I don’t know much about thrash metal. I bought a copy of Master of Puppets in the fifth grade
after a friend’s older brother turned me on to the record, but my thrash
education stalled there. I eventually heard Reign
in Blood for the first time more than ten years later, and I’ve heard Kill ‘Em All once or twice, but other
than that I still haven’t made it through thrash 101. My metal tastes tend to
run doomier or dronier, at least to the point where I don’t seek out new thrash
records. Seeing the ghastly cover of Manifest
Decimation, painted by Paolo “Madman” Girardi, compelled me to make an
exception with Power Trip’s debut album.[1]
Knowing that the record came out on Southern Lord, home of many of the best
metal bands around right now, definitely helped pique my interest as well.
Power Trip does not disappoint. Throughout a lean
thirty-five minutes, the Dallas band runs through the gamut of eighties thrash
styles. This is admittedly a small gamut, but the band is able to make the most
of a limited framework. Indeed, the best songs on Manifest Decimation are the ones that don’t deviate much from a
thrash circa 1986 blueprint at all: speed; harsh, punky vocals; and shredding
for shredding’s sake. Nearly every song here makes me feel like a Reagan-era
maladjusted teenager in a suburban basement who’s just a little too angry for
Black Flag.
The opening title track begins with an odd introduction of
sci-fi synths setting an ominous mood before it is drowned out by feedback and
some seriously heavy reverbed drums. That intro heralds four songs that are
about as textbook as thrash can come. “Heretic’s Fork” features some screeching
guitar interplay and a chaotic mix, as well as an excellent slower outro that recalls
early Metallica at their most thundering. “Conditioned to Death” gets off to a
draggy start, but the band rights things easily once the Kirk Hammett-esque
riffing kicks into gear. The record peaks with “Murderer’s Row,” with its
hardcore call and response, machine gun drums, dynamic tonal shifts, and
blisteringly fast solos that sound like they were ripped from an outtake from Reign in Blood.
Unfortunately, the band briefly loses its bearings with “Crossbreaker,”
a song on which Power Trip abandons its greatest strengths. The slower pace of
the song should provide a nice break from the mayhem of the rest of the record,
but it derails the momentum instead. Thankfully the band rights itself in time
for “Power Trip,” a song that is basically just Cro-Mags flavored hardcore with
a thrash guitar solo wedged into the middle. After the searing “Power Trip,”
the band stretches out with closer “The Hammer of Doubt.” Over the song’s six
minutes, Power Trip makes a case for how effective they can be with more time
to explore different movements and more varied arrangements than they can
usually cram into a song with half its length.[2]
It’s a powerful finale to a record that stands as a powerful statement of
intent for this rare band that can breathe new life into an old sound.
It’s possible that if I was more familiar with thrash, I
might not like this record as much. It’s not unlikely that the band is just
rehashing the sounds of the past without adding anything of their own. But as a
thrash neophyte, this sounds like a lost artifact from that era, a brutal
dispatch from the horrific world depicted on the cover, with Riley Gale’s
martial bark to usher us through the hellscape. I couldn’t ask for a better
guide.
"Murderer's Row"
"The Hammer of Doubt"
"Heretic's Fork"
[1] It
actually reminds me of something that could have been a cover painting for an
old Vertigo or 2000 A.D. comic book.
[2]
Might they have a Master of Puppets
style prog-thrash record in their future? I wouldn’t turn that down.
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