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Power Trip Nightmare Logic Louise Brown , March 8th, 2017 12:40

The first howl on the new Power Trip full-length was written prophetically as the 2016 primaries battled in and around the band's homestate of Texas. Raised on a punk rock diet, in a college-town where positive hardcore bands played alongside power-violence acts without batting an eye, the outcome of the election was just a dystopian madness that they never imagined. As the album, now mixed, mastered and packaged with artwork from the ever-disturbing Paulo Girardi, filters onto the streets, that nightmare is real. Power Trip, unwittingly, have soundtracked our anger, confusion and desperation in 32 minutes of tormenting thrash metal.

Nightmare Logic builds quickly into an anguished, otherworldly rumble with unsettling, industrialised noise – perhaps the masterstroke of Prurient and Terrorism producer Arthur Rizk who moulds Nightmare Logic from just another retro thrash offering into a shape-shifting, harrowing beast. When the breakdown come in – and by breakdown we mean both musical and philosophical – frontman Riley Gale yelps in genuine pain. There is a menacing groove and fiery fury in the guitars of Blake Ibanez and Nick Stewart, while rhythmically Chris Whetzal and Ulsh pound bass and drums respectively with all the frustration of the socially displaced.

When thrash metal was born out of a collision of hardcore punk and heavy metal in the 1980s it was with a backdrop of similar political vexation. Thrash bands such as Nuclear Assault, Megadeth and Sepultura wrote songs that railed against war, injustice and corruption. As thrash made a welcome revival in the mid-2000s it took on a more lurid palette, drawing on the Troma tropes of toxic mutants and beer-bonging aliens. Power Trip are bringing back alienation, angst and terror to heavy metal at a time it needs it most. Lest not forget that Power Trip started life as a hardcore band, a hardcore band raised on Napalm Death and Metallica on either side of a TDK-60 maybe, but part of a positive outlook, DIY culture that saw them tour Europe for the first time with perky straightedge behemoths Bane. Despite debut 'Manifest Decimation's metallic leanings, and their signing to Sunn O))) overlord Greg Anderson's Southern Lord label as part of his mopping up of any new band that sounded like they could soundtrack the downfall of man, Power Trip were sorely ignored by the metal masses. Nightmare Logic looks to right that wrong. It's their revenge.

But at the heart of Nightmare Logic is not an anger at being judged too harshly, it's at home where they direct all their ire. The album is unashamedly outspoken on topics that have been distant from the centre of heavy metal – and the band are not afraid of taking their music to the core of a scene they see failing its fans when it comes to message-driven music. Whether it's a tirade against fanatical Christians on 'Soul Sacrifice' or 'Crucifixation', criticising social apathy on 'Executioner's Tax' or 'Waiting To Die' or a cry for revolt on 'Firing Squad' and 'Ruination', Gale's lyrics are a call to action, backed by relentless, crushing thrash metal. This is no retro throwback, Power Trip have poured their genuine, obsessive love of early thrash, but also Cro-Mags, Prong and Black Flag to create a boiling pot of modern metal mastery. When people look back on 2017, with all its disorientation, Nightmare Logic will be remembered for being both its salve and its solution.

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Power Trip – Nightmare Logic Review

I’ll be honest with you, thrash is the reason I picked up the guitar, stood before a mic, and threw angry saliva at the lone spectator at the foot of the stage. Thrash is why I’m a metalhead and thrash is why I’m here before you. Sure, my tastes have evolved quite a bit since those pimple-faced days, but a monster like Power Trip brings the memories flooding back. Yes, Power Trip reminds me of the good ole days, which means it’s a re-/neo-/retro-thrash outfit that does it the way it’s always been. But, man, they do it well. And, with Nightmare Logic , they’ve done it better than they’ve ever done it before.

For one, Riley Gale’s vocals are a harsher rendition of the Bloodclot ( Cro-Mags )/Killian ( Vio-lence ) approach he took on their debut album, Manifest Decimation . It’s a perfect fit to the barrage of chugging, fast-picked guitars that fill this thirty-minute record from beginning to end. And the beginning is where, well… we begin. “Soul Sacrifice” is a neck-snapping number that starts from nothing, huffing and puffing harder than the world’s largest diesel engine. It even sports a build that climaxes into “Raining Blood” proportions. But Nightmare Logic doesn’t stop here. The conclusion to “Soul Sacrifice” is only the beginning of “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe).” If you’ve heard the debut album from these Texas boys, I know you’ll remember “Crossbreaker.” “Executioner’s Tax” is that song’s illegitimate step-child. Do you want a song that charges the tallest castle walls on the planet (no matter the futility) and comes at you like a possessed, axe-wielding ape? Well, this is it. “Swing of the axe!” will be stuck in your head for a week.

For memorability, the title track, “Ruination,” and “Crucifixation” are on par with the previous two. Comparing extremes, the three-minute, testicle-stomping “Ruination” does its damnedest to match wits with the five-minute closer, “Crucifixation.” What the former lacks in time, it makes up for in catchiness—almost to the level of “Executioner’s Tax.” The closer is the lengthiest on the album, but the time it has for riff changes gives it a memorability “Ruination” can never have. In comparison to these tracks, “Nightmare Logic” and “If Not Us Then Who” fall a touch short, but what makes them work are the vocals. The riffs are still there, but Gale’s venom and his verse arrangements give them the kind of fuel to propel space shuttles.

As you can probably guess, I love this damn album. Yes, “love.” Nope, I didn’t give it a 4.0/5.0, but I still love it. Fucking deal with it. I have to admit I’m a little biased by the fun Power Trip and I had back at the Southwest Terror Fest , but this album is nothing more than in-your-face rethrash. It has an energy few retro-thrash bands are capable of capturing and I put it up there with the Havok s and Warbringer s of the world. In the end, this is an enjoyable listen that smashes the band’s previous release into oblivion. It’ll also smash your eardrums into your skull. If you’re one of those people that hates thrash, I’m sure you can find some metalcore to appease your sad hearts. For all the thrashers of the world, you oughta have fun with this one.

Rating: Good! DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 128 kbps mp3 Label: Southern Lord Recordings Websites: facebook.com/powertripTX Releases Worldwide: February 24th, 2017

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Album Review: POWER TRIP Nightmare Logic

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Power Trip – Nightmare Logic – Album Review

Posted on March 11, 2017 by Chris Jennings in Reviews

Now this is how you deliver a crossover thrash record in 2017! Power Trip’s Nightmare Logic is one mean mutha of an album, hyped up on hardcore’s rancour and thrash metal’s speed and precision and it’s simply a joy to behold. Frankly, we thought album’s like this would not (could not) materialise this late in the game…..how wrong we were!

Opening up with the S.O.D-esque stomp of “Soul Sacrifice”, Riley Gales’s feral howl brings everything to life as Power Trip unleash all hell in the name of crossover thrash! Frankly, each track crushes all in its path, never dipping in intensity, never delivering anything but the most spine-splintering selection of chugging riffs and Kerry King inspired solos. It’s all fuckin’ marvellous!

This certainly ain’t no lightweight, jokey thrash album either. Power Trip are a serious enterprise and this album has something to say, with some hefty weight behind both the music and the message. Fashioning some sense of logic out of the nightmarish world of conformity and nanny-state politics we’re currently living in, Nightmare Logic tries to makes sense of this fever dream known as reality and come out the other side; bruised, battered but belligerently in control of our own destiny. That’s an alternative manifest right there!

Speaking of alternative manifest’s….Power Trip’s debut, Manifest Decimation , was fuckin’ great but Nightmare Logic is absolutely outstanding. Crossover thrash has found its new leaders in the formidable shape of Power Trip!

Check. This. Lot. Out. Now! 9/10

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Review: Power Trip ‘Live In Seattle’

Of all the horrible things that happened in 2020, right near the top if you’re a metal fan, was the death of Power Trip vocalist Riley Gale . Hailing from Dallas, Texas, they vaulted to the echelons of the next generation of thrash, and underground heavy in general, and were knocking on the door for much bigger things on the strength of their first two, absolutely ferocious, albums; 2013s Manifest Decimation and 2017s breakthrough Nightmare Logic .

Both albums, in addition to their 2018 compilation Opening Fire: 2008-2014 , demonstrated Power Trip ’s uncanny ability to seemingly effortlessly conjure up the nastiest of vibes of the first wave of thrash and crossover, complete with untouchable riffs and vicious energy, but presented in a modern context. Gale was at the epicenter of the band’s energy, a sweatpants-wearing, modern throwback to the late ‘80s crossover thrash scene, but brimming with Texas attitude, all the while possessing a savage thrash bark, wherein he completely commanded the stage with his voice and presence. His death, especially right at a very pivotal point for Power Trip , annihilated any momentum they had accumulated professionally, to say nothing of the personal devastation of losing a close friend and bandmate that they had shared so much with.

It is under these circumstances that the remaining member of Power Trip , lead guitarist Blake Ibanez , rhythm guitarist Nick Stewart , bassist Chris Whetzel and drummer Chris Ulsh dipped into the vault for the first release since Gale ’s untimely passing, one might guess there will be more. Recorded at Neumo ’s (a place I know well) on the 28th May 2018, Live In Seattle puts on vivid display Power Trip ’s merciless live show, and showcases Gale ’s stage presence and ruthless thrash bark. Featuring a career-spanning setlist with songs being almost evenly split between Manifest Decimation and Nightmare Logic , with a few old-school, deep cuts thrown in to appease the longtime fans, namely Suffer No Fool and Divine Apprehension , both are absolutely smoking in a live setting and first appeared alongside each other on their 2011 self-titled EP.

The main riff from Soul Sacrifice is already full of crawling malevolence, but on this live recording, it’s positively crushing. Ibanez and Stewart ’s riffs can be felt through the speakers, and when Ibanez unleashes some of his blazing lead work, the audience is laid to waste. Power Trip ’s biggest ‘hit’ Executioner’s Tax is a massive, chugging, thrash monster, all the while Gale does his best to get the Seattle crowd absolutely crazed, as well as admonishing those in for being on their phones. Staring at one’s phone is not something that goes unnoticed at a Power Trip show as the crowd is either in full headbang mode or caught up in a circle pit. Gale ’s feelings towards organized religion are pounded home with Crucifixation sounding equally punishing, the frontman again shows his personality and command viciously barking at the crowd ‘bang your fucking heads’ , as if they need more motivation to do so.

Live In Seattle puts on vivid display Power Trip’s merciless live show…

We get back-to-back rippers from Manifest Decimation with Heretic’s Fork , which is absolutely blazing, the palm-muted, chugging riffage sounding as crisp and menacing as any metal fan could want, followed the pounding bass drum intro of Conditioned To Death in which Gale again is instructing the crowd to get the circle pits going, as Power Trip put on a clinic in aggressive thrash riffing, to say nothing of the blazing shred. Firing Squad is a total face-melt giving way to the frenzied riffing of the penultimate Manifest Decimation , in which one can literally feel the menace and aggression from the riffing and rhythm assault along with the vocal threat pouring from the speakers. Fucking crushing stuff. The set closes with more ire towards organized religion with the intimidating riffage and ‘80s thrash chug of Crossbreaker in which the bass is literally felt in the listener’s chest backed up by the vicious yet catchy riffing.

Live In Seattle is an uncompromising testament to the sheer ferocity and talent that is Power Trip ’s take on heavy thrash. The setlist is killer, the execution and tone of the songs practically peerless, as well as the songwriting itself, which are all things that helped separate them from the glut of mid-aughts thrash revivalist bands. This live recording is also a wicked, posthumous, example of Gale ’s powers as a thrash metal frontman.

He didn’t possess a mega-wailing metal voice, but his bark and delivery are so convincing and full of menace that he had quickly ascended to the point of being one of the best underground frontmen on earth. His on-stage high kicks whilst rocking Obituary sweatpants at the perfect downbeat or solo are the stuff of legends in the 2010s. I also found the album to be a slightly depressing listen as all the potential Power Trip wielded is on bright display, and one can’t help but wonder what might have been had Gale lived. Nonetheless, this is an excellent document of the sheer power, ferocity and skill they possessed.

A melancholic reminder of a band that I most certainly miss – RIP Riley Gale .

Label: Southern Lord Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Twitter | Instagram

Scribed by: Martin Williams

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Album Review: Power Trip – Live in Seattle

July 7, 2023

Coming up on three years since the unfortunate passing of Power Trip’s singer Riley Gale—who died at the young age of 33—the band decided to dig into their vault to leave fans with a gift: Live In Seattle. Recorded on May 28, 2018, the live album captures the raw energy and crackling emotion of the Dallas-based band at the top of their game. Live in Seattle is both a love letter to the late and great Riley Gale and to fans old and new—who perhaps didn’t get the opportunity to see the formidable band live.

The album—and show—kicks off with “Drown.” Short and sweet, the opener leaves listeners wanting more as Gale mercilessly attacks with his fearsome vocals. The song ends with him welcoming the crowd to their show. “Divine Apprehension” follows next with its screaming—nay shrieking—guitars. In fact, the screeching guitars juxtapose nicely with Gale’s growls. Power Trip, as fans will know, heavily critique organized religion and the lyrics of “Divine Apprehension” is no different. “It’s a fine line between faith and ignorance. You cross that line, and then you piss all over it.” This common theme prevails throughout the entire record. Dedicated to those who haven’t seen Power Trip live before, “Suffer No Fool” calls fans to action, of course referencing a Bible verse in the process.

“Soul Sacrifice” showcases Blake Ibanez’s impeccable guitar solos, taking inspiration from his influences, specifically the Stone Roses. Without pause, the band launches directly into “Executioner’s Tax.” Gale spits venom while singing “Death hides behind veiled faces. It only takes one swing and you’re gone.” Another highlight of the song is getting to hear Chris Ulsh’s impressive drum fills—indicative of a high level of mastery.

Ingeniously combined by the words “fixation” and “Crucifiction,” “Crucifixation” speaks about getting too caught up in your spirituality. With its punishing tempo and Metallica-like riffs, “Crucifixation” exists as one of the highlights of the record. “For every one who spoke out, thousands were slain. Torture and bloodshed in the sake of some holy name,” Gale yells during “Heretic’s Fork.”

Before starting the last couple of songs, Gale addresses the crowd. “These songs are dedicated to anyone in attendance who has ever lost somebody,” he pauses. “This a slow song,” he finishes wryly. Immediately, “Firing Squad” blasts into being with its breakneck tempo that sounds as if it’s in double-time.

One critique of the album occurs during the transition between “Firing Squad” and “Manifest Decimation.” Audio from the end of the first song appears in the latter, repeating the same vocals and instrumentals over again. Despite this small mixing error, “Manifest Decimation” still triumphs, as the band perform an extended breakdown full of rich structure and aggression. The album comes to a close with the “midnight snack,” “Crossbreaker,” leaving listeners in want of more.

Live in Seattle spotlights just how massively crucial Power Trip is to the scene. Gale never wasted a single syllable, designating a specific intention to each and every word and this album is a perfect example to his testament to music. Though it’s uncertain if the band will have any more future releases—whether it be live albums, old recordings, or even new releases— Live in Seattle acts as a beautiful swan song for the band, capturing and preserving them at their peak forever.

Live in Seattle can be streamed on Power Trip’s bandcamp here.

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Album Review: Power Trip – Live In Seattle

Album Review: Power Trip - Live In Seattle Reviewed by Neil Bolton

Power Trip are now an established name in our world, and to be honest have very little to prove anymore. Most metal heads are now familiar with their no nonsense crossover thrash, and their name is often spoke alongside the big hitters of metal. With this it is very welcome that Power Trip have decided to join Metallica, Mr Benante and others in providing some free furloughed lockdown entertainment.

'Live in Seattle' was recorded at Neumos on their tour with Sheer Mag, Red Death and Fury. The date was 28/05/18 and it was mixed by front of house engineer Zachary Rippy of signal Sounds Audio.

After the brief intro of 'Drown' which already contains bone crunching riffs, Seattle is welcomed into the show and we dive immediately into 'Divine Apprehension'. Images of a manic circle pit are already in the mind’s eye long before Riley Gale requests one. Their thrash metal, with a hint of the punk cross over, scratches an itch many thrash metal fans have been carrying for a while.

And the soothing abrasive relief continues throughout.

'Soul Sacrifice' from the album 'Nightmare Logic' released in 2018 rips and pummels just as precisely as the studio version. It leads straight into the world class 'Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)'. Riley orders the crowd to save themselves for the correct moment to loose it. With out visuals I can only assume he fails as you have to be strong willed not to loose it when that chord rips through the air.

After more lessons on how to thrash we go back a little in time a little for 'Heretic’s Fork' from 2013’s 'Manifest Decimation'. A slightly older track that still sounds fresh and sharp.

In fact every single note and vocal recorded on this streamed release is 100% quality.

A welcome exhibition of the delights of thrash is at your fingertips, and if you would like to purchase this through Bandcamp rather than stream it for free, all proceeds go towards offsetting the financial impact of numerous Power Trip tours and shows that have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a 43 minute gift from the Texan metal quintet to us the fans, and a welcome gift it is. Thank You Power Trip!

For all the latest news , reviews , interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS'S EDGE on facebook , twitter and instagram .

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Powertrip – Nightmare Logic Album Review

Powertrip – Nightmare Logic

Album Review by Adam McCann

Label : Southern Lord Records

Year : 2017

Today is your lucky day

Following the release of their superb debut album ‘Manifest Decimation’, Power Trip have returned 4 years later with their follow up album ‘Nightmare Logic’. The fact that ‘Manifest Decimation’ was that good had Power Trip fans baying for more, their Texan thrash metal tore through the speakers like it was 1988 all over again. There are no modern breakdowns, no whiny vocals, just good old-fashioned balls to the wall, crank it up, play it fast and eviscerate it raw thrash.

‘Nightmare Logic’ picks up perfectly where the previous album left off, there’s not time for silly intros or elongated overly complicated passages a la ‘Rust in Peace’ or ‘…And Justice for All’, Power Trip put the throttle down and don’t stop with the whole album being over in under 35 minutes. Thank you very much, shows done, hit the road to explode once more. Tracks such as the breakneck ‘Ruination’, the old-school Sepultura style ‘Crucifixation’ and ‘Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)’ in which Power Trip manage to take on giants like Anthrax, Cro-Mags, Iron Reagan, Stormtroopers of Death and come out alongside them with what can only be described as a crossover masterpiece.

As an album, ‘Nightmare Logic’ is easily one of the best thrash albums of 2017, standing shoulder to shoulder with releases from Havok and Warbringer, taking on and even beating Kreator, Overkill and Prong. ‘Nightmare Logic’ is thrash at its most raw and fun, these guys know what they’re doing and they do it pretty fucking well. The age old saying goes: “good things come to those who wait”, the four years for ‘Nightmare Logic’ have been more than worth it. If it takes Power Trip another four years to complete their third album, the question is; can they make it three out of three.

Rating : 87/100

MHF Magazine/Adam McCann

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AC/DC at Power Trip: if this is the band's last hurrah, they've gone out with an incredible, weekend-stealing set for the ages

Ac/dc's headline performance at power trip featured hits, debuts and rarities aplenty.

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

It's a miracle that AC/DC still exist. Between wayward drummers, retired bassists and cited hearing issues that forced singer Brian Johnson to sit out the majority of the band's 2016 tour - Guns N' Roses vocalist Axl Rose guesting in his place - it was starting to look like a very real possibility that we might never see the band again. And good god, what a tragedy that would have been.

Seven years away might have added a few more creaks and groans to the band's frame, but a sprawling 24-song set soon blows the cobwebs off as they pull out hits, rarities and even a few new tracks for their Power Trip headline spot. Kicking off with If You Want Blood (You've Got It) , AC/DC don't so much ease themselves in as leap headfirst, anthems coming thick and fast as Back In Black, Shot Down In Flames and Thunderstruck all fly out as early inclusions.

A band built for - and from - the sweat of live performance, it's refreshing to see how surprisingly austere their production is. Yes, the on-stage visuals are gorgeous, but there are no massive trains, bulldozers or even an inflatable Rosie this time out; the focus instead being drawn entirely to the band on-stage and the sheer magic of their performance (and maybe the odd massive bell).

“How lovely's this? Nice to see ya. Let’s get rocking and rolling.” Johnson remains a cheeky and lively presence on-stage, looking like one of the more hale members of the group as even Angus has to tone down his duckwalking antics to selected songs ( Shoot To Thrill and Let There Be Rock , if you're asking). But what he lacks in physical theatrics, he makes up for in instrumental wizardry, his every touch sending the guitar wailing as if 50,000 volts are being blasted through it.

And when the guitar isn't screaming, the fans are. Power Up tracks Demon Fire and Shot In The Dark receive a warm welcome as new boogie-friendly additions to the band's canon, but it's anthems like Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap , Whole Lotta Rosie and You Shook Me All Night Long that have voices roaring into the night sky. But there's a place for hits and rarities alike in the set, a two-hour extravaganza that throws up a miscellany of styles and tones.

Much like the ship of Theseus – or Trigger’s broom if you’d rather a reference from the last century – AC/DC have changed enough over the past 50 years that it can be hard to reconcile the band that wrote rock'n'roll tracks that take off at 100mph like Riff Raff with the more blues based Have A Drink On Me or Stiff Upper Lip . Yet the band approach each with the same expert craftmanship that ensures nothing but good times and massive smiles all around, indisputably AC/DC in everything they put their hand to.

By the time AC/DC signal for the 21-gun salute of For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) , there's no doubt in our minds that they are still the greatest rock'n'roll stars to ever (duck) walk the planet. Whether Power Trip remains a one-off, or the staging ground for another massive global tour remains to be seen. But even if this is the band's last hurrah, there's no better way to go out than with a final almighty showing of raucous, rougish rock'n'roll that is celebrated the world over. Oft-copied, never surpassed.

AC/DC setlist Power Trip festival October 7 2023

If You Want Blood (You've Got It) Back In Black Demon Fire Shot Down In Flames Thunderstruck Have A Drink On Me Hells Bells Shot In The Dark Stiff Upper Lip Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap Shoot To Thrill Sin City Givin The Dog A Bone Rock'n'Roll Train You Shook Me All Night Long Dog Eat Dog High Voltage Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be Riff Raff Highway To Hell Whole Lotta Rosie Let There Be Rock T.N.T. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

Staff writer for Metal Hammer, Rich has never met a feature he didn't fancy, which is just as well when it comes to covering everything rock, punk and metal for both print and online, be it legendary events like Rock In Rio or Clash Of The Titans or seeking out exciting new bands like Nine Treasures, Jinjer and Sleep Token.

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Power Trip Officially Return With Summer Shows: ‘The Time Is Right to Get Back On Stage’

By Daniel Kreps

Daniel Kreps

The surviving members of Power Trip have revealed their surprise reunion in December — the Dallas thrash group’s first gig together since the death of singer Riley Gale in 2020 — was not a one-off as the band has scheduled three more shows this summer.

Following their unannounced five-song reunion in Austin in December, Power Trip — guitarist Blake Ibanez, guitarist Nick Stewart, bassist Chris Whetzel, and drummer Chris Ulsh, along with Fugitive singer Seth Gilmore, who handled lead vocals at that Austin gig — have booked shows at Pomona, California’s No Values Fest on June 8, Dallas’ the Factory on July 6, and New York’s Knockdown Center on Aug. 24.

See you soon. https://t.co/lWh5Ng0oSb pic.twitter.com/zuvthDfR1r — POWER TRIP (@powertriptx) February 20, 2024

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Power Trip continued, “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.”

Following Gale’s August 2020 death from an accidental overdose from the toxic effects of fentanyl, 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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Nightmare Logic

Best New Music

By Zoe Camp

Southern Lord

March 1, 2017

No one throws a party like Power Trip . In the years since their 2008 inception, the Dallas crossover quintet has come to embody the platonic ideal of heavy metal escapism, in person and on record. Genre boundaries get blown to smithereens during their rambunctious, pretension-free concerts; they’ll play with anyone who’s willing to get noisy, be it New Orleans bounce queen Big Freedia , moody post-punk outfit Merchandise , or black metal darlings Deafheaven . Power Trip’s excellent debut album, 2013’s Manifest Decimation , further solidified this reputation by translating their live ferocity to wax. One album on, nine years in, Power Trip have mastered the rager. They now turn their focus to widespread revelry with Nightmare Logic —a mission that goes off with a big, beautiful bang.

Nightmare Logic doesn’t find Power Trip making any significant shifts to the no-holds-barred approach they showcased so powerfully on their debut. It’s an LP crafted in its predecessor’s literal spitting image, from the proliferative gang vocals and thrash beatdowns right down to the eight-track runtime and gory old-school artwork. Frontman Riley Gale still huffs, puffs, and howls like a rabid wolf, a feral intermediary through which the band issues blistering, occasionally loony indictments of corrupt politicians (“Ruination”) and greedy, polluting CEOs (“If Not Us Then Who”). Gale’s bandmates match these screeds with litanies of their own: particularly guitarist Blake Ibanez, a hardcore titan ( and occasional shoegazer ) whose slithering riffs incessantly run amok. Even the audience can’t escape Power Trip’s leaden censure. On “Waiting Around to Die,” Gale delivers this sputtering, incendiary pep talk with a rage so palpable you can almost feel it shaking you by the shoulders: “You’re waiting around to die, how can you live with it?/Just waiting around to die, AND I CAN’T FUCKING STAND IT!!!”

Thrash has always been a goofy genre with a morbid sense of humor: a direct consequence of the genre’s primordial days in the Reagan era, when trolling the silent majority doubled as a pre-eminent past-time and a form of protest. Like their peers Iron Reagan and Skeletonwitch , Power Trip view the impending apocalypse as a cause for celebration, powered by schadenfreude. Evangelical Christians are treated to particularly hilarious roastings. “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe),” the album’s best song, sees Gale calling the bluff of all those Bible-Belters who’d so passionately pleaded for the arrival of the man upstairs, only to come face-to-face with the titular killer-for-hire when the End of Days finally arrives. “You’ve prayed for so long, and now you have your chance/The executioner’s here, and he’s sharpening his axe!”

Power Trip’s new attention to detail pushes Nightmare Logic over the edge. It’s abundantly clear that they’ve spent hours at the dissection table with Manifest Decimation , amplifying—but not recycling—its best hooks and theatrics, trimming off the static scar tissue. They’ve chopped a few seconds of extraneous riffing here, a repeated breakdown there; it’s an impressive operation, considering their debut was plenty lean and mean. The nit-picking pays off, as Nightmare Logic outmatches the preceding LP across all verticals, from cohesion and catchiness to impact and atmosphere.

The band’s secret weapon remains producer and Sumerlands guitarist Arthur Rizk, or as I like to call him, the Ariel Rechtshaid of heavy music; Code Orange’s Forever and Prurient’s Frozen Niagara Falls are just two of the bevy of ambitious records he’s worked on. A master of dynamic contrast and sonic feints, Rizk’s the textbook definition of a board-wizard. Under his command, Ibanez’s already-huge tremolo riffs on “Executioner’s Tax”, “ Firing Squad ,” and the title track become hulking, like a stampede of hellish racehorses against the thundering backbeat. Meanwhile, in the back of the mix, the rhythm section ebbs and flows to accommodate the axework, ensuring sustained impact and easy passage from one ripper to the next. Rizk again runs Gale’s yelps through a heap of effects, rendering every syllable an echo-laden boom from on high. And in spite of its sheer heft, Rizk makes Nightmare Logic a crisp, nuanced listen; like the band themselves, he strikes a rare balance between modern intricacy and old-school aggression, nodding to tradition without over-relying on tropes.

You don’t need to be a metalhead to have a blast with Nightmare Logic . Screamed sardonics, persistent chug, and apocalyptic melodrama are all acquired tastes, sure. But Power Trip’s fist-pumping choruses, ricocheting grooves, and ample charm are so animated that they leave us with something addictive and, well, fun . Just like Metallica, the Texans pitch a big tent, where the only prerequisite for entry is a willingness to splash around in the bloodbath for half an hour. With Nightmare Logic , there’s a good chance you’ll stick around for a good, long soak.

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The Tortured Poets Department / The Anthology

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Taylor Swift – ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ review: a rare misstep

Arriving at the peak of her imperial phase, Swift’s 11th studio album is surprisingly flat and, at times, cringeworthy

Since emerging in 2006 with a tear-stained six string , Taylor Swift has seesawed through public opinion perhaps more than any other 21st century artist. In 2024, she’s landed as a monolithic force in pop culture with an unavoidable, omnipresent force permeating every facet of daily life. There are reporters appointed solely to cover her exploits , and University modules dedicated to dissecting her lyrics , not to mention that her name is permanently etched onto the internet’s trending topics. While the rest of the music industry grapples with an accelerated pop culture landscape and tirelessly attempts to orchestrate meaningful, viral moments, Swift remains unscathed — always at the epicentre of endless discourse and somehow each day pushing the boundaries of celebrity.

So, when she announced the forthcoming release of ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ at the Grammys earlier this year – while collecting the Album Of The Year prize for 2022’s ‘Midnights’ – it seemed to be met with an audible eye roll from a room full of artists perhaps jaded by competing for scraps of attention in a media sphere wholly dominated by Swift. And, after releasing 10 records (including live albums and re-recordings) in four years, this frustration from her peers seems to join the first splinters in her public opinion, deepening with every new typo-riddled, brand-partnered Easter Egg that has dropped in the run up to release.

Perhaps Swift was tempting fate with this one. Above all else in her career, Swift has always found acclaim through her lyricism, and comparisons have gleefully been made between herself and The Bard . Speaking in February , she says that “I have never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on [TTPD]”. It’s surprising, then, that ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ delivers some of her most cringe-inducing lines yet.

The title track alone boasts the worst on the record, even if it’s a stab at sarcasm. “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist,” precedes the clunky “I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed Golden Retriever.” Elsewhere, on ‘Down Bad’ she’s unceremoniously “crying at the gym” , and ‘Florida!!!’, an otherwise cathartic, Southern gothic-imbued collaboration with Florence Welch is marred by the line: “My friends all smell like weed or little babies”.

Most bizarre, though, is ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, which seemingly exists as her response to the backlash against her brief relationship with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy . Their fleeting romance, which seems to be the muse for much of the record, triggered an explosive reaction from her fanbase who were distraught at Swift’s public association to the singer, given his slew of controversial comments (a few of which centred around her soon-to-be collaborator Ice Spice ).

Swift has historically used her lyrics to assert her narrative. On ‘Speak Now’ (2010) she took the first of many aims at Kanye West following his stage invasion at the 2009 MTV VMAs, and much of ‘Reputation’ (2017) came for the social media haters. Intriguingly, on ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, she appears to tackle the people who claim to have her best interests at heart: “These people only raise you to cage you”, she sings, adding “God save the most judgemental creeps/Who say they want what’s best for me”.

Frustrated lyrics permeate the rest of the record, which operates as a knottier, if inferior, sequel to ‘Midnights’. But while the aforementioned shone in its ecstatic embrace of freedom with the frantic, false optimism of someone freshly out of a long-term relationship, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ sees the dust settle and the misery creep in. There are inevitably parallels with 2019’s ‘Lover’ , an album that seemed assured in a safe, lasting love. Here, the saccharine optimism of ‘Lover’’s ‘London Boy’ dissipates on ‘So Long London’, where she laments “I left all I knew/You left me at the house by the Heath”.

Musically, it’s an album mostly devoid of any noticeable stylistic shift or evolution. ‘Fortnight’, a Cigarettes After Sex -esque number featuring Post Malone hints at an interesting direction for Swift, and ‘I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)’ introduces intriguing elements of country and western. But it mostly descends into a monochromatic palette, existing in the same Jack Antonoff-branded synth pop as ‘Midnights’, yet struggling to capture any of its brightness.

‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’ highlights her unrelenting work ethic that doesn’t falter amid personal tragedy. But, it seems poised for internet virality than anything more substantial, given its restrained verses that plod along before catapulting into a euphoric, Carly Rae Jepsen -indebted pop chorus. Lyrics like “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday everyday” are almost too glaringly obviously written to be lip-synced into an iPhone 13 front camera.

‘The Tortured Poets Department’ ends up chasing its own tail with frenzied attempts to respond to critics despite Swift’s current stature. Closer ‘Clara Bow’ offers some respite, highlighting the inevitable lifecycle of young female stars who are raised up as shinier, improved versions of their predecessors only to be replaced by the same system years later. Though Swift herself seems immune to the machine-churn of pop stars — now maintaining a greater relevance than ever nearly two decades into her career — it’s one of the album’s most poignant and best moments.

Ultimately this record lacks the genuinely interesting shifts that have punctuated Swift’s career so far, from the lyrical excellence on her superior breakup album ‘Red’ to ‘1989’’s pivot to high-octane pop. Even ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’ , perhaps her most dynamic works to date, came out of a need to prove herself as a songwriter.

It is peculiar then, that at the pinnacle of her success and acclaim, this is the record Swift chooses to make. Now acting as pop’s undeniable ruler, perhaps it’s just that she simply has nothing else to prove. After all, it’s bound to shift crate loads of slightly varied vinyl pressings , and will unlikely dampen the upcoming European leg of record-busting The Eras tour . It’s why the lyrical themes of victimhood that once aided her image come off as increasingly jarring today. On ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ she positions herself as a “simple girl” at the mercy of “too high a horse” from her naysayers, but it grates against a landscape that often declares her exempt from criticism.

Swift seems to be in tireless pursuit for superstardom, yet the negative public opinion it can come with irks her, and it’s a tired theme now plaguing her discography and leaving little room for the poignant lyrical observations she excels at. It’s why the pitfalls that mire her 11th studio album are all the more disappointing — she’s proven time and time again she can do better. To a Melbourne audience of her Eras Tour, Swift said that ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ came from a “need” to write. It’s just that maybe we didn’t need to hear it.

Release date: April 19, 2024
Record label: Taylor Swift
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Taylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing ‘Tortured Poets Department’: Album Review

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Taylor Swift 'Tortured Poets Department" variant album cover vinyl LP review

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For where it sits in her catalog musically, it feels like the synth-pop of “Midnights,” with most of the feel-good buzz stripped out; or like the less acoustic based moments of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” with her penchant for pure autobiography stripped back in. It feels bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and — not to be undervalued in this age — handmade, however many times she stacks her own vocals for an ironic or real choral effect. Occasionally the music gets stripped down all the way to a piano, but it has the effect of feeling naked even when she goes for a bop that feels big enough to join the setlist in her stadium tour resumption, like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

The first time you listen to the album, you may be stricken by the “Wait, did she really just say that?” moments. (And no, we’re not referring to the already famous Charlie Puth shout-out, though that probably counts, too.) Whatever feeling you might have had hearing “Dear John” for the first time, if you’re old enough to go back that far with her, that may be the feeling you have here listening to the eviscerating “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” or a few other tracks that don’t take much in the way of prisoners. Going back to it, on second, fifth and tenth listens, it’s easier to keep track of the fact that the entire album is not that emotionally intense, and that there are romantic, fun and even silly numbers strewn throughout it, if those aren’t necessarily the most striking ones on first blush. Yes, it’s a pop album as much as a vein-opening album, although it may not produce the biggest number of Top 10 hits of anything in her catalog. It doesn’t seem designed not to produce those, either; returning co-producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner aren’t exactly looking to keep her off the radio. But it’s easily among her most lyrics-forward efforts, rife with a language lover’s wordplay, tumults of sequential similes and — her best weapon — moments of sheer bluntness.

Who is the worst man that she delights in writing about through the majority of the album? Perhaps not the one you were guessing, weeks ago. There are archetypal good guy and bad boy figures who have been part of her life, whom everyone will transpose onto this material. Coming into “Tortured Poets,” the joke was that someone should keep Joe Alwyn, publicly identified as her steady for six-plus years, under mental health watch when the album comes out. As it turns out, he will probably be able to sleep just fine. The other bloke, the one everyone assumed might be too inconsequential to trouble her or write about — let’s put another name to that archetype: Matty Healy of the 1975 — might lose a little sleep instead, if the fans decide that the cutting “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and other lacerating songs are about him, instead. He might also have cause to feel flattered, because there are plenty of songs extolling him as an object of abject passion and the love of her life — in, literally, the song title “LOML” — before the figure who animated all this gets sliced down to size.

The older love, he gets all of one song, as far as can be ascertained: the not so subtly titled “So Long, London,” a dour sequel to 2019’s effusive “London Boy.” Well, he gets a bit more than that: The amusingly titled “Fresh Out the Slammer” devotes some verses to a man she paints as her longtime jailer (“Handcuffed to the spell I was under / For just one hour of sunshine / Years of labor, locks and ceilings / In the shade of how he was feeling.” But ultimately it’s really devoted to the “pretty baby” who’s her first phone call once she’s been sprung from the relationship she considered her prison.

It’s complicated, as they say. For most of the album, Swift seesaws between songs about being in thrall to never-before-experienced passion and personal compatibility with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. She feels “Guilty as Sin?” for imagining a consummation that at first seems un-actionable, if far from unthinkable; she swears “But Daddy I Love Him” in the face of family disapproval; she thinks “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” before an epiphany slips out in the song’s hilariously anticlimactic final line: “Woah, maybe I can’t.” Then the most devastating songs about being ghosted pop up in the album’s later going.

Now, that, friends, is a righteous tirade. And it’s one of the most thrilling single moments in Swift’s recorded career. “But Daddy I Love Him” has a joke for a title (it’s a line borrowed from “The Little Mermaid”), but the song is an ecstatic companion piece to “That’s the Way I Loved You,” from her second album, now with Swift running off with the bad choice instead of just mourning him. It’s the rare song from her Antonoff/Dessner period that sounds like it could be out of the more “organic”-sounding, band-focused Nathan Chapman era, but with a much more matured writing now than then… even if the song is about embracing the immature.

The album gets off to a deceptively benign start with “Fortnight,” the collaboration with Post Malone that is its first single. Both he and the record’s other featured artist, Florence of Florence + the Machine , wrote the lyrics for their own sections, but Posty hangs back more, as opposed to the true duet with Florence; he echoes Swift’s leads before finally settling in with his own lines right at the end. Seemingly unconnected to the subject matter of the rest of the record, “Fortnight” seems a little like “Midnights” Lite. It rues a past quickie romance that the singer can’t quite move on from, even as she and her ex spend time with each other’s families. It’s breezy, and a good choice for pop radio, but not much of an indication of the more visceral, obsessive stuff to come.

The title track follows next and stays in the summer-breeze mode. It’s jangly-guitar-pop in the mode of “Mirrorball,” from “Folklore”… and it actually feels completely un-tortured, despite the ironic title. After the lovers bond over Charlie Puth being underrated (let’s watch those “One Call Away” streams soar), and over how “you’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith,” an inter-artist romance seems firmly in place. “Who’s gonna hold you like me?” she asks aloud. (She later changes it to “troll you.”) She answers herself: “Nofuckinbody.” Sweet, and If you came to this album for any kind of idyll, enjoy this one while it lasts, which isn’t for long.

From here, the album is kind of all over the map, when it comes to whether she’s in the throes of passion or the throes of despair… with that epic poem in the album booklet to let you know how the pieces all fit together. (The album also includes a separate poem from Stevie Nicks, addressing the same love affair that is the main subject of the album, in a protective way.)

There are detours that don’t have to do with the romantic narrative, but not many. The collaboration with Florence + the Machine, “Florida!!!,” is the album’s funniest track, if maybe its least emotionally inconsequential. It’s literally about escape, and it provides some escapism right in the middle of the record, along with some BAM-BAM-BAM power-chord dynamics in an album that often otherwise trends soft. If you don’t laugh out loud the first time that Taylor’s and Florence’s voices come together in harmony to sing the line “Fuck me up, Florida,” this may not be the album for you.

When the album’s track list was first revealed, it almost seemed like one of those clever fakes that people delight in trolling the web with. Except, who would really believe that, instead of song titles like “Maroon,” Swift would suddenly be coming up with “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”? This sounded like a Morrissey track list, not one of Swift’s. But she’s loosened up, in some tonal sense, even as she’s as serious as a heart attack on a lot of these songs. There is blood on the tracks, but also a wit in the way she’s employing language and being willing to make declarations that sound a little outlandish before they make you laugh.

Toward the end of the album, she presents three songs that aren’t “about” anybody else… just about, plainly, Taylor Swift. That’s true of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” a song that almost sounds like an outtake from the “Reputation” album, or else a close cousin to “Folklore’s” “Mad Woman,” with Swift embracing the role of vengeful witch, in response to being treated as a circus freak — exact contemporary impetus unknown.

Whatever criticisms anyone will make of “The Tortured Poets Department,” though — not enough bangers? too personal? — “edge”-lessness shouldn’t be one of them. In this album’s most bracing songs, it’s like she brought a knife to a fistfight. There’s blood on the tracks, good blood.

Sure to be one of the most talked-about and replayed tracks, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” has a touch of a Robyn-style dancing-through-tears ethos to it. But it’s clearly about the parts of the Eras Tour when she was at her lowest, and faking her way through it. “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday — every day,” she sings, in the album’s peppiest number — one that recalls a more dance-oriented version of the previous album’s “Mastermind.” It’s not hard to imagine that when she resumes the tour in Paris next month, and has a new era to tag onto the end of the show, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” might be the new climax, in place of “Karma.” “You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart,” she humble-brags, “and I’m good, ‘cause I’m miserable / And nobody even knows! / Try and come for my job.”

Not many superstars would devote an entire song to confessing that they’ve only pretended to be the super-happy figure fans thought they were seeing pass through their towns, and that they were seeing a illusion. (Presumably she doesn’t have to fake it in the present day, but that’s the story of the next album, maybe.) But that speaks to the dichotomy that has always been Taylor Swift: on record, as good and honest a confessional a singer-songwriter as any who ever passed through the ports of rock credibility; in concert, a great, fulsome entertainer like Cher squared. Fortunately, in Swift, we’ve never had to settle for just one or the other. No one else is coming for either job — our best heartbreak chronicler or our most uplifting popular entertainer. It’s like that woman in the movie theater says: Heartache feels good in a place like that. And it sure feels grand presented in its most distilled, least razzly-dazzly essence in “The Tortured Poets Department.”

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"The Tortured Poets Department" is Taylor Swift's trip through heartbreak's agonies and triumphs

In the singer's 11th studio album, she addresses various exes, from joe alwyn to matty healy, by nardos haile.

Taylor Swift 's ascension as pop music's head lyricist in charge didn't happen by accident. From her early singles "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Our Song," the musician has held the world in a snake-like trance with her prose, unable to release us from her devastating heartbreak ballads, seething revenge plots and introspective fairy tales that turn into nightmares. She is a storyteller after all.

If you expected something sonically and lyrically experimental from Swift, you will be disappointed.

And because of her mighty, lucrative pen, the now 34-year-old is at the pinnacle of her career. Honestly, does a peak even exist for someone who is a freshly minted billionaire because of a global world tour that revitalized local economies across the country? All the while, Swift has been cemented in history with the most album of the year Grammy awards and numerous record-breaking albums. She is an omnipresent, dominating force in culture and music. Last year, she was even at the center of American politics and sports after she started dating pro-footballer Travis Kelce . Swift was swept into contentious culture wars sparked by right-wing conspiracy theories peddled by the likes of former President Donald Trump .

But before her seemingly immortal reign, Swift was in a six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, which ended in early 2023. The pair began dating in 2016 at the height of Swift's public shunning or cancellation by the general public, sparked by a feud between Swift, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Thus, " Reputation " was born, and the then largely unpopular Swift was in love and didn't care what people thought about her or her music. For years, Alwyn was reportedly the inspiration for her following albums: "Lover," "Folklore," "Evermore," "Midnights" and now her 11th studio album, "The Tortured Poets Department." But now, Alwyn and the end of their near-common law marriage are at the center of Swift's most agonizing and emotionally indulgent work to date.

If you expected something sonically and lyrically experimental from Swift, you will be disappointed with "The Tortured Poets Department." However, if you are searching for glimmering variations of Swift's past selves in one album, this does that. In a mega two-hour, dual album, released in two parts as "The Tortured Poets Department" and "The Anthology," Swift pens 31 different heartbreaks, triumphs and intimacies — tortured poems if you will. Her frequent collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner are back. While Dessner's work dazzles in "The Anthology," and Antonoff's production in "Tortured Poets" lacks variety and mystery, it raises the question if the singer will ever tap other producers to work on her new music.

However, Swift's songwriting and music-making model is contingent on the more, the better. During the 31-song album, some of it lands like the fun drama of "Down Bad," which thumps against Antonoff's synthesizer. She sings, "Now I'm down bad crying at the gym. Everything comes out teenage petulance." She sings she may die if she can't have her lover. It's almost pathetically accurate to heartbreak's grief. Or some are just plain awkward like the title track where she compares her ex – problematic fling and frontman of the 1975, Matty Healy – to a "tattooed golden retriever. "

Some of it is just a less exciting rendition of her previous works like the twangy, folk-influenced "But Daddy I Like Him," which could be plucked right from "Red." This is where "Tortured Poets" falls, inevitably caught between Swift's bleeding bars and production that sounds like a Swift we already know. But her sharp vulnerability and craftsmanship are apparent in the haunting goodbye ballad, "So Long, London." We can only assume it is about Alwyn as she sings quietly, "I stopped CPR after. It's no use." Her heart aches as she gives up on her love of London, a place she used to call home. She cries, "You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest day."

Songs like "Florida!!!" featuring Florence + the Machine, "Guilty as Sin?" and "Loml," are standouts in the first album. "Florida!!!" is as experimental as the artist gets in the project. The song is a synthesized version of a Southern Gothic anthem built to make space for Florence Welch's sweeping vocals. "Guilty as Sin?" is a soft rock track, reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie, where Antonoff's production feels it moves in sync with Swift's vocals. The guilty pleasure track is about falling for the quintessential bad boy and how it reflects negatively on who you are. Swift may be referring to the public condemnation she faced for dating Healy, who has had a history of spewing misogynoir online towards Black women like rapper Ice Spice . Lastly, "Loml" is a soaring wounded ballad, where Swift confronts her ex-love about his little lies, "You holy ghost, you told me I'm the love of your life. You said I'm the love of your life/About a million times." She finishes the song with the conclusion: "You're the loss of my life."

Part One's lackluster quality is not fully rectified by the additional 15 songs in "The Anthology," but Swift does certainly try. For the most part, the attempt is a bold success. Swift and the tracks sound like her winning, fictionalized fantasies in "Folklore" and "Evermore." The following 15 songs are some of the singer's most captivating songwriting. It's a shame that it takes a whole album to get meaty songs like "The Black Dog" or "The Albatross." The latter is a woodsy, whimsical track that puts Swift in the hot seat as she vilifies herself as the albatross and that "she is here to destroy you." Other highlights are songs like "Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus," "thanK you AIMee" (a Kardashian diss track) and "How Did It End?"

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The lyricist isn't looking for perfection; she's busy crafting yet another life-altering, death-invoking heartbreak into peaceful solitude.

Dessner's production, or ability to draw attention to Swift's vocals is the triumph in "The Anthology." Something shifts in Swift's lyrics too. In the masterpieces that are "Folklore" and "Evermore," Swift uses folktales to weave in her storytelling, however, that changes in "The Anthology." It's all reflective — the fantasy has vanished, and all that's left is heartbreak's ruins. Her self-aware, pensiveness glimmers against the soft strumming of guitars and strings in "I Hate It Here." Swift mischievously sings, "I hate it here so I will go to secret gardens in my mind/People need a key to get to, the only one is mine." She stresses that she is lonely and bitter but, "I swear I'm fine."

Jaded by love and her reality, she continues:

I'll save all my romanticism for my inner life and I'll get lost on purpose This place made me feel worthless Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me And in my fantasies, I rise above it

"The Prophecy" is a rumination of Swift's past patterns where her gentle vocals are laid over the light strumming of Dessner's acoustic guitar. It's the singer at her barest. The prophecy Swift sings about is her damned eternal loneliness. It's a prophecy the stars or witches have predicted. She begs that the curse will be reversed in the chorus, "Please/I've been on my knees/Change the prophecy/Don't want money/Just someone who wants my company."

Lonely and single, she's terrified at what comes next, wishing to the sky, "I'm so afraid I sealed my fate/No sign of soulmates." It's the level of honesty Swift's fans and critics crave as we all come together to dissect her lyrics like a science project. The stages of grief are all endlessly explored, and it loses us as it meanders through some of the low parts of "The Tortured Poets Department." The artist lands just slightly off the mark. However, in Swift's 11th studio album, the lyricist isn't looking for perfection; she's busy crafting yet another life-altering, death-invoking heartbreak into peaceful solitude.

about Taylor Swift

Men who feel threatened by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Barbie deserve to feel bad
The right is coming for Taylor Swift. They don't stand a chance
A songwriting reclamation of youth: Calling out bloodsuckers who date female artists in their teens

Nardos Haile is a staff writer at Salon covering culture. She’s previously covered all things entertainment, music, fashion and celebrity culture at The Associated Press. She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Taylor Swift's new album rollout strategy shows she's too big to fail

Taylor Swift's new album "The Tortured Poets Department" will arrive on Friday, April 19.
She has declined to release a lead single or promote the album in any significant way.
The quiet rollout strategy says a lot about Swift's stature in the pop-music landscape.

If you spend enough time in Taylor Swift-devoted territories of social media, as I have, you'll find posts that proclaim "The Tortured Poets Department" is her best album yet.

Die-hard fans say it's a masterpiece , destined to win Swift her fifth Grammy Award for album of the year .

Sure, some of these posts are tongue-in-cheek, while many are knowingly hyperbolic. But the fact that no fan has heard even one second of "Poets" — the album isn't out until Friday — seems to be a moot point. Once a pop star earns "fave" status, her actions go largely unchallenged by her base , while her music is blindly praised.

But Swift has managed to harness this reckless passion better than anyone else — at least in terms of commercial success .

If ttpd is only half as good as the playlist names / back cover lyrics, it HAS to win aoty. I mean... old habits die screaming? Am I allowed to cry?? You don't get to tell me about sad??? Lyrical masterpieces already pic.twitter.com/3TtadOb7AM — Maja (Taylor's Version) (@clover_blooms_) April 5, 2024

Swift announced the title of her 11th studio album back in early February, while accepting an award at the 2024 Grammys .

Although her team has used a few niche methods to drum up excitement this week (like painting a mysterious QR code on a wall in Chicago and partnering with Spotify for a library installation in Los Angeles), confirmed details from the singer herself are scant , save for the tracklist. With just a few days to go, we still haven't gotten a measly teaser or snippet, let alone a lead single.

Yes, you read that right. The aforementioned fans who insist "Poets" will dominate charts and break records have no idea what the album sounds like.

But that doesn't mean those fans are wrong. All evidence does point to "Poets" becoming another blockbuster for Swift despite her near-silent promotional strategy.

Swift used a similar gambit for "Midnights," the predecessor to "Poets," which arrived in late 2022. Though she was more active during that rollout, especially on TikTok , she never gave any hints of the album's sonic direction. Based on the '70s style of the cover shoot, many fans hoped for a Laurel Canyon vibe , akin to Carole King or Fleetwood Mac. It would've been an exciting change for Swift, but come release day, those fans were let down. "Midnights" was standard pop.

Still, the aesthetic misdirection didn't impair the album's performance. In fact, "Midnights" broke a variety of records and sold over 1 million copies in its first week (the first album to achieve the feat in seven years, since Swift's own album "Reputation" in 2017).

Remember, "Midnights" arrived just before The Eras Tour kicked off in 2023. Over the following year, Swiftmania swept the nation . Now, she's more popular than ever.

Watch: The Taylor Swift effect: How a pop star created her own economy

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Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets' is written in blood

On Taylor Swift's 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department , her artistry is tangled up in the details of her private life and her deployment of celebrity. But Swift's lack of concern about whether these songs speak to and for anyone but herself is audible throughout the album. Beth Garrabrant /Courtesy of the artist hide caption

For all of its fetishization of new sounds and stances, pop music was born and still thrives by asking fundamental questions. For example, what do you do with a broken heart? That's an awfully familiar one. Yet romantic failure does feel different every time. Its isolating sting produces a kind of obliterating possessiveness: my pain, my broken delusions, my hope for healing. A broken heart is a screaming baby demanding to be held and coddled and nurtured until it grows up and learns how to function properly. This is as true in the era of the one-percent glitz goddess as it was when blues queens and torch singers organized society's crying sessions. It's true of Taylor Swift , who's equated songwriting with the heart's recovery since she released " Teardrops on my Guitar " 18 years ago, and whose 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department , is as messy and confrontational as a good girl's work can get, blood on her pages in a classic shade of red.

Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and 50 more albums coming out this spring

Turning the Tables

Taylor swift is the 21st century's most disorienting pop star.

Back in her Lemonade days, when her broken heart turned her into a bearer of revolutionary spirit, Swift's counterpart and friendly rival, Beyoncé , got practical, advising her listeners that while feelings do need tending, a secured bank account is what counts. "Your best revenge is your paper," she sang .

For Swift, the best revenge is her pen. One of the first Tortured Poets songs revealed back in February (one of the album's many bonus tracks, it turns out, but a crucial framing device) is called " The Manuscript "; in it, a woman re-reads her own scripted account of a "torrid love affair." Screenwriting is one of a few literary ambitions Swift aligns with this project. At The Grove mall in Los Angeles, Swift partnered with Spotify to create a mini-library where new lyrics were inscribed in weathered books and on sheets of parchment in the days leading up to its release. The scene was a fans' photo op invoking high art and even scripture. In the photographs of the installation that I saw, every bound volume in the library bears Swift's name. The message is clear: When Taylor Swift makes music, she authors everything around her.

For years, Swift has been pop's leading writer of autofiction , her work exploring new dimensions of confessional songwriting, making it the foundation of a highly mediated public-private life. The standard line about her teasing lyrical disclosures (and it's correct on one level) is that they're all about fueling fan interest. But on Tortured Poets , she taps into a much more established and respected tradition. Using autobiography as a sword of justice is a move as ancient as the women saints who smote abusive fathers and priests in the name of an early Christian Jesus; in our own time, just among women, it's been made by confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, memoirists from Maya Angelou to Joyce Maynard and literary stars like the Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux. And, of course, Swift's reluctant spiritual mother, Joni Mitchell .

Even in today's blather-saturated cultural environment, a woman speaking out after silence can feel revolutionary; that this is an honorable act is a fundamental principle within many writers' circles. "I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay, how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only home I ever have," Natalie Goldberg declares in Writing Down the Bones , the most popular writing manual of the 20th century. When on this album's title track, Swift sings, "I think some things I never say," she's making an offhand joke; but this is the album where she does say all the things she thinks, about love at least, going deeper into the personal zone that is her métier than ever before. Sharing her darkest impulses and most mortifying delusions, she fills in the blank spaces in the story of several much-mediated affairs and declares this an act of liberation that has changed and ultimately strengthened her. She spares no one, including herself; often in these songs, she considers her naiveté and wishfulness through a grown woman's lens and admits she's made a fool of herself. But she owns her heartbreak now. She alone will have the last word on its shape and its effects.

This includes other people's sides of her stories. The songs on Tortured Poets , most of which are mid- or up-tempo ballads spun out in the gossamer style that's defined Swift's confessional mode since Folklore , build a closed universe of private and even stolen moments, inhabited by only two people: Swift and a man. With a few illuminating exceptions that stray from the album's plot, she rarely looks beyond their interactions. The point is not to observe the world, but to disclose the details of one sometimes-shared life, to lay bare what others haven't seen. Tortured Poets is the culmination of a catalog full of songs in which Swift has taken us into the bedrooms where men pleasured or misled her, the bars where they charmed her, the empty playgrounds where they sat on swings with her and promised something they couldn't give. When she sings repeatedly that one of the most suspect characters on the album told her she was the love of her life, she's sharing something nobody else heard. That's the point. She's testifying under her own oath.

Swift's musical approach has always been enthusiastic and absorbent. She's created her own sounds by blending country's sturdy song structures with R&B's vibes, rap's cadences and pop's glitz; as a personality and a performer, she's all arms, hugging the world. The sound of Tortured Poets offers that familiar embrace, with pop tracks that sparkle with intelligence, and meditative ones that wrap tons of comforting aura around Swift's ruminations. Beyond a virtually undetectable Post Malone appearance and a Florence Welch duet that also serves as an homage to Swift's current exemplar/best friendly rival, Lana Del Rey , the album alternates between co-writes with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the producers who have helped Swift find her mature sound, which blends all of her previous approaches without favoring any prevailing trend. There are the rap-like, conversational verses, the reaching choruses, the delicate piano meditations, the swooning synth beats. Antonoff's songs come closest to her post- 1989 chart toppers; Dessner's fulfill her plans to remain an album artist. Swift has also written two songs on her own, a rarity for her; both come as close to ferocity as she gets. As a sustained listen, Tortured Poets harkens back to high points throughout Swift's career, creating a comforting environment that both supports and balances the intensity of her storytelling.

It's with her pen that Swift executes her battle plans. As always, especially when she dwells on the work and play of emotional intimacy, her lyrics are hyper-focused, spilling over with detail, editing the mess of desire, projection, communion and pain that constitutes romance into one sharp perspective: her own. She renders this view so intensely that it goes beyond confession and becomes a form of writing that can't be disputed. Remember that parchment and her quill pen; her songs are her new testaments. It's a power play, but for many fans, especially women, this ambition to be definitive feels like a necessary corrective to the misrepresentations or silence they face from ill-intentioned or cluelessly entitled men.

"A great writer can be a dangerous creature, however gentle and nice in person," the biographer Hermione Lee once wrote . Swift has occasionally taken this idea to heart before, especially on her once-scorned, now revered hip-hop experiment, Reputation . But now she's screaming from the hilltop, sparing no one, including herself as she tries to prop up one man's flagging interest and then falls for others' duplicity. "I know my pain is such an imposition," Swift sang in last year's " You're Losing Me ," a prequel to the explosive confessional mode of Tortured Poets , where that pain grows nearly suicidal, feeds romantic obsession, and drives her to become a "functional alcoholic" and a madwoman who finds strength in chaos in a way that recalls her friend Emma Stone's cathartic performance as Bella in Poor Things . (Bella, remember, comes into self-possession by learning to read and write.) " Who's afraid of little old me? " Swift wails in the album's window-smashing centerpiece bearing that title; in " But Daddy I Love Him ," she runs around screaming with her dress unbuttoned and threatens to burn down her whole world. These accounts of unhinged behavior reinforce the message that everybody had better be scared of this album — especially her exes, but also her business associates, the media and, yes, her fans, who are not spared in her dissection of just who's made her miserable over the past few years.

Listen to the album

I'm not getting into the dirty details; those who crave them can listen to Tortured Poets themselves and easily uncover them. They're laid out so clearly that anyone who's followed Swift's overly documented life will instantly comprehend who's who: the depressive on the heath, the tattooed golden retriever in her dressing room. Here's my reading of her album-as-novel — others' interpretations may vary: Swift's first-person protagonist (let's call her "Taylor") begins in a memory of a long-ago love affair that left her melancholy but on civil terms, then has an early meeting with a tempting rogue, who declares he's the Dylan Thomas to her Patti Smith; no, she says, though she's sorely tempted, we're "modern idiots," and she leaves him behind for a while. Then we get scenes from a stifling marriage to a despondent and distracted child-man. "So long, London," she declares, fleeing that dead end. From then on, it's the rogue on all cylinders. They connect, defy the daddy figures who think they're bad for each other, speak of rings and baby carriages. Those daddies continue to meddle in this newfound freedom.

In this main story arc, Swift writes about erotic desire as she never has before: She's "fresh out the slammer" (ouch, the rhetoric) and her bedsheets are on fire. She cannot stop rhapsodizing about this new love object and her commitment to their outlaw hunger for each other. It's " Love Story ," updated and supersized, with a proper Romeo at its center — a forbidden, tragic soulmate, a perfect match who's also a disastrous one. Swift peppers this section of Tortured Poets with name-drops ("Jack" we know, " Lucy " might be a tricky slap at Romeo, hard to tell) and instantly searchable references; he sends her a song by The Blue Nile and traces hearts on her face but tells revolting jokes in the bar and eventually reveals himself as a cad, a liar, a coward. She recovers, but not really. In the end, she does move on but still dreams of him hearing one of their songs on a jukebox and dolefully realizing the young girl he's now with has never heard it before.

Insert the names yourself. They do matter, because her backstories are key to Swift's appeal; they both keep her human-sized and amplify her fame. Swift's artistry is tied up in her deployment of celebrity, a slippery state in which a real life becomes emblematic. Like no one before, she's turned her spotlit day-to-day into a conceptual project commenting on women's freedom, artistic ambition and the place of the personal in the public sphere. As a celebrity, Swift partners with others: her model and musician friends, her actor/musician/athlete consorts, brands, even (warily) political causes. And with her fans, the co-creators of her stardom.

Her songs stand apart, though. They remain the main vehicle through which, negotiating unimaginable levels of renown, Swift continually insists on speaking only for herself. A listener has to work to find the "we" in her soliloquies. There are plenty of songs on Tortured Poets in which others will find their own experiences, from the sultry blue eroticism of " Down Bad " to the click of recognition in " I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) ." But Swift's lack of concern about whether these songs speak for and to anyone besides herself is audible throughout the album. It's the sound of her freedom.

Taylor Swift: Tiny Desk Concert

She also confronts the way fame has cost her, fully exploring questions she raised on Reputation and in " Anti-Hero ." There are hints, more than hints, that her romance with the rogue was derailed partly because her business associates found it problematic, a danger to her precious reputation. And when she steps away from the man-woman predicament, Swift ponders the ephemeral reality of the success that has made private decisions nearly impossible. A lovely minuet co-written with Dessner, " Clara Bow " stages a time-lapsed conversation between Swift and the power players who've helped orchestrate her rise even as she knows they won't be concerned with her eventual obsolescence. "You look like Clara Bow ," they say, and later, "You look like Stevie Nicks in '75." Then, a turn: "You look like Taylor Swift," the suits (or is it the public, the audience?) declare. "You've got edge she never did." The song ends abruptly — lights out. This scene, redolent of All About Eve , reveals anxieties that all of Swift's love songs rarely touch upon.

One reason Swift went from being a normal-level pop star to sharing space with Beyoncé as the era's defining spirit is because she is so good at making the personal huge, without fussing over its translation into universals. In two decades of talking back to heartbreakers, Swift has called out gaslighting, belittling, neglect, false promises — all the hidden injuries that lovers inflict on each other, and that a sexist society often overlooks or forgives more easily from men. In "The Manuscript," which calls back to a romantic trauma outside the Tortured Poets frame, she sings of being a young woman with an older man making "coffee in a French press" and then "only eating kids cereal" and sleeping in her mother's bed when he dumps her; any informed Swift fan's mind will race to songs and headlines about cads she's previously called out in fan favorites like "Dear John" and "All Too Well" — the beginnings of the mission Tortured Poets fulfills.

Reviews of more Taylor Swift albums on NPR

In the haze of 'Midnights,' Taylor Swift softens into an expanded sound

Let's Talk About Taylor Swift's 'Folklore'

Show And Tell: On 'Lover,' Taylor Swift Lets Listeners In On Her Own Terms

The Old Taylor's Not Dead

The Many New Voices Of Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift Leaps Into Pop With 'Red'

Swift's pop side (and perhaps her co-writers' influence) shows in the way she balances the claustrophobic referentiality of her writing with sparkly wordplay and well-crafted sentimental gestures. On Tortured Poets , she's less strategic than usual. She lets the details fall the way they would in a confession session among besties, not trying to change them from painful memories into points of connection. She's just sharing. Swift bares every crack in her broken heart as a way of challenging power structures, of arguing that emotional work that men can sidestep is still expected from women who seem to own the world.

Throughout Tortured Poets, Swift is trying to work out how emotional violence occurs: how men inflict it on women and women cultivate it within themselves. It's worth asking how useful such a brutal evisceration of one privileged private life can be in a larger social or political sense; critics, including NPR's Leah Donnella in an excellent 2018 essay on the limits of the songwriter's reach, have posed that question about Swift's work for years. But we should ask why Swift's work feels so powerful to so many — why she has become, in the eyes of millions, a standard-bearer and a freedom fighter. Unlike Beyoncé, who loves a good emblem and is always thinking about history and serving the culture and communities she claims, Swift is making an ongoing argument about smaller stories still making a difference. Her callouts can be viewed as petty, reflecting entitlement or even narcissism. But they're also part of her wrestling with the very notion of significance and challenging hierarchies that have proven to be so stubborn they can feel intractable. That Swift has reached such a peak of influence in the wake of the #MeToo movement isn't an accident; even as that chapter in feminism's history can seem to be closing, she insists on saying, "believe me." That isn't the same as saying "believe all women," but by laying claim to disputed storylines and fighting against silence, she at the very least reminds listeners that such actions matter.

Listening to Tortured Poets , I often thought of "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance," a song that Sinéad O'Connor recorded when she was in her young prime, not yet banished from the mainstream for her insistence on speaking politically. Like Swift's best work, its lyrics are very specific — allegedly about a former manager and lover — yet her directness and conviction expand their reach. In 1990, that a woman in her mid-20s would address a belittling man in this way felt startling and new. Taylor Swift came to prominence in a culture already changing to make room for such testimonies, if not — still — fully able to honor them. She has made it more possible for them to be heard. "I talk and you won't listen to me," O'Connor wailed . "I know your answer already." Swift doesn't have to worry about whether people will listen. But she knows that this could change. That's why she is writing it all down.

Taylor Swift

COMMENTS

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Power Trip's excellent debut album, 2013's Manifest Decimation, further solidified this reputation by translating their live ferocity to wax. One album on, nine years in, Power Trip have ...
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Manifest Decimation is the debut album by American thrash metal band Power Trip.It was released on June 11, 2013 through Southern Lord Recordings.The album is a precursor to Nightmare Logic, which launched them to stardom with their brand of old school thrash metal. [failed verification] The album was produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (additional tracking done in Argyle ...
Power Trip
Sure, what Power Trip do on Nightmare Logic is hardly reinventing the wheel, but by emphasising the use of pace, memorable riffing and some catchy vocal hooks, all married to a die-hard commitment to being utterly furious, the band for the most part knocks the ball out of the park on their sophomore LP. Clinically consistent, rarely letting ...
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Power Trip - Power Trip review: Power Trip's self titled release shows what this band is capable of, but falls short due to it's length and the band's failure to utilize their sound to the fullest potential. ... The highly technical guitar playing drives most of the album, setting the standards of coherency, power, and stamina with precise ...
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Power Trip Nightmare Logic Louise Brown , March 8th, 2017 12:40

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