15 November 30 - December 6, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents T he kid in the wizard hat dives off the stage and disappears into the choppy sea of metalheads below. Devil- horned hands bob in the crimson-lit room as the crowd headbangs in uni- son. A circle pit kicks up again, forming a cy- clone. It’s three days before Halloween in Dal- las, the second night of the annual Wrecking Ball Metal Madness fest at The Echo Lounge & Music Hall. Fugitive, a North Texas crossover-thrash band, has just launched into the final searing cut of its set, “The Javelin.” Hundreds of local metal fans roar in approval. Ask an outsider about Dallas and they’ll probably reference the eponymous classic soap opera, the assassination of then-Presi- dent John F. Kennedy or “America’s Team.” Ask them to describe the music scene, and they might cite greats of the Americana- country-cowpunk varieties: Old 97’s, The Dixie Chicks and Slobberbone, not to men- tion blues guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan. Keep scraping the surface, though, and a black-gold wellspring spews forth: North Texas is home to some of the fiercest heavy music around. A woefully non-encyclopedic history of the scene is sure to leave certain fans cold, but here are some in- disputable highlights: There’s Rigor Mor- tis, the DFW thrash veterans who once landed a Capitol Records deal. There’s Pantera, Arlington’s Cowboys from Hell who forged a foothold in the international metal pantheon. Then, of course, there’s Power Trip. Lead guitarist Blake Ibanez, a founding Power Trip member and veritable maestro of the subversive music scene, has kept busy with his latest band Fugitive. He’s been fea- tured in Guitar World magazine and charged ahead with new music, released to critical acclaim. Ibanez opened up Fugitive’s Fort Worth rehearsal space to the Observer on a punish- ingly hot afternoon in August. It was days before what would have been a major show, performing ahead of arguably the most fa- mous metal band in the world: Metallica. Hellish weather forced the cancellation of Fugitive’s outdoor pre-show gig — tem- peratures were expected to soar to 110 de- grees — but the group still had a set to execute later that same weekend as part of Metalli- ca’s Dallas takeover. Some metal pros might be crushed to learn that their Metallica pre- show had been scrapped. Fugi- tive seems to be taking it in stride as they set up to rehearse, crammed in a snug room lined from floor to ceil- ing with band posters. “Yeah it’s a little disappointing, but it’s like, at the end of the day, you still get to do a lot of cool shit,” Ibanez says. And there was plenty of cool shit ahead for Fugitive, such as an appearance at Wrecking Ball, presented by Dallas death metal giants Frozen Soul, plus a Florida fest in November and a gig in Austin after that. Drummer Lincoln Mullins offers me candy during the interview and earplugs ahead of rehearsal. I accept both. Ibanez counts Texas heavyweights Bitter End and Iron Age as formative influences in his early career. Most of the groups that get lumped into the North Texas metal category have roots in hardcore, he says. The scenes eventually started to merge. “Hardcore and metal have pretty much fused together. It used to be way more seg- mented,” Ibanez says. “It’s a lot more popu- lar, you know, more people going to shows. I mean, the biggest bands in DFW are basi- cally metal bands.” Not bad for a megachurch-stuffed region smack-dab in the Bible Belt. P ower Trip’s Riley Gale repeatedly thrusts the microphone stand in the air like a spear, then sets it down onstage. The vocalist’s baseball cap casts a long shadow over his eyes. Gripping the mic with both hands, discordant tension builds as his bandmates launch into their debut album’s title track, “Manifest Decimation.” “What the fuck is up, Singapore?” Gale snarls. The audience screams back in re- sponse. “We are Power Trip from Dallas, Texas. Let’s go!” It’s Feb. 15, 2020, roughly a month before the COVID-19 pandemic will force count- less shutdowns, quarantines and stay-at- home orders worldwide. Power Trip’s sophomore LP, Nightmare Logic, had been heralded an “international success.” The band had shared stages with patron saints of the underground: Anthrax, Lamb of God, Obituary and Danzig, to name a few. ▼ Music Elijah Smith Fugitive performs at the Wrecking Ball in October. >> p16 Heavy The bands carrying the torch of North Texas metal. By Simone Carter Liftin
