Thirty two minutes from Dallas that got reviewed by publications which do not acknowledge metal exists, made by a band who came out of hardcore and had no interest in saluting 1986. It is the last great thrash record and the argument about whether that phrase is fair is worth having.
Where they came from
Dallas, formed 2008, out of the hardcore scene rather than the metal one. That matters: the band toured hardcore venues, played hardcore festivals and had a hardcore audience before the metal press noticed them, which is precisely how the original crossover bands operated.
Manifest Decimation in 2013 is the first album: murkier, drenched in reverb, and already carrying the thing that made them different, which is Riley Gale's voice.
The voice
Gale did not sound like a thrash singer. There is no attempt at Araya's flat declamation or Baloff's bark; the delivery comes from hardcore, forward and furious and completely present, and it carries a personality rather than a persona.
That is a large part of why the record reached people outside the genre. A listener with no investment in thrash hears a man saying something rather than a singer performing a style.
Nightmare Logic
Released in February 2017 on Southern Lord, and it is eight songs and thirty two minutes with nothing wasted. The production is dry and heavy without being retro, the riffs are genuinely written rather than assembled from familiar parts, and the whole thing moves.
What separates it from the revival bands is that the lyrics are about the present: precarity, surveillance, the specific texture of being young and broke in 2017. It uses the form to say something current, which is exactly what the 1986 records were doing and exactly what most of the retro wave was not.
What happened
Riley Gale died on 24 August 2020, at thirty four. The band have not continued and have said they will not.
What he left, besides the records, is a reputation in the scene as somebody who used the platform: he was involved in local causes in Dallas, he was explicit about who was and was not welcome at the shows, and the tributes after his death came from well outside metal.
| Release | Year | Label | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Armageddon Blues EP | 2009 | Self released | Hardcore, with the direction visible |
| Manifest Decimation | 2013 | Southern Lord | Murky, reverb heavy, already theirs |
| Nightmare Logic | 2017 | Southern Lord | The record |
| Live in Seattle | 2020 | Dark Operative | Released three months before Gale died |
The claim
Is it the last great thrash record? The argument for is that nothing since has done what it did, which is to make the form matter to people who did not already care about it, and to be reviewed on its own terms rather than as a revival.
The argument against is that thirty years is not long enough to know, and that plenty of good records have come out since. Both are fair. What is not arguable is that Nightmare Logic settled the question of whether this music could still be made rather than merely reproduced.
Why it worked
Three reasons, and they are the same three that made the 1986 records work.
It came from a scene rather than from a revival: Dallas hardcore, with a real audience and real rooms. It had something to say that was not about the past. And it was short, dry and played with total commitment by people who could hold the tempo.
None of that is a formula anybody can follow, and it is a reasonable description of what this genre requires when it is working.
The adjacent corner where thrash met a completely different tradition is Blackened Thrash, and the wider account is in The Fall and the Revival.
How it was made
Recorded with Arthur Rizk, who has since produced a substantial proportion of the interesting heavy records of the last decade, and the production is a large part of why the album works.
It is dry and close in the way the 1986 records were, but it is not a period pastiche: the low end is modern, the drums have weight that a 1986 mix could not achieve, and nothing is trying to sound like it was recorded on eight tracks. That combination, contemporary production applied to a form that usually gets retro production, is unusual and it is a substantial part of why the record reached listeners who would have bounced off a deliberate throwback.
What it did to the scene
It moved the goalposts. Before Nightmare Logic the question about a modern thrash band was whether it could execute the form convincingly; afterwards it was whether the band had anything to say.
That is a considerably harder standard and it has been good for the music. The bands who have emerged since are noticeably less interested in the aesthetics of 1986 and more interested in using the form for something, which is exactly what the founding generation did and what the revival mostly did not.
Where to start
With Nightmare Logic, obviously, and give it the full thirty two minutes in one sitting because it is sequenced. Then Manifest Decimation, which is murkier and rewards the second visit more than the first.
Then the live album from 2020, which was released three months before Gale died and captures what the band were actually like in a room, which by every account was the point of them.
The hardcore inheritance
One more thing that separates this record from everything around it. Power Trip's rhythmic instincts come from hardcore rather than from metal, and it shows in the arrangements.
The songs are built around a small number of ideas repeated with total conviction rather than around a sequence of six riffs. There are breakdowns where a thrash band would put a solo. And the whole record is written for a room, in the way a hardcore record is, which is why it works live in a way that a lot of technically superior thrash does not.
That is the crossover trade made for the third time, and it produced the best record either side of it has managed in thirty years.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original releases. Riley Gale died on 24 August 2020.
