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Power trip returns, reshaped by loss, the thrash metal band finds catharsis in a familiar place.

Evan Minsker

Four years after the death of frontman Riley Gale, Power Trip surprised fans onstage at Mohawk in Austin, featuring a new vocalist. Samantha Tellez/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Four years after the death of frontman Riley Gale, Power Trip surprised fans onstage at Mohawk in Austin, featuring a new vocalist.

The open-air venue Mohawk in Austin, Texas, has an upper deck perch that's perfect for observing the churning cyclone of bodies below. Emotions were high on Dec. 1, 2023: Texas band Fugitive was the headliner, but many in the crowd had a hunch about the promised "special guests." When Power Trip , the crossover thrash metal giants who had been missing in action for four years, finally appeared, there were tears in the pit. Bodies flew from the stage into the torrent of thrashing heads screaming every word of "Executioner's Tax (Swing of the Axe)" in blunt, ecstatic unison. It was a moment of catharsis for a scene that had been in mourning since the shocking 2020 death of the band's lead singer, Riley Gale .

Blake Ibanez, guitarist in both Fugitive and Power Trip, called the decision to bring the band back that night "testing the waters" to see how fans would react. "It was a safe way to do it, because on one hand it's, like, 'Hey, it's just a Fugitive show, and I'm having the guys come up here. We're gonna just celebrate and play the songs,' " he tells NPR on a video call. "I mean, at some point it's gotta happen." This year, Power Trip will play full-length sets at the Pomona, Calif., festival No Values (June 8), in its hometown of Dallas (July 6) and in New York City (Aug. 24).

It's an opportunity for a passionate fan base of hardcore kids and metalheads to celebrate — people who loved the band's boundless energy, how it could wield scream-along pop hooks using the heaviest, scuzziest, most abrasive metal soundscapes. Some at the Mohawk show spoke of it with near-religious reverence. "This is so cliché, but it was the most electric feeling I've felt at a show," said Erica Hotchkiss, a fan from Irving, Texas. She and some friends drove three hours south to Austin to catch the show based on a clue in the flyer: an illustration of an executioner, which is a key piece of iconography from arguably Power Trip's most beloved song . "We didn't know if they were just going to come out and make an announcement. But we knew that we had to be there."

It was fans like this who compelled Power Trip to come back. "They can see we're in it for the right reasons," Ibanez says. "We didn't make any money off Power Trip at that show. We didn't do it for that. We did it for ourselves because we miss playing these songs together, and we did it to celebrate Riley." The full shape of what's next isn't yet defined beyond this handful of shows. Here's what's certain: The band wants to perform the music they put out, across two albums and scattered singles. Gale's family wants them to play. It took years for everyone to get to this point.

The loss of a lyricist and a leader

"It was one of the worst things that happened to me in my life, because Riley was my best friend," says Brandon Gale, Riley's father.

Riley Gale died in his sleep on Aug. 24, 2020, from the toxic effects of fentanyl. He was 34. The band lost its voice and lyricist; the scene lost a leader. Power Trip built its reputation on gleefully chaotic live shows, and those shows wouldn't have been half as powerful without the longhaired figure in a camo hat barking out front about systemic injustice, corporate greed and oppression. Every word was shouted with an authoritative grizzle; he could galvanize a crowd with a single-syllable grunt. "He had very strong messages in there," Brandon Gale emphasizes. "It wasn't just yelling for the sake of yelling on stage. He wanted people to genuinely get engaged in the message."

"Riley, dude, he was just such a force on stage," says Gray Muncy, a photographer from the Dallas-Fort Worth area who estimates he captured over 40 of the band's shows (and somehow never broke a camera in the process). "I've shot so many photos of him, and it was so easy because of his emotion." Whenever Muncy gets a compliment on photos of Power Trip, he credits the chemistry between the band and its audience. "If you go to a really good hardcore show, the crowd is in the band," he said. "There's that symbiotic relationship where they feed off of each other."

Riley Gale, pictured here in 2018 at the Saturn in Birmingham, Ala., could galvanize a crowd with a single-syllable grunt. David A. Smith/Getty Images hide caption

Riley Gale, pictured here in 2018 at the Saturn in Birmingham, Ala., could galvanize a crowd with a single-syllable grunt.

In the wake of his passing, the Gales set up a 501(c)(3) charity called the Riley Gale Foundation in an effort to honor Riley's strong convictions. Brandon Gale says his son was the small guy in school who would stand up to bullies, and that he volunteered in soup kitchens as a young man. The foundation aims to be a continuation of his passions in life: It puts funds toward helping unhoused LGBTQ+ youth in the Dallas area (Riley was a committed supporter of the queer-focused outreach group Dallas Hope Charities), has named a library in his honor (he was a voracious reader) and also donates to a local dog rescue (loved animals).

Gale's friends affirm that on and off the stage, he led with empathy: He was the guy who let touring bands crash at his place, who made himself available to anyone who needed an ear. "With the fans, he wanted to be someone anybody could reach out to and talk to if they were dealing with something in their lives," says Power Trip guitarist Nick Stewart. "He was just such a comforting person when people didn't know where they stood. He felt like he could try to help everybody."

Before Power Trip began, Ibanez described Riley's previous band Balls Out as "the kings of Dallas hardcore." Gale was without a band when Ibanez, Stewart and bassist Chris Whetzel's band Reality Check was beginning to fizzle in the late 2000s. Mutual friends suggested they talk, and soon enough, Gale and Ibanez — then 21 and 16 — started bonding over hardcore bands like Cro-Mags, Breakdown and Leeway over messages on MySpace.

Power Trip's sound was a meeting point between hardcore punk and thrash metal, and in the process of creating it, the band connected with a wide swath of listeners interested in the greater sphere of heavy music. "We know we play a very subversive style of music, but we also want this to be for everyone," says drummer Chris Ulsh. "We want people to feel comfortable at our shows and have a good time. We're the type of band that can play with anyone regardless of if we're playing with indie bands, death metal bands, punk bands, whatever."

Steadily, a community of passionate fans formed around the band. Hotchkiss, who has an executioner tattoo with the caption "swing of the axe," saw the band around 10 times before attending the surprise show in Austin last year. "I'm married to my husband because we ran into each other at a Power Trip show," she said. Hotchkiss was a fan from the Dallas hardcore scene; her husband Kris was a metalhead. Previously acquaintances, they bonded instantly after she saw him in the pit: "Power Trip was our common ground." The date of that show appears on a decorative pillow in their home.

Who could step into Riley's role?

In the months after Gale passed, Ulsh said the band didn't consider or discuss the prospect of keeping the band going "for a really long time." It was 2020, and playing shows wasn't an option due to COVID-19, anyway. But as live music started to return, the band's members were talking on one of their regular FaceTime calls, and Ulsh broached the subject. "I'd never really mentioned it to anyone else and it kind of seemed like no one else had talked about it, but everyone was just like, yeah, we should," he says. "I like being a band with these guys, and we all seemed to feel the same way."

Some of the band's members had been busy with different projects, Ibanez with Fugitive and Ulsh with Quarantine. Still, the idea of these four starting a different band together didn't feel right — like it wouldn't be honest or respectful to their past together. "We put so much into this band and it just kind of seemed like it would be compounding tragedies: losing a close friend and then losing this thing that we dedicated our adult lives to," Ulsh says.

Power Trip in 2024 now includes vocalist Seth Gilmore (far left). He plans to give it his all "to honor the spirit of Riley's memory." Adam Cedillo/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Power Trip in 2024 now includes vocalist Seth Gilmore (far left). He plans to give it his all "to honor the spirit of Riley's memory."

"If anybody's going to step into this role and sing these songs, it'd be someone from our world who has history with us and gets this whole thing and knew Riley," Ibanez says. "The pool for that? I mean, I think it's [not] overstating it to say it's incredibly small. Beyond that, who's actually willing and is capable of doing it?"

Seth Gilmore was the guy, a friend embedded in the Texas hardcore scene for as long as Power Trip existed. As the frontman of Fugitive, he had established chemistry with Ibanez. Initially, he was hesitant. "A year or so after Riley passed, before we even started Fugitive, I may have thrown it his way: 'Hey, would you want to mess around with some of these songs I've been working on, that were actually songs for the Power Trip album that never happened?' " Ibanez recalls. The implication that he'd be standing in for Gale gave him pause, so he dropped it until well after Fugitive had earned the respect of fans. "By the time I brought it up to him again in the past year, at that point he didn't really think twice about it." Gilmore confirmed Ibanez's assessment in a statement, saying he plans to give it his all "to honor the spirit of Riley's memory."

So it was Gilmore barking "Manifest Decimation" and "Hornet's Nest" to the crowd at Mohawk. Gale could never be replaced, but for fans who had just watched a Fugitive set, the consensus was that it was an organic fit. "I personally don't think there's any other person better to fit the bill than Seth," Hotchkiss said. Of course, fans had a hunch he would be the guy. "Even before everybody knew Power Trip was playing that night in Austin, I said, 'Seth, your life's about to change,' and he just smiled," Muncy says.

There was some fallout from that night, too. Brandon Gale issued a statement saying the family was not told in advance about the show and was caught by surprise. He later issued an apology, saying that while he wishes he'd gotten a heads-up from the band, he still regrets the statement. "While it came as a surprise, it was a very visceral reaction and I would certainly undo it," he says.

That one show wasn't the extent of the issues between the band and Brandon Gale, as the statements brought to light a civil lawsuit he'd filed on behalf of Riley's estate on Feb. 10, 2021, against the members of Power Trip. The suit alleged breach of fiduciary duty and claimed the band owed the Gale estate money from merchandise sales, tour revenue and royalties. On Dec. 8, one week after the surprise set in Austin, the case was settled.

"There was an unfortunate need for the litigation," Brandon Gale says. "It was critically important that the foundation received all of the money that Riley was entitled to because that's the primary source, with contributions, of how we build and grow the foundation. It's settled, and what I want to do is focus on the good stuff going forward."

"We probably don't want to comment on that," Ulsh says of the lawsuit. "That was a very difficult and s****y thing that happened that we had to go through. It's behind us now, and we just want to leave it behind us." Ibanez adds: "When something really tragic happens like that, there's a lot of emotions involved. It happens this way with a lot of similar situations, when you have the family of someone who wasn't really involved and is trying to figure everything out and get things together. Yeah, it's behind us. And as everything stands, everything's all right."

Asked about the future of the band, Brandon Gale offered his blessing: "If Power Trip goes out and they start touring again, people are going to buy their music and Riley's going to get his royalties and the foundation's going to grow. So how could we not be in favor of that?"

'We're just taking it one step at a time'

Power Trip is currently resuming rehearsals in Dallas. Ulsh says he's excited to get back to playing for wild crowds instead of repeating the same songs over and over to each other in a practice space. Ibanez is excited to feel the rush again, too: "We were gone from it for so long, and then you get up there and it's like, wow, I forgot we're part of something really special."

Though Ibanez let it slip that Power Trip had been working on a new album before Gale's death, he refused to engage further on the possibility of new music in the future. "The main focus is to play the catalog — that's what people want to hear. I don't think we're really particularly interested in moving on from where we were," Ibanez says. "We really want to honor Riley and want to honor what we've done before just moving forward. That's the main thing, to treat the whole situation with as much respect as possible. ... We're just taking it one step at a time."

While Ulsh, Ibanez and Whetzel all stayed busy in recent years with other bands, Nick Stewart hadn't been back on a stage since Power Trip's last show with Gale. "I'm a civilian — I just book shows and don't have a side project right now. So it's even more reason why I'm excited to do this," Stewart says. "It's been our lives since I graduated high school, so to be able to do it again is really special. I love performing, man; I love getting up there and giving everything I got." As he spoke, his dog began barking in the background. "Sorry, my dog's going crazy. But yeah, excited as my dog right now to get up there and play some shows."

That December night in Austin, Muncy looked around in the pit and saw how many people around him were crying. "When I first thought about them playing, I was, like, 'My friends need this; Texas needs this show, our scene needs this,' " he says. "But then once it happened, I was like, 'You know what? My friends in the band needed that show more than anybody.' Those four dudes, they sacrificed a lot to get where they are. They can't just quit."

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Power Trip Announce 2024 Return, Name Live Vocalist

A few months after reuniting for a brief live set this past December, Power Trip have announced their 2024 live return and named the vocalist they will continue with for these upcoming gigs.

The members of Power Trip — Blake Ibanez, Nick Stewart, Chris Whetzel and Chris Ulsh — played a show in Austin, Texas on Dec. 1 with Seth Gilmore of the bands Skourge and Fugitive. It marked their first live performance since the death of vocalist Riley Gale in August of 2020.

It appears as though the band plans to continue on with Gilmore as their vocalist. In a new post on their Instagram , Power Trip announced their first live show of 2024 will take place at California's No Values festival on June 8. They also alluded to some other shows that will take place later in the year.

The statement reads:

Nearly four years ago to the day, unbeknownst to us, we would perform for the last time as Power Trip. It has been a difficult road since then, marked by deep pain, grief, and everything else that came with losing our brother Riley. We know this can’t be undone, and it will always remain part of us. We have thought deeply about the future of Power Trip and what always comes back to us is that this band was founded on resilience, perseverance, and most importantly: a love for the music and for all of the people it has brought us closer to along the way. We’ll never have the words to convey our appreciation of the enduring support we’ve received over the years, and we feel as though the time is right to get back on stage for all of you who’ve been there throughout our existence as a band. With that, we are excited to announce a round of upcoming 2024 performances starting with  @novaluesfestival  on June 8th in SoCal. Joining us will be our long-time close friend/collaborator, and singer of  @fugitive_tx  /  @skourge713  —Seth Gilmore—who will be handling vocals for these upcoming shows. Stay tuned, more info on the way… Riley Gale Forever. Power Trip Forever. See you in the pit. - Blake, Chris, Nick and Chris

Misfits , Social Distortion , Iggy Pop , Turnstile , Bad Religion , Sublime , The Dillinger Escape Plan , The Damned , Suicidal Tendencies and Black Flag are among the other artists who are set to play the festival.

Check out the post below to see the full lineup.

After Power Trip's December 2023 show with Gilmore, Gale's family issued a statement that they were caught "entirely by surprise," as they were apparently unaware that the remaining members were planning a show together.

READ MORE:  12 Bands That Called It Quits After the Death of a Member

Shortly after, Gale's father clarified the family's comments in a new message, and wrote, "We also would like to specifically appreciate and thank Seth Gilmore. He really put his all into that performance."

"As Riley's dad and the person who wrote the original message, it broke my heart to hear that I got it wrong. I humbly request that you understand the raw emotions we face and how they impact us every day thinking about what the world lost when Riley died," he concluded.

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Watch Power Trip’s Surviving Members Stage Surprise Reunion Set

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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. 

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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).”

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Meet Power Trip, a band determined to wreak havoc with the system

They’ve taken thrash’s template and doused it with filth, and they’re kicking political apathy in the face. Meet Power Trip, a band determined to fuck up the system

The world is going to hell right now. But as society fractures, the one cliché we’ve been told we can rely on is that impending doom and political uncertainty will result in great art. The climate in America is at its most conservative since the original thrash boom raged against Reagan. It’s been a while, but we live in hope that metal is ready to fight against the system once again.

“I was asked about whether metal could be political still,” Power Trip vocalist Riley Gale snorts. “And I think it’s bullshit to say that it couldn’t. It’s always been about going against the grain and pushing the boundaries – not just in music but also in the way we think. But I’m no political science major, I can only try and deconstruct what I think is wrong. I’m more interested in what my songs mean to you! I want to know how what I write affects people.”

Once Riley gets on a roll, he’s almost impossible to stop. Having been front and centre of one of the most explosive and vibrant thrash bands of the past decade, he’s got used to running his mouth at maximum pace. But he has a level of intelligence and intellect that is totally at odds with the lazy, meat-headed metal dude stereotype. In fact, the inspiration for Power Trip’s lyrical standpoint came while Riley was studying English at college around the time of their 2009 Armageddon Blues EP.

“I got into this ‘Intro To Rhetoric’ class with this professor called Dr Kyle Jensen,” explains Riley. “He was the shit, so intelligent, and I just wanted to take every class I could with him. And I was already thinking about the future, accepting the fact that we were going to see World War Three. I knew, even 10 years ago, that we were going to see this huge global change that would redefine what being human is because of technology. I don’t feel comfortable in this environment. My professor really encouraged me to continue that thinking, to take these French post-modern philosophy classes and watch the news every day from many different sources. It really made me realise my place in the world. So every record is about, ‘Oh, the world is fucked!’ I wrote the new one before Trump was even elected! I mean, I didn’t need to change anything!”

Since forming in Texas in 2008, just for, as Riley puts it, “Something cool to do to pass the time”, Power Trip have mutated from a fun hobby to one of the most vital bands around. After releasing a couple of EPs and one excellent full-length album in 2013’s Manifest Decimation , they became hotly tipped in underground circles. But newcomers and existing fans alike have been blown away by latest album Nightmare Logic ’s brand of brutal, warp-speed crossover – it takes everything that Power Trip have done up to this point and makes it hit harder, faster and more often. It’s like a trip through some of heavy music’s most glorious moments; everything from Testament to Agnostic Front to Sepultura to Obituary are represented. If you like your music heavy, harsh and abrasive, and feel that you have been underserved over the last few years, Power Trip have got your back.

“The problem with metal recently has been that it’s either too polished, like Avenged Sevenfold or Five Finger Death Punch, or bands have a gimmick or try to step out of the box just to be different,” says Riley. “The new thrash records are way too polished. I think part of our appeal is that people think we sound old as shit! We still try and have our own sound, but I guess we aren’t reinventing the wheel. It’s a mixture of something modern with an old-school approach.”

The ‘old-school approach’ means being able to cut it live, and, with Power Trip about to head over to our shores with Napalm Death and Brujeria, they’ll need to show their prowess.

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“I always say that if you put us in front of anyone that likes heavy music, they are going to leave liking our band,” Riley confidently predicts. “We toured with Lamb Of God and Anthrax at the end of 2015. We were the opening band and no one knew who we were. So me and Chris [Ulsh], our drummer, would walk through the crowd just before we were due to come on. There would always be some country motherfucker like [adopts Southern drawl], ‘Let’s get these faggot opening bands out the way!’, and then after we’d play, he’d be at our merch stand telling us we were the greatest opening band he’d ever seen. I remember seeing videos of those early thrash and hardcore shows and they looked genuinely dangerous. We want it to be that wild again, no matter how big the venue, no matter where we are on the bill – we want to instigate people losing their minds.”

It all points to a bright future… for Power Trip at least. For society at large? Riley isn’t so sure.

“I’m constantly thinking about the future,” he says. “The song Executioner’s Tax is about people just plugging into technology, eating whatever they want and waiting to die. Just checking out of life and wanting a nice, warm, comfy death. And I’m like, ‘Nah! Fuck that!’ Let’s try and do something about the world if we don’t like it or if we’re really that unhappy. We aren’t meant to sit in some small apartment and wait for The Reaper to show up! I guess a lot of it is because I know I won’t reach old age, or I’ll end up an empty shell of myself. I guess once you accept that, it’s actually quite empowering.”

Despite this attitude, and the disdain Riley has for those currently holding control of the world, there is a message of hope and positivity within Power Trip’s music: they’re not giving up yet, and neither should we.

“We’re honoured to be sharing a stage with a band like Napalm Death,” he tells us. “I look at the way that Barney [Greenway, frontman] talks to people onstage. It’s not just the level of passion and belief he has, but the eloquence and the intelligence and the empathy for his fellow man. That’s inspiring to me. That’s where I aim to be. I’m not there yet, but I believe in the power of the human spirit. I think we can make it through, whatever hell we are about to go through.”

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Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.

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For the surviving members of metal band Power Trip, the Grammys are a bittersweet coda

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On Monday night, just a few weeks after a freak deep freeze brought Texas to the brink of an electric-grid collapse, the surviving members of the Texas metal band Power Trip gathered at guitarist Nick Stewart’s house in Dallas.

The four — Stewart, 32; guitarist Blake Ibanez, 29; drummer Chris Ulsh, 33; and bassist Chris Whetzel, 33 — had spread out across the state and country during the fall and winter surge of the pandemic. They’d hadn’t all been in the same room since the early fall of 2020.

“I just got here like five minutes ago; it’s so strange to me to be seeing these guys for the first time in six or seven months,” said Ulsh, who now lives in Philadelphia.

“It’s been a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it,” Stewart said. “I guess it hasn’t really hit me until right now.”

The last time they were all together was for a funeral. On Aug. 24, Power Trip’s singer, Riley Gale, died at 34, a brutal loss of one of their genre’s most viscerally compelling performers and empathetic songwriters. In a devastating year for music, Gale’s death hit especially hard — a young singer at the height of his powerswho had shared stages with Ozzy Osbourne and Danzig and whose band was poised for stardom.

Although no cause of death has been publicly released (a representative for the group said, “The family has not released the toxicology report to anyone, so Riley’s cause of death cannot be confirmed”), one of metal’s most important and inventive groups of the last decade now has to stare down a future without its singer — and close friend.

Monday’s interview was the first time Power Trip had spoken publicly as a group since Gale’s death.

On Sunday, Power Trip is nominated for its first Grammy, for metal performance, for a version of its song “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe),” released off a surprise live LP in June. For a group that takes its ferocious cues from ’80s thrash and hardcore, the band members are unexpectedly earnest about this potential award. They had huge ambitions as a band, and each said that their peers acknowledging their achievements with Gale would be a truly meaningful coda as they grieve.

“Losing Riley was the saddest thing that ever happened to me,” Ulsh said. “But I’m so proud of everything we accomplished together. One of the coolest things from the start was that there was no ceiling to this band, and this Grammy nomination is a perfect example of that.”

Seven months on from Gale’s death, the band and its peers understandably struggle to talk about what he meant to their lives. “Just heard about Riley. Goddamnit. Sending love to his family and friends and his band,” Anthrax’s Scott Ian wrote on social media after news of Gale’s death broke. Ice-T wrote, “I’m devastated... Still don’t know how... I’m speechless.”

Asked about fond memories of his friend and bandmate, Ulsh took a few beats to try to describe their last days together.

“It still feels very fresh. It’s hard to talk about,” Ulsh said. “We were close. I spent a lot of my downtime on tour with him. It’s still hard to fathom.”

“We’ve never been through anything like this,” Ibanez agreed. “But it’s definitely brought us closer. You’re together all the time, then in the blink of an eye, you know you’ll never see each other again.”

“But this has helped us all realize how much we love each other,” Stewart said.

Power Trip’s members have played together for more than a decade, but even though they released their last studio album, “Nightmare Logic,” in 2017, their worldview seemed perfectly timed to the present moment of public fury and big-picture social critique.

Their music pulls from the hard-riffing roots of Texas metal forebears like Pantera but caught the ear of the tastemaking L.A. metal label Southern Lord. Power Trip arrived at its brand of thrash metal through a lens of basement hardcore punk and fervent prison-reform politics.

Even the most demanding tough-guy metal fans could recognize their sincerity and ability. Gale was not an overtly menacing physical presence onstage, in the way many metal frontmen try to posture. But alongside peers like Code Orange, Turnstile and Oathbreaker, something about Gale’s conviction connected deeply with fans well beyond metal’s typical catharsis.

“Power Trip was the first heavy band I can remember that was universally beloved since, like, Slayer,” said Albert Mudrian, editor of the metal magazine Decibel. “Everybody knew the stars were aligning for them to take the next step. There aren’t many extreme bands who crossed over, who can crack a Billboard top 10. Power Trip were in the position to join them.”

The band was especially attuned to the ongoing movement against police violence. Power Trip’s 2013 song “Conditioned to Death” riffed on Michel Foucault to depict prison’s strangling of human potential. Gale guest-howled on “Point the Finger,” a 2020 single from Ice-T’s metal band Body Count released at the height of the racial justice protests after George Floyd’s death. The band’s song “If Not Us Then Who” quoted civil-rights activist John Lewis.

Even the stampeding licks of “Executioner’s Tax,” an older song now up for a Grammy in a live version, hits harder in light of the roiling demonstrations against police brutality over the last year.

“Death hides behind veiled faces / It only takes one swing and you’re gone,” Gale screamed. “The executioner, the beginning and the end / He carries cold hard steel masked with the taste of medicine.”

Listening to that live recording today “definitely hits home,” Whetzel said. “It takes me right back to that show. It touches me now in a way I wouldn’t have imagined.”

Although the pandemic had already shuttered the band’s world of sweat- and spit-soaked live shows, the group was working on new material and in January 2020 had just thrown the second edition of its hometown festival, Evil Beat, with Deafheaven, Carcass and Torche. Even mainstream outlets like NPR took notice of their rise.

“It’s easy for me to downplay what we accomplished, but the response has been pretty incredible,” Ibanez said. “To get this outpouring of respect and love was very cool. It’s helped a lot. It makes me feel like what we were doing had a purpose.”

Few metal bands take the Grammys as a defining barometer of success. But as Power Trip slowly begins to think about both its legacy and its future (the band has no idea yet what its next steps in music will be: “We do want to continue to play music together; we just are not sure what that looks like at this time,” Ibanez said.), it keeps turning back to its songwriting with Gale and the way the music resonated with fans, those deeply immersed in metal as well as far outside that sphere.

A Dallas LGBTQ transitional-housing center, Dallas Hope Charities, plans to name its new library after Gale, who helped raise thousands in donations and invited its volunteers to set up outreach efforts at Power Trip shows. “If that is something that brings them calm to their anxiety and lets them have that quiet time and that space, that’ll be there for them,” Chief Executive Evie Scrivner told the Dallas Observer, announcing the library after Gale’s death.

“It’s easy for a band to say they’re ‘anti-authoritarian,’ but Riley was looking around and seeing people who were really oppressed; that’s what he reacted to,” Mudrian said. “He wasn’t lamenting his own situation so much as he was listening to the stories of other people. That speaks to a generousness he had as a person.”

All four band members are just beginning to assess what Gale meant to their lives and what their band has meant to metal. But as a valediction for this time in their career, they’re proud that this recording of “Executioner’s Tax” is a testament to Power Trip’s importance to metal, at the Grammys and far beyond.

“I hope we changed people’s perceptions about what a metal band can be,” Ibanez said. “We didn’t have to compromise; we just were who we were, and people respected that about us. I hope that’s how people will remember us.”

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MIA   >  Archive   >  Mandel

Ernest Mandel

De gaulle’s trip to moscow.

Source: From World Outlook , 29 July, 1966, Volume 4, No. 24, Paris and New York City Written: July, 1966 Translated: by World Outlook Transcrition & Marked-up: by David Walters for the Marxists’ Internet Archive 2009. Public Domain: Creative Commons Common Deed . You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.

[The following article has been translated from the July 9 issue of the Belgian left socialist weekly La Gauche.]

“As to alliances, we would think that they ought to be constructed ‘in three stages’: a Franco-Russian treaty procuring a first degree of security; the Anglo-Soviet pact and an agreement to be concluded between France and Great Britain constituting a second degree; the future pact of the United Nations, in which America would be a capital element, crowning the whole and serving as the ultimate recourse.” It was in these terms that Charles de Gaulle in December 1944, at the time of his first trip to Moscow, defined his concepts concerning European security, according to his Memoirs. (Volume III, p. 83, “Livre de Foche” edition.) Many things indicate that he has not changed his mind twenty-two years later. Wasn’t his second trip to Moscow designed to advance this concept?

Those with a more dour outlook will immediately object. The head of the Fifth Republic had something much more Machiavellian in mind. What he is aiming at is the predominance of France in Europe, or at least Western Europe if he is unable to extend it “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”

Since France doesn’t have the necessary economic weight, it must neutralize the drive of German industry through military superiority and diplomatic ruses. Hence it has two interests in common with the Kremlin—to block the Bundeswehr from getting nuclear arms and to break the American grip on “little Europe.” Thus the trip to Moscow was a power play against Washington and Bonn.

No doubt these analysts are right on the long-range aims of the general. But the nature of things is such that the designs of men—no Tatter how imbued with their own “grandeur”—are not at all sufficient to shape the destiny of the world. This is determined by the relationship among the big social forces. More than once in history, the diplomatic maneuvers of a power that was too weak have ended in serving the ‘big ones” despite the best intentions in the world. Didn’t this happen once again with the trip to Moscow?

Thus in the United States, the most cunning, like the servile tools of the (Johnson administration, carefully refrained from denouncing the general. “De Gaulle in Moscow served the United States despite the United States,” said some. ‘He worked for the whole West,’ others said approvingly. In Bonn, after weeks of glacial chill, the barometer of Franco-German relations again points to “fair weather.”

The truth is that de Gaulle, contrary to the groundless fears of some, did not betray his West German class brothers any more than he did his Polish class brothers at the time of his first trip.

In December 1944, Stalin dangled a “good, firm alliance,” real support against the Anglo-Saxons, in return for immediate recognition of the Lublin committee. But de Gaulle was not deceived. This would moan betraying a perhaps ‘democratic’ but certainly bourgeois Poland in behalf of a perhaps despotic but certainly noncapitalist Poland. And he did not want to take responsibility for an act contrary to “honor and honesty.” (Memoirs, Volume III, p sa.)

In June 1966, Brezhnev and Kosygin dangled an offer of just as real support against the United States, even genuine political leadership in Europe. In exchange they asked for recognition of the German Democratic Republic; that is, “of the two German states.” Be Gaulle brusquely replied that there could be no question of recognizing this “artificial construction. And with that rejoinder the serious conversation came to an end. The balance was nothing but decorations and fine talk.

Of course, the differences between Paris and Washington, between Fans and Bonn, are real in relation to the political future of our continent, its relations with the United States and the best strategy to follow to block the rise of the anti-imperialist and anticapitalist forces in the world.

Be Gaulle seeks a Europe freed largely from American supremacy. He seeks an Atlantic alliance on the basis of equality between North America and a Western Europe combined under his guidance. He favors a more supple policy, with regard to the USSR, which in his opinion should be definitively separated from China and the “extremists” among the revolutionists of the Third World, through some indispensable concessions.

He holds that it is necessary to “relax” the tensions to be able to resolve the questions in dispute, such as the reunification of Germany, while the Americans and the Germans of Bonn maintain that without this reunification no real relaxation is possible in Europe. But at bottom, they all defend a common cause—the cause of Big Capital. They all seek to hold back the enemy—socialism and the peoples of the Third World who are rising and seeking to break out of the capitalist world market. They all seek refuge under the “nuclear umbrella” of the Pentagon, without which they cannot counterbalance Soviet military power on the European continent (if anything confirms this, it is the explosion of the ridiculous French nuclear device in Polynesia which amounts to nothing in face of the power of the USSR). The means may differ, the aim is the same.

In this respect the Soviet Union represents something else again. The means are perhaps the same, but the aim is entirely different. Thus treaties on mutual consultation can be concluded—even by means of a direct telephone line!—treaties on technical cooperation, or whatever cultural and commercial exchanges are desired; the fundamental opposition between the interests of the French bourgeoisie and the Soviet leaders will by no means make it possible to form a genuine alliance in the present world context.

The Soviet leaders are aware of the weakness of the present Communist parties in Western Europe (for which they are in part responsible). They are aware of the temporary stabilization of caitalism in this part of the world (which they largely contributed to). From this they draw the conclusion that it is necessary to return to a policy that seeks to ‘exploit the interimperialist contradictions,” as before the second world war. They commit an error in believing that de Gaulle is ready to follow them into a têtei-tête, when he seeks in reality only to increase his power and prestige within the Atlantic Alliance

The French Communist leaders would obviously make a still greater error in concluding that the time has come for an ‘agonizing revision” of their political orientation in France, as in 1935 or 1944.

It is true that the policy of the USSR places them before a cruel dilemma; they no longer know if they should applaud or complain when the Soviet crowds cheer the person who remains, until proved otherwise, the fiercest and most dangerous class enemy of the French workers. If they oppose him, they are tempted to make an alliance with de Gaulle’s pro-American adversaries like Nollet and Nitterrand—and then the capitals of Eastern Europe are not very contented. And if they approve, what remains of their role as an opposition in France? There remains the socialist perspective which stands in complete opposition to the politics of de Gaulle; but the leaders of the French Communist party do not think this is any more “realistic’ than do the Social Democratic leaders of the SF10, or even the technocratic ideologists of neocapitalism.

That will the practical results of the trip amount to? The American Newsweek summarized the situation as follows: “At least he will have succeeded in engaging the Russians in a new diplomatic dialogue with the West.” That puts it in a nutshell. At a time when the intensification of the American aggression against the Vietnamese people makes a public dialogue between Moscow and Washington more difficult, de Gaulle is playing, objectively, the role of go-between for the Atlantic Alliance as a whole Thanks to him, the head of one of the capitalist states in this alliance has been acclaimed by crowds in the Soviet Union. For the first time in many years they have been shown a face of capitalism which their own leaders now say is benevolent, attractive, peaceful, full of good intentions toward the peoples of the world.

Pravda in connection with this trip, talks about an ‘irreversible process.” Let them beware of certain processes, which while still reversible, bode nothing good for the USSR. By attending mass in Leningrad, de Gaulle, like a good politician, was already prepa:ing for his coming trip to Poland. Rumania, ceaselessly increasing its trade with the West, already told the Russians in Bucharest that it would like to see the Warsaw pact modified just as de Gaulle wants to modify NATO. Decidely, if things are in movement, thanks not a little to the general, not everything is stirring in favor of socialism and not everything is stirring against the interests of American imperialism.

Back to the Ernest Mandel Internet Archive

Last updated on 7 February 2009