Bar the hassle of having to queue on Camden’s high street for an hour, subject to all the annoying passers-by, Thursday night was pretty no-nonsense as far as gigs go: two crossover-thrash acts from two different sides of the pond tearing it up at the Electric Ballroom, namely Dallas’ Power Trip and London’s own Inhuman Nature. Having seen each of them just months prior, I knew what to expect from each of them, and both delivered in a no-frills, no fuss way.
Inhuman Nature stepped up first, vocalist Chris Barling once again inciting chaos with invocations to open up circle pits inbetween the likes of ‘Take Them by Force’, ‘Carnivorous Lunar Activities’, ‘Beyond the Realms of Sanity’, and ‘Dead and Buried’. Notably, bassist Daragh Markham chimed in too, bookending ‘Lines in the Sand II’ with cries of “Free Palestine!” Overall, it was another solid set that maintained the standard I’d seen in previous shows, worthy of a fistbump on the way out.
Headliners Power Trip also maintained the momentum of and the standard set by their support slot for Pantera back in February. The gnarly opening riff for ‘Soul Sacrifice’ easily elicited a mean-mugging headbang from me, the groove and chant of ‘Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)’ was as addictive as ever, and the ‘Hornet’s Nest’ certainly set audiences, and the circle pits therein, abuzz. Other highlights included ‘Drown’, dedicated to late founding vocalist Riley Gale, the finely tuned ‘Heretic’s Fork’, and the pre-encore closer ‘Waiting Around to Die’, which certainly didn’t “fuck with the dead”. However, it was ‘Crossbreaker’, the blistering encore shred of thrashphemy, that left the strongest impact on me, having had it as an earworm since first hearing it earlier in the day—sterling stuff.
In short, despite some pre-gig frustration, Thursday night turned out to be a helluva Trip.
~MRDA~
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