here’s to them, let’s hope they can remodel and adapt enough to forge further triumphs.

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My copy of Opening Fire is a fancy pants clear vinyl edition I sourced from the US. It is a really good press of the album too.

Given the slaughter and militarisation in certain areas since this LP was released in 2018 the cover art by Matt Stikker feels a lot less escapist and silly than it did.

1220 Down.

*officially Opening Fire: 2008 – 2014, but quite frankly I don’t have enough pixels for that.