‘special guest’
Dallas thrash act reconvene in Austin for first time since singer Riley Gale’s death in 2020
The surviving members of the Dallas thrash act Power Trip staged a surprise reunion Friday for the first time since the death of the band’s frontman Riley Gale in August 2020.
Fugitive, led by Power Trip guitarist Blake Ibanez, was the headliner Friday at Austin’s Mohawk, though a “special guest” was promised on the gig’s flyer. That ended up being the surviving members of Power Trip — Ibanez, guitarist Nick Stewart, bassist Chris Whetzel, and drummer Chris Ulsh — who took the stage together for a five-song set.
The musicians recruited Fugitive vocalist Seth Gilmore to fill the void left by Gale, who died of an accidental overdose from the toxic effects of fentanyl.
The five-song set featured the band’s “Soul Sacrifice”, “Executioner’s Tax”, “Hornet’s Nest”, “Manifest Decimation” and “Crucifixation,” Blabbermouth reports.
Formed in 2008, the band released two full-length albums on Southern Lord, 2013’s Manifest Decimation and 2017’s Nightmare Logic. The latter made Rolling Stone‘s “20 Best Albums of 2017,” which was noted for “frontman Riley Gale’s ferociously flabbergasted bark: Rather than trading in straight-up rage, he delivers lines like ‘You’re waiting around to die/And I can’t fucking stand it!’ with something approaching bewildered indignation.”
Following Gale’s death, Power Trip went on hiatus and moved on to other projects, but the surviving members did not rule out a reunion someday. “We do want to continue to play music together; we just are not sure what that looks like at this time,” Ibanez told the Los Angeles Times in March 2021, shortly after the group was nominated for a Best Metal Performance Grammy Award for their live rendition of “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe).”