Power Trip Mean More to Dallas than the Cowboys Ever Did

Photo by Lukas Hodge

Dallas has always been the place you play when you are heading north on 35 after leaving Austin. Over the years, there have been a handful of bands worth their salt, Hagfish, Toadies, and Spasm 151, just to name a few. But recently, almost out of nowhere, a band of slam/metal/ punk hybrids have come up and started destroying the place. Shutting down show spaces and crushing up benzos leaving a wake of bloody noses, ironic t shirt designs, and blown amps. Raised on equal parts Iron Age, Black Flag, Sodom, Triple 6, and The S.U.C (HAWK, DJ SCREW, BIG MOE RIP), Power Trip are, like it or not, the future of hardcore punk.

The first time I saw Power Trip, I was far from impressed. Although the live energy was commendable, to me, the songs were generic and unenthused. It was at an Iron Age record release and at that time, if you played a show with Iron Age, there was no point in watching anyone else because they were too good. So to be fair, I never gave “ The Trip” a fair shake. A couple years later, I got the chance to see them again. It’s ridiculous it took me that long, seeing as they almost weekly seemed to be playing here in Austin, but a prick such as myself can't really be bothered to take in live music unless I’m getting paid dollar, dollar, bills [throws money at camera]. Chaos in Tejas 2012 was a game-changing gig for Power Trip. It gave people in the larger, HardCorePUNKmEtal community the opportunity to see these good ole boys from Texas fucking kill it. It was the first time seeing Power Trip where they finally seemed to be firing on all cylinders. The boys opened up with “Evil Beat” off the group's Armageddon Blues EP and before the first actual riff was played, the outside of Red7 lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. While the stage was lined with the local drug dealer contingent complete with oversized jeans, pockets filled with Marlboro menthol packs stuffed with $20 bags, out in the pit you saw Texas’ displaced youth gearing up for random hardcore kid #3’s next concussion. Much like big brothers Iron Age, Power Trip had been plagued by constant line up changes almost since their inception, but now had finally seemed to fall into the groove. The songs got better and the playing got better. Solos made more sense and breakdowns were in all the right places. Riley Gale wrote words that the kids could not only sing along with but also empathize, all the while rhyming. Seriously his lyrics rhyme.

Riley Gale is a little dude. About a buck-thirty soaking wet. He’s relatively clean cut. He is extremely well-spoken and further more extremely well-read. At first glance, he kinda looks like a fucking dork. He wears Clark shoes and it's confirmed that we own several of the same J. Crew button downs. Riley has North Dallas suburbs written all over him. Needless to say, he is aesthetically as far from what a typical hardcore punk figure as you can get. He attended a Catholic high school and graduated from a good college. Riley is also really, really funny. That being said he is a total degenerate. Riley eats, sleeps, and breathes hardcore punk. His musical interests range from shitty shoegaze to classical. He’s just like Dallas—a bizarre mix of everything specializing on celebrating the ugly things.

I met Riley Gale through Power Trip's roadie, Neighborhood. Neighborhood looks like he could be the fucked up junkie cousin of Harry Styles from One Direction. At the time, “Hood” was working at a tattoo shop in Dallas. He had just gotten a Tupac tattoo , but unfortunately due to circumstances beyond his control, he would soon be covering up because of impending incarceration. A 19-year-old white boy with a Tupac tattoo would be very popular in Huntsville state penitentiary. When I moved back to Dallas a couple years ago, I got to spend a lot of time with Riley and “Hood.” After every encounter, I became more and more interested in Power Trip as a band. When they would invite me over for a house party, I knew I was always in for a treat. It was easy to pick out Riley’s house in the quiet town of Richardson, Texas. The yard was overgrown and you could hear Juicy J mixtapes from down the street. I was not uncommon to approach the front door and get startled by the obligatory rap “ blow horn” or the ever popular” DAMN SON, WHERE’D YOU FIND THISSSS” coming through the front door. You’d walk in and see a giant TV with some first person shooter game on the screen. Immediately next to it was another TV with Sportscenter muted. A series of wraparound couches lined the living room, coffee table overflowing with blunt guts, and stems. Crushed up Xanax residue atop of every CD case. Sitting on the couches were cross section of North Dallas’ youngest and sluttiest scene girls, seapunks, former cheerleaders, drug-dealing whiteboys with Adolf Hitler tattoos and one time even a confirmed prostitute, however, that was at a fourth of July party and it was before noon so it's hard to count. It's not that they partied so hard it's how passionately they did it. Almost like, "Hey, we know we’re from Dallas, so we just have to go a little bit harder.” It was beautiful.

Hood called me up one night, told me Power Trip was playing an indie record store in Dallas called Good Records. Hardcore punk was not the preferred musical styling at Good Records, so I thought, “This is gonna be a party.” See, here’s the thing: Power Trip doesn’t give a fuck about the show. Power Trip doesn’t care if people come or don’t come. They are playing because they want to. They wanna party. Riley wants to see people beat the living shit out of each other and that’s exactly what he gets. What people don’t understand is that every show Power Trip plays, kids are gonna be there and they are gonna be there to destroy the place. Doesn’t matter if it's Kansas or Africa, they make you wanna rage. The songs aren’t about unity. There are no speeches about respecting the space between songs. No one's wearing a Have Heart shirt. It’s just raw aggression. That night, at Good Records, I damn near saw a record shop owner have a coronary. By the first note, you could see on his face that he understood what a terrible mistake he made booking that show. Riley threw a mic stand into the crowd, laying out the first two rows of people during the first song, but that didn’t matter seeing as the venue held about 60 people comfortably and there were a couple hundred people in then building, ready to take their place up front. It was revolving door of people getting carried out holding bloody noses. Hell, even Riley’s little brother jumped off the twelve-foot balcony atop of a sea of hardcore kids murdering each other. Riley had to stop a song and go convince the owner to let his brother back in to which he promptly did the same thing again.

If I had to compare Power Trip to another band, it would be Annihilation Time. Granted, musically there aren’t a lot of similarities, but fundamentally they couldn’t be more similar. When Annihilation Time broke up they left a legacy to be copied (poorly) by legions of awful bands, mostly Europeans. I call it “Tragedy syndrome." Before I saw Power Trip, the wildest sets (outside of Cleveland) were all from Annihilation Time. Jimmy would shove lightsabers up his ass while wearing a surprisingly authentic Indian (feathers) headdress. I’m not gonna say I haven’t seen better. Paintbox for one was better, but that’s beside the point. There is no formula to hardcore. All the best bands form organically. Puke, I know. If you start out trying to sound like another band, that might work out for a while, but until you take all the influences that inspired you and make it something your own, it’s not gonna be worth half a fuck. Annihilation Time after the “golden era” lineup change was never the same. No one who emulated them did it well. The first generation of Power Trip was trying to be Iron Age and that didn’t work either. Then they started doing their own thing and are kicking asses (metaphorically and physically) and breaking hearts (metaphorically and physically) all across America and Europe ever since.

It's been a long standing tradition for Texas bands of all HCPM(hardcorepunkmetal) genres to get the fuck out of Texas as soon as they realize that there’s something more. Specifically, that rings true for the crossover bands like Verbal abuse and MDC. In their defense, Texas is pretty horrible on paper. Impalers’ Mike Sharp, once said in an interview that “the thing about Texas is that it's awful. It's in the middle of fucking nowhere and the weather sucks.” Which is true. Typically, if you grow up here, you jump ship at the first chance you get. Do I love it here? Yes. Would I have loved it having never had the opportunities to travel frequently and see if the grass was truly greener on the other side? Probably not. I get why people leave. Hell, I left. But I really hope Power Trip stays. They are good for the state. They are good for Dallas, a city that I love dearly. At this point, Power Trip means as much to Dallas as the Cowboys ever did and that’s straight blasphemy. FUCK DEZ BRYANT.

Power Trip are playing A389 Festival this weekend. Maybe you'll see Logan Worrell there, losing his shit.