Trivium have never been ones to turn down an opportunity to work with other musicians, and in 2013 they enlisted Disturbed frontman David Draiman to produce their sixth album, Vengeance Falls. As the band prepared to drop the album, frontman Matt Heafy and guitarist Corey Beaulieu looked back over their rollercoaster career to that point.
No one ever said that being in a band was supposed to be easy. Even the biggest and most commercially potent bands have to contend with the peaks and plummets of fortune’s roller- coaster ride, learning valuable lessons along the way. Or, of course, not.
But even by the routinely chaotic standards of the rock’n’roll life, Trivium’s eight years in the metal spotlight have been particularly eventful. Exploding onto our scene with their audacious 2005 album Ascendancy and an unforgettable debut performance at Download, they conquered the UK with a degree of ease that startled the band as much as it did those who witnessed it. Within a matter of months, Trivium were headlining in big venues and being touted as metal’s next big thing. And then it all went spectacularly tits up. The band’s next album, The Crusade, amounted to the dropping of a colossal creative clanger that swiftly removed the band’s veneer of youthful invincibility.
Pleasingly, we then learned that Trivium were made of sterner stuff than most. Since finding themselves sliding down festival bills and falling out of favour with a fickle rock media, the Floridian foursome have clawed their way back to where they feel they belong. 2011’s In Waves was a rampaging return to peak form that kickstarted a second surge towards heavy music’s upper echelons, exemplified by another astonishing performance at Download in 2012 that somehow managed to outstrip the band’s first. No longer clinging to the rollercoaster for dear life, Trivium were back and this time they were driving the damn thing.
“It has all been a great learning process,” a lean and bright-eyed Matt Heafy tells Metal Hammer. “The UK was the first place to embrace us in a really big way. We did Download and it blew up, Ascendancy went gold and magazines were saying we could do no wrong. But the next record comes along and the UK didn’t like it. That was hard to digest. This was where we called home and suddenly people weren’t stoked on the record. There’d be 99 positive comments about the band but there’d be one negative comment and it would eat me alive and I’d try to make that person like us! Nowadays it really doesn’t matter. I’m just happy to do what I’m doing for a living.”
No one could ever accuse Matt or his fellow guitarist Corey Beaulieu of lacking confidence of self-belief, but there was a time, specifically around The Crusade and its follow-up Shogun, when it was obvious that Trivium were struggling. As seemingly trivial as it might seem with hindsight, it was the recruitment of drummer Nick Augusto in 2010 that proved to be a pivotal moment in the band’s story. It was the chemistry between Trivium’s four members that was in dire need of refreshment and that injection of new blood made all the difference. In Waves was an album that screamed news of Trivium’s rebirth and, pleasingly, the momentum gained through its subsequent critical acclaim and commercial success has been propelling the band along at speed ever since.
“All the bad shit that happened built character,” says Matt. “We nearly broke up multiple times over the years. It just sucked. But we made the necessary changes and when we made In Waves it felt like we were making our first demo. That’s how exciting it was. If anyone saw us at Wacken this year, they’ll see that we’ve grown. We’re playing our asses off and we’re on the up again.”
“When we went back to play Download again in 2012, our live performance was so tight, we had so much confidence and we were killing it,” grins Corey. “We had even more confidence because we knew we had a guy back there behind the drums nailing everything. All we had to do was grab people by the throat.”
It seems highly likely that a bigger audience than ever before will be checking out Trivium’s new album, Vengeance Falls. A supremely confident and focused work, the band’s sixth album feels like a shrewd but sincere consolidation of everything they have achieved in the past. But nothing Trivium do ever escapes the scrutiny of petulant online pundits, and so the news that Disturbed/Device frontman David Draiman was to occupy the producer’s chair has to rank as one of the bravest moves Matt and his bandmates have ever made. Thoughts of David and his music often trigger memories of nu metal’s stumbling denouement, monkey impersonations and the oily sheen of radio-friendly hard rock. However, having toured with him, Matt and Corey regard their new artistic foil as a friend and inspiration.
“He’s the most in-depth producer we’ve ever worked with,” Matt states. “To have someone who practises what they preach, a singer in a band who has to perform what he creates in the studio, there are just so many pluses to it. Before, we’d considered producers who’d just heard of us but weren’t fans, but David is a fan and he was excited.”
“We’re not hiring anyone to write shit for us,” adds Corey. “We need a constructive ear and a fresh perspective and production ideas. We had the songs and David wanted to help us make them the best they can be. He didn’t ask us to write a song like The Sickness!”
The biggest revelation contained within Vengeance Falls’ 10 deftly crafted anthems is that Matt Heafy has finally become the great vocalist he has always threatened to be. No longer hiding behind guttural screams or, as he did back in the days of Ascendancy, relying on studio trickery to bolster his voice, Trivium’s garrulous frontman now sounds like the finished article.
“I’ve learned more from David about singing than from anyone else I’ve ever worked with,” Matt explains. “He taught me mechanics, how to stand, how to take care of myself. There are so many little things I’ve learned from him. Also, I’ve never wanted auto-tune on any of our records, but on the first two I had to because I didn’t know how to sing. David said, ‘I know you can sing and we’re going to make you the best singer you can be!’ Thanks to him, on this record there’s zero auto-tune and that’s not something that many other singers can claim.”
Eight years ago, a somewhat brash teenager from Florida did his first interviews with the UK press, proudly declaring that he expected his band to become one of the biggest in the world. His journey since then may not have turned out quite as he expected, but unlike many bands that have risen and fallen within their comparatively brief lifespan, Trivium are still here, still growing and learning, fighting the good fight and making records that demand to be heard and respected. Their ambitions may be more modest these days, but the fire that blazes within Trivium’s collective core will still take your eyebrows off if you get too close. They’re here to stay and growing stronger by the day.
“So many bands look like they don’t give a shit. Where’s the fire?” asks Corey. “Watch old footage of Metallica and those guys had that intensity. James Hetfield’s like a fucking lion. That’s what we want to be like.”
“We used to say we wanted to be like our heroes, but now we just want to carve our own destiny,” concludes Matt. “It’s amazing that I play guitar and sing for a living. We do still have goals. I watched Rammstein in Romania, and although I’m not going to be buggering Nick on a 20-foot riser, I do want as much fire as they have, if not more! Those kind of massive shows with pyro and lights make me want to do this and do it bigger and better. We’re metalheads. We’re proud of this music and we’re proud of what we are.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 250, October 2013
