Trauma Rages On With "Awakening"

So you’re going to see Queensryche at Irving Plaza next Monday (April 10). Set your calendar reminder for 6:30 pm. You’ll have time to scope out merchandise, meet with some friends in the lobby, grab a beer and head to your seat. That way you’ll ready front and center for the thrash attack slamming into your noggin courtesy of Trauma. The San Francisco Bay Area veterans are supporting “Awakening (2022),” their latest dose of face-meting metal.

Trauma formed in 1981 and released its seminal Bay Area LP, “Scratch and Scream,” in 1984. The group disbanded in 1985 and returned to the scene like a steamroller with the triumphant “Rapture and Rage” (2015). The band then released “As the World Dies” (2018) and now the aforementioned “Awakening.”

Though known to casual metalheads for having a pre-Metallica Cliff Burton among their ranks prior to releasing their first album, Trauma deserves acclaim, and your ears attention, for so much more. This is a band on fire four decades into its career. Enter “Awakening” as prime evidence.

On album opener “Walk Away,” Trauma begins the proceedings with a barrage of riffs, artillery of drums and bass, and commanding vocals. The band consists of founding member Kris Gustofson (drums), singer Brian Allen, guitarist Steve Robello, live six-stringer Casey Trask and bassist Michael Spencer.

“Death of the Angel” and “Meat” keep the freight train rolling at full steam, “Burn” features an infectious riff, “Falling Down” is an old-school, pit-worthy tune, while “Death Machine” ends the proceedings in an appropriate, neck-snapping mode.

The band members’ talent cannot be denied, but Trauma is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Their music demands your attention, and requires butts in seats at Irving Plaza by 7 p.m.

We recently spoke with drummer/band founder Kris Gustofson.

You’re on a great tour, with a chance to bring your music to people who don’t know about Trauma.

It’s kind of interesting because it’s just one of these things where I would say like, 97, 98, it could be 100 percent of the people for all I know are unaware of the band. I’ve had a lot of people come up and say I’ve heard of you guys but I’ve never listened to your music. That type of thing. For the most part every night we play we’re playing in front of fans that have just really never heard any Trauma music. For the most part people seem to be really liking what we’re doing and I’m just hopeful that they get interested to do a further exploration into the band’s catalogue. The band’s really never toured to this degree before. It is a kind of backwards way of doing it. But we’ve also had very dedicated fans come to the shows. We had one guy who actually flew from Bogota, Colombia to come see us.

When Trauma disbanded in 1985 could you ever see the band regrouping? What was the impetus for returning?

Not really to be honest. Me and (original vocalist) Donny Hillier were really good friends and we’d talk about it periodically, ‘maybe one day we’ll put Trauma back together.’ Years and years went by until Mike Varney wanted to do a rerelease on the “Scratch and Scream” album in 2013. He actually suggested maybe we should have a band in case there were any possible live performance dates or festivals over in Europe, and we did do a couple of them.

Was it difficult putting a newly formed Trauma back together?

It took some doing. Especially having a live band it sounded kind of interesting, but the original lineup hadn’t played in so long that we had to get together to see if it would even work that way. Unfortunately it did not just because people had other obligations or hadn’t played in so long that they really couldn’t play the material anymore. So it’s been quite a journey to get it to where it is now.

“Awakening” marks the Trauma debut of singer Brian Allen, who came onboard following Donny Hillier’s death. What does he bring to the band?

Brian Allen was the lead singer of Vicious Rumors and he was a really good fit for what we needed to do at this point in time. Donnie passed away unfortunately and at one point there was a time when we were seriously considering forgetting it. But by chance we were able to get (Brian Allen) and it worked out and here we are now.

Where does “Awakening” stand in the Trauma pantheon?

We wanted to bring it back more to the Bay Area thrash metal of our roots. I think we did that with this new album. “As the World Dies” to me was more of a hard rock album to a certain degree. We just needed to try to see if there was even any interest in the band at all off that and we actually did get a lot of good reviews off that record. “As the World Dies” had a little bit of a modern edge to it to a certain degree. With “Awakening” we wanted to go back to our roots more.