In the early 2000’s, the Heavy Metal music scene was awash in a sea of up-and-coming bands that came to be lumped under the “Metalcore” banner. As per usual, a great deal of these bands disappeared just as quickly as they arose but a few were able to distinguish themselves in new, exciting ways and prove they had staying power, with Trivium being chief among them.
Mixing Metalcore mainstays like throat-shredding vocals and double-bass driven breakdowns with a healthy dose of old-school Thrash Metal leads and melodies, Trivium broke through in a big way with its second album, 2005’s Ascendency, and hasn’t looked back. Now on their eighth album (2017’s The Sin and the Sentence) and with almost 20 years of experience behind them, the musicians of Trivium have made a career out of expanding enough on their established sound to never make the same album twice, while also remembering what made their initial hits such monsters.
Much of the band’s success falls upon the shoulders of lead vocalist and guitarist Matt Heafy. Heafy’s vicious snarl-and-roar voice has evolved and his range (in both singing and shouting) has broadened in strength and dynamics. Pairing this with his and guitarist Corey Beaulieu’s tight, serpentine riffage gives Trivium’s output an undeniably sharp twin-axe front end. Bassist Paolo Gregoletto and drummer Alex Bent (the latest in a long line of skinsmen) round out the picture with precise blasts of lower-register potency.
Trivium is a band that was once defined by its influences. Staples like Metallica, Pantera and In Flames have all been listed as inspirations for the young quartet, but Trivium has put in the time, effort and creative output to one day join that list of heavyweights as motivators for the next generation of Heavy Metal prodigies.
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This article appears in Oct 3-10, 2018.
