Live Review: Power Trip, Flaming Wrekage, Shackles

As legends of the thrash scene such as Slayer play farewell tours, attention starts to shift to who will lead the next wave of metal. On the back of their acclaimed Nightmare Logic album, Power Trip are widely considered the reigning princes of a new breed of thrash. Accordingly, it was no surprise to see sold out signs at their debut Sydney show.

Locals Flaming Wrekage took to the task of opening the evening with vigour and enthusiasm. They’ve been carving out a niche for close to a decade now and that experience showed in the balance of pure thrash and more melodic leanings, as they shifted between the two effortlessly.

Shackles took things onto a different level with songs that barely hit two minutes. Played at a lower speed they’d probably be standard length but such is the intensity and top gear approach by the band, they literally hurtle through rapid-fire, grind-core riffs with a drummer that was more machine precision than human metronome. The death/punk vocal approach was a blistered blast of a growl that would have been more effective if it had been better placed in the mix.

If the night had been stepping up in quality with each act, it took a quantum leap forward when Power Trip hit the stage. The clarity and tightness of their playing was on display from the opening pummelling chug. Looking at the band you could pinpoint the various influences of their sound, the hardcore punk of vocalist Riley Gale, the classic metal hinted at by bassist Chris Whetzel’s Judas Priest T-shirt, the '80s thrash vibe of lead guitarist Blake Ibanez. You get all that and more when Power Trip lay waste to a stage and by song two they’d incited a circle pit behind the flailing limbs and stray boots of surfing punters. Crowd favourite Executioner’s Tax (Swing Of The Axe) got an early airing and was a high point of the night, Gale leaning out into the throng, grinning maniacally and leading the anthemic and macabre chorus before making an appeal for weed to help ease the pain of a rolled ankle the previous night in Brisbane.

Divine Apprehension, from their recent retrospective release, was pure thrash chug with wailing cyber solos. Rhythm guitarist Nicky Stewart eyed off the crowd with a menacing raised fist, bared teeth and theatrical intensity when he wasn’t laying down slabs of artillery riffs, the solid base between the rhythm section and Ibanez’s pyrotechnics. Returning for the encore and one final round of chaos, they pulled out Crossbreaker from their debut album before leaving the heaving masses satiated and promising to return to Australia sooner rather than later. Power Trip had prevailed, cementing themselves as the new bastions of hybridised metal.