After touring with the help of Skourge and Fugitive frontman Seth Gilmore behind the mic, a reunited Power Trip has given fans a chance to honor the talent and legacy of the late Riley Gale. Their powerful crossover thrash played well while on tour with Pantera not too long ago and fan reactions have been positive. But what about a potential for new music?
It turns out, that’s very much in the cards. During an interview withAltars Of Metal,Power Trip guitarist Blake Ibanez revealed that the band is moving on from Gale’s passing by working on new material. It took a long time to get to this point, however, because Ibanez said he had to get okay with the idea of getting in the studio with Gilmore to work on new Power Trip.
“I think I had mentioned to [Gilmore], after Riley passed away, I had talked about, ‘Would you wanna mess around with some of this Power Trip stuff?’ And I think at that point it was so fresh and so new, it was just kind of, like, ‘I don’t know. Maybe down the road.’ And I was, like, ‘Yeah, I get it.’ He’s in a band called Skourge, which is a hardcore band that has some crossover influences, some death metal influence.
“So I’d heard the evolution of his voice and everything in that band. And I think around this time they had done a new EP or something, and his voice — he started to showcase what he could do, his depth to his voice, his range. And I was, like, ‘Whoa. Oh, I didn’t know you could do all that stuff.’ And not just that, but me and him having such a good relationship and him being such a nice guy that’s easy to work with, I was, like, ‘Well, why don’t we just try to write some songs and see what happens?’”
According to Ibanez, one of the things that eased him into the idea of working with Gilmore on new Power Trip was actually their time working on Fugitive together.
“I’ve always been pretty involved when it comes to Power Trip in the studio. I didn’t write anything for Riley, but just me and him having to write songs together, we had to be on the same page and understand how to… He knew what I wanted him to do in terms of where I wanted things to be, and I know the formula and I know how I like to write songs and how we’ve always written songs. And I have some of those instincts as well.
“So I was, like, ‘Well, I’m gonna take what I know from what we’ve always done and what I did with Riley and everything I learned from him and we learned working together, and let’s try to write songs. I think we can do it.’ And so I didn’t know if it was gonna work at all. And then, obviously, we started working together and it was fun. And he’s a talented lyricist and singer in his own right. And there wasn’t the pressure of, ‘We’re making a Power Trip record,’ or something. It’s, like, ‘Let’s just start a new band and have it be different and have it be its own thing.’
“And that kind of just led to playing more shows and bigger shows and having some success with Fugitive out of the gate and building his confidence — playing bigger shows and playing his own songs and songs with me. And I think over a couple years, I think by the next time the Power Trip idea came around, like, ‘Hey, do you wanna try to sing these songs and see what happens?’, he was ready and he was, like, ‘Yeah. Why not? I’m comfortable playing with you, and I feel good with what I’m doing right now. Why don’t we give it a shot?’ And he was down. And he had to be, because it’s a lot to put on your shoulders. And he has a good head on his shoulders.”
With the new material now in the works, Ibanez opted to give fans an idea of what Power Trip sounds like with Gilmore at the helm and how it differs from Gale.
“Of course we’ll always honor him when we can. We are moving forward, we have to focus on the future, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll forget him or not honor him. Of course that’s always gonna be a thing that we’ll do and we’ll try to make sure of. But when it comes to moving forward, we’re gonna write music how we wanna write it.
“Obviously, like I said before, all the things and the elements of the formula that we’ve always had, I wanna try to keep those as much as I can, obviously, but Seth’s a different person, he’s a different singer, he’s a different lyricist. So, is he gonna try to write lyrics exactly like Riley would? Well, I would hope he wouldn’t. Those were Riley’s words, that was his personality.
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in everything and still wanna be in that realm anymore — of course we do — but I don’t write the lyrics, so I can’t really control that. I want Seth to write about what he feels strongly about and what he wants to put his name on and sing every night. So that’s not really for me to decide. I think he’s his own person.
“We all come from the same world musically, and we have similar tastes and everything. We want it to sound like Power Trip, we want it to sound like something we would do. But I would never tell him to write about this or that. Riley, he was always thinking and changing, and I don’t know what he would be writing about in this day and age either. I don’t know what he would wanna talk about. I can’t really speculate on that. He’s not with us anymore, sadly.
“I would feel that would be like trying to fill his shoes, and that doesn’t feel right. I think he deserves that space. I think with Seth, he’s his own guy. He can handle his own thoughts and ideas. I don’t think we would do anything that would, for any reason, go in opposition to anything that he wrote about. But he’s not gonna try to write the same songs or anything like that, so it’ll be something different. But I can’t imagine it’d be anything that people that like us wouldn’t be interested in or be stoked on. But [it’s] not really my call.”